| David Beckham inked a five year contract of $250 million to play for
Los Angeles Galaxy to increase the popularity of soccer as much as
American football, basketball and baseball.
Moving to LA for Beckham will mean he'll reside close to his old time
friend and movie star Tom Cruise.
Legally bound by contract with Real Madrid, David Beckham won't be able to
move to LA before June this year.
David says he is moving to America not because of the money, but
because he wants to encourage the young Americans to play soccer
rather than other American sports.
However this may be a challenging task, even for Beckham. As history
shows, when the world's greatest soccer players of the 1970s started to play for
the North American Soccer League, it created a lot of excitement but
it did not save NASL from folding in 1985.
Many sports critics share the idea that spending astronomical amount
of money to attract the soccer players into the USA is not the right
way to achieve soccer growth in America.
One British soccer player who spent several seasons playing in the US
said that "American male is a great fan of football, basketball, and
baseball. Nothing or noone is going to change that. In fact most
Americans have never heard of David Beckham."
In fact until several days ago, when interviews with Beckham were
shown on American TV, very few Americans heard David's voice before.
Beckham is not a great talker, and it's hard to get a good interview
from him. Most of the times he says everything is great and amazing to
him.
This will not help him make soccer more popular either.
Even the greatest soccer player of all times Pele and the 1994 World
Cup could not make American audience fall in love with soccer for
long. There is even smaller chance Beckham can do it. |
David Beckhman, England's most famous soccer player, signed a five-year contract to move to the USA and play for LA Galaxy soccer team to make soccer more popular with the American audience.
