Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Brand Beckham

It's Saturday night and the traffic coming into Carson has ground almost to a halt. Not so long ago, such a jam would have been laughable in this southern outpost of Los Angeles, with its depressing rows of templated houses inhabited mainly by poor blacks and Hispanics. A crush to get out of Struggletown, maybe, but not to get in. Especially when the ensnarled traffic is comprised of the glitterati who populate LA's most glamorous postcodes, and who had probably never heard of Carson -- much less visited it -- before the dazzling arrival of Becks and Posh in July.

In a poor piece of (pre-Beckham) planning, only the far right lane of Avalon Boulevard allows access to the car parks of the Home Depot Centre, home ground of the Los Angeles Galaxy, who are playing on this autumn evening. The burghers of Beverly Hills and Bel Air have come, in part, because their children play soccer, one of the few things they have in common with the Hispanic immigrants who cut their lawns and scrub their toilets.

For American families of all income brackets, soccer is by far their children’s most beloved sport: a maddening conundrum for the true believers who see an estimated 15 million kids devote themselves to the round ball, only to abandon the sport once they become teens. At that stage, the best athletes among them follow instead the traditional routes to sporting fame: baseball, gridiron and basketball.

Which brings us to David Robert Joseph Beckham, star midfielder of the LA Galaxy, the reason the Home Depot Centre is suddenly so difficult to penetrate. The most important reason for signing the former England captain and Manchester United and Real Madrid star is to serve as an inspiration for these youngsters; to keep them playing so the best and the brightest become professionals and eventually turn the US into a soccer powerhouse.

No one may be better placed to meet this challenge than the impossibly handsome and charismatic Beckham. His is a unique and omnipotent popularity, his face plastered on billboards from London to Tokyo selling everything from cologne to mobile phones, his trademark kicks immortalised in films and TV shows, whose fame skyrocketed with his marriage to pop star Victoria Beckham. And there are his delicious contradictions: the jock who enjoys wearing pink nail polish, sarongs and ever-changing hairstyles; who doesn’t mind being called gay (“because they have good taste”); who, having become the ultimate example of metrosexuality, was last month named the number one “man’s man” in a poll of one million internet users on AskMen.com.

The cynics believe that Beckham will never be able to sell soccer to the Americans by relying on his superstar wattage alone, that it will take a World Cup victory to create a breakthrough in the US. But at 32, Beckham is still good enough to play in England’s national team as it tries to qualify for next year’s European championships. And it ignores his heroic deeds in rebounding from adversity to drive Real Madrid, the richest club in the world, to the Spanish championship earlier this year. And yet it’s undeniable that Beckham the player can’t possibly live up to the hype. He is not, and never has been, the world’s best player.

He has a remarkable right foot, which can make a ball defy the laws of physics and gave birth to a movie, Bend it Like Beckham, and he works tirelessly at his craft, but the true legends of the game – Pele, Cruyff, Maradona, Zidane, Beckenbauer – were all able to perform magic. Beckham, in truth, has never been even an adequate dribbler nor a consistent scorer, which to his credit, he acknowledges. “I’m not a player who will run past 10 players and score three or four goals,” he said just before his move to the US. “My game is about working hard, being a team player and assists. That’s one thing I’m worried about, because people probably do think they’re going to see me turn out, and we’ll win our first game 10-nil.”

Of course, that did not happen, primarily because no one got to see him turn out very much at all. An ankle injury and then a knee injury limited Beckham to just two full matches – and one goal – in his first half season.

Looking around the Home Depot Centre, kids are everywhere. Two women, the sort of well-kept, attractive 40-somethings with the slightest hint of cosmetic surgery that LA specialises in, are escorting their young sons and a posse of friends to their seats. They are depressed upon hearing that Beckham’s injuries will again keep him from the field, but one is overheard telling the boys that “maybe he’ll come and say hello”. And maybe not.

If the crossover nature of Beckham’s appeal was ever in doubt, it was dispelled the night after his debut with the Galaxy. Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith hosted a welcome party that was a who’s who of Hollywood. “When the Beckhams arrived in LA there was a media blitz with dozens of photographers turning up to everything the couple did,” recalls Dave Jarvis, of the tabloid news agency Splash.

When the final whistle blows at the Home Depot Centre, Beckham, dressed in a tight-fitting suit with a wide tie – a look favoured in London more than LA – joins his teammates on the field. His appearance brings howls of approval from the terraces. Soon, however, as his teammates are still signing autographs, Beckham is safely inside his customised Escalade, heading back to his $US25 million ($26.8 million) Beverly Hills mansion. Landon Donovan, one of America’s best players, has the stall next to Beckham’s – where the Nivea skin cream sits neatly alongside soaps and deodorants – in the Galaxy’s dressing room. In Beckham’s absence, it is left to Donovan to captain the team and act as a de facto spokesman.

He has the demeanour of someone who has grown tired of answering the same questions about his famous teammate, but at the same time he seems to understand his role as Becks-lite. An Italian journalist asks, with all that has been written and said about Beckham, what’s he really like? “He’s pretty chill,” shrugs Donovan, using Cali-speak for laid-back. He pauses when asked what it is about Beckham that most surprised him. “People forget he is a soccer player,” Donovan says. “He loves to be part of a team, he loves to win … You assume he’s almost going to be bigger than life. But he’s not, he’s this real person and he understands what all this is and he takes it in his stride and he just loves to play.”

Beckham went out of his way to gel with his new teammates. Even though he earns more in a few hours than some of the younger players get a year (the development players can make as little as $US17,000, while Beckham’s deal nets him up to $US50 million), Donovan says Beckham does not demand special treatment. “It wasn’t easy at first but now everybody’s comfortable with him and he’s comfortable with us,” he says. “You see what happens around him and it’s beyond what you could ever expect … It can be two or three o’clock in the morning and there will be people waiting for him, and he deals with it.”

Abel Xavier, from Mozambique, is the most credentialled of the rest of the Galaxy team, having played in Europe’s top leagues until arriving in the US this season. “What’s impressed me about him is that he’s really a very simple man,” he says. That is perhaps what draws people most to Beckham: the inability to neatly place him in a box. For all his radical hairstyles, his life as a fashion plate, the exotic tattoos, the provocative photo spreads, and his championing of chic metrosexuality, at his core Beckham has not much changed from the Cockney lad who grew up dreaming of playing for his working class parents’ favourite team, Manchester United.

He loves, above all else, his family – he and Victoria have three boys, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz – and once responded, when asked what he missed most about England, “my friends, Nan and Grandad, pie and mash and jellied eels”, referring to what some choose to call a delicacy in London’s East End.

When Beckham said he was “gutted and angry” at having to leave Old Trafford, Manchester United’s famous home, there is no reason to doubt him. But why he came to leave is perhaps the best illustration of the contradiction that is Beckham. His legendary manager at Old Trafford, Sir Alex Ferguson, is a dour Scot who believes that the first priority of a footballer is the game. It is not difficult to imagine the disdain with which Ferguson – who treated Beckham like a son – viewed his star player’s 1998 marriage to Posh Spice. Ferguson thought she was a bad influence and eventually, Beckham was forced out of Manchester. “For me, personally, I need other things outside of football as well and that’s part of me and part of my life,” Beckham said at the time.

At the end of the 2002 season, Paris St Germain in France was shopping its brilliant young Brazilian, Ronaldinho. Real Madrid’s football staff wanted him but marketing forces within the club wanted Beckham, who was not the same calibre of player as the buck-toothed Brazilian but was already a brand. Money talked loudest in the end. Beckham’s four years in Spain were largely an on-field disappointment – until the latter half of last season when Madrid finally won La Liga – but it is estimated the club sold $US600 million in merchandise during this time, and Beckham’s shirt was one of the most popular sellers.

In January, when Beckham was out of favour in Spain, his hand was forced. Manchester United was the only club he wanted to play for, but with Ferguson still in charge and the team winning the premiership last season, that move was unlikely. So Beckham, who had a fondness for America since he played a junior tournament there as a 13-year-old, made the fateful decision to throw his lot in with the Galaxy.

Simon Fuller, the billionaire who manages Beckham – he also managed the Spice Girls – and was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, began working on an audacious deal with the MLS (Major League Soccer). In essence, it was a huge gamble. Beckham’s guaranteed money from the Galaxy was somewhere in the region of $US30 million over five years. That is less than he would make in Europe but, considering his off-field endorsements are in the range of $US40 million a year, he’s hardly hurting to pay the rent. The crux of the deal was that Beckham would share in profits generated by his arrival at the Galaxy. More than 300,000 shirts bearing Beckham’s name and his number, 23, were sold within hours of going on sale, at about $US70 each. The Galaxy sold thousands of extra tickets and sponsors clamoured to associate themselves with the superstar. Vitamin giant Herbalife signed a $US20 million shirt sponsorship deal with the Galaxy, an unheard-of figure in US soccer. If all goes well for him, Beckham could make up to $US250 million in the next five years, the richest deal in sports history.

“The business has been wonderful,” says Galaxy general manager Alexi Lalas. “When we sat down and looked at this, it had to make sense economically and that already has happened. It was a calculated risk but we’ve recouped our money.” Lalas is smart enough to know, however, that Beckham needs to be on the field for the money to keep pouring in. “This has been a challenging year to say the least. There’s no question we need to have him healthy and playing.But I think when we look back on 2007 we’ll see it as a watershed moment in the evolution, not just of the Galaxy but of American soccer. The positives that have come from signing David Beckham far outweigh any of the challenges.”

But will the fascination last? Lalas, for one, is confident Beckham will have his Hollywood ending. “As far as this adventure that he’s on in the United States, there’s a lot of pressure on him, but if anybody can live up to it, I think David Beckham can.”

Beckham is coming to Australia to play in a match between the LA Galaxy and Sydney FC on November 27. Robert Lusetich is The Australian’s Los Angeles correspondent.


DO YOU WANT TO BE LIKE BECKHAM?

The Yes Case, by Stephen Lunn

“Have you ever wondered whether there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking?”

That other famous fashion-mista, über-model and deep thinker, Derek Zoolander, pondered the ephemeral nature of looks, fame and life in the public eye in his eponymous 2001 film, directed by Ben Stiller. You could be forgiven for thinking that David Beckham – the world’s most famous metrosexual – channels the great Zoolander in his multiple hair-dos, designer-label clothes and patented pouts for the camera.

But there is one big difference between Becks and Zoolander. While Derek’s weakness was his inability to complete a left turn on the catwalk, on the football pitch Beckham can turn to the left, to the right. Hell, he can turn on a dime. All with a round ball at his feet and an opponent nipping savagely at his heels. And that’s why I wouldn’t mind stepping into his Adidas Predator footy boots – kangaroo skin or not.

Men want to be Beckham because of football. He captained England in its national sport for six years from 2000 to 2006. Fantasy sport for many men is not picking an ideal team for a newspaper competition. It is imagining yourself in the boots of a John Eales or the pads of Steve Waugh, guiding your team home from impossible odds with tenacity, daring and skill. Beckham has skill in spades. His sweet right boot and ability to make the ball sing as it swerves and dips toward goal from a free kick has twice seen him finish runner-up as FIFA world player of the year. He has carried the England team on his skinny shoulders more than once.

While Americans for two decades wanted to “Be Like Mike”, to jump and shoot like basketballer Michael Jordan, for those who follow the beautiful game the chance to bend one like Beckham, just once, around a wall of opposition players and into the top corner of the net, would be priceless.

Football might have been Beckham’s golden ticket, but more than any other player of his or any previous generation, he has managed to parlay his gifts into commercial success off the field. Not bad for the son of a kitchen fitter and hairdresser from the working class Leytonstone in London. Obviously the Posh’n’Becks soap opera, so carefully nurtured, manipulated even, by the savvy, cheeky, funny and entertaining Victoria, has played a critical role in his rise. Like many of us, he married above his station in terms of intellect. (Once asked if he was a volatile player, Becks answered that he “can play in the centre, on the right and occasionally on the left side”.)

Whatever his IQ, Beckham’s (or his management team’s) business nous is a worthy arrow in his quiver. He has taken his name well beyond the confines of Europe, turning it into an international brand. Sure, he allegedly slipped off the wagon in Spain with comely personal assistant Rebecca Loos, but his image hasn’t suffered one bit. That’s because it’s clear that he is a devoted husband and father. And okay, he may come to regret his myriad tattoos, at least two of which are misspelled, and he wears gear only previously seen on Huggy Bear, and sounds like he enjoys the contents of helium balloons a little too much. But he’s a man who can deliver that pure sporting moment, a curling free kick out of reach of the keeper.

As Derek Zoolander might say, that will be Beckham’s “eugoogoly”.

Stephen Lunn is The Australian’s social affairs writer


The No Case, by John Birmingham

What a mystery is Becks. A deep mystery too, for one so shallow. How can a man be gifted with such unnaturally good looks, rare talent and immense fortune and yet remain so uninspiring to his fellow men? Is it just the painted fingernails? The misadventures at the barbershop? The wife? Or is it that observing his existence, which is unavoidable on a tabloid planet, you cannot help but feel that there is much less to it than meets the eye?

A favoured line of tired copywriters when considering the alpha male is to say: “Women want him, and men want to be him.” But is that so of David Beckham? For sure, an absolute majority of randomly selected men probably would not mind having such a flat tummy, so much blond hair to mistreat, just a modicum of Becks’s way with a football. We would all, if we were honest, be unlikely to brush off a dalliance with Rebecca Loos were she offering, which she is not. Either of his two Ferraris would be nice, as would the Lamborghini, the Porsche, the Bentley or the Hummer.

If you were Becks, you would get to make these sorts of choices. Because of the fame, the looks, the money and … well, the money on its own would be enough, wouldn’t it? Hundreds of millions of dollars for a couple of games of footy in a country where, win or lose, nobody cares. Or rather, nobody who matters cares. Because despite the fawning and hero worship of Hollywood players like Tom and Katie and Will and Jada, despite the A-list parties and the celebrity cheer squad, the peeps who really matter in Beckham’s new world, the great, unwashed American masses Just Don’t Care. And without their love, in America, you’re no one. Having been bought at vast expense to turn the world game into America’s game, you face inevitable despair because you cannot lead them to a World Cup win and that alone might pique the interest of the world’s most insular sporting nation.

It’s a left-handed gift in a way, a beautiful curse. Because now, having moved to LA, Becks can live without every waking moment being forensically examined by the tabloids. But it’s that obsession with all things Becks that underlies the $300 million contract, that pays for the cars, the jets, everything.

That is possibly why neither you nor I would really want to be him. To be like him? Sure. Just a bit phenomenally richer. A touch inhumanly fitter and stronger and more graceful, at least with a ball at our feet.

But not to be him. For to be David Beckham is not to be fame’s subject, but its object. The whole world might want to know what you think, because you’re Becks, but nobody would care.

You would live as a prisoner of limitless potential. You would know that in your personal realm you enjoyed autonomy akin to the divine right of kings, but you would know – or you would hopefully know – that such freedom exists only in its potential form.

And in the end, it would not matter how admirable you appeared in form and movement, in action how like an angel. For to be David Beckham is to know disappointment. Disappointment at failure. Disappointment at never quite measuring up to the colossus of your own image, and disappointment that the monster of that image got away from you because you could never control it. You never had a hope. The only real hope you ever knew was a child’s dream to wear the red jersey of Manchester United. And having realised that dream, you lost it.

Credits: John Birmingham is a journalist and writer.

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