Beckham's first season in MLS showed mixed results

The most common view of David Beckham's MLS maiden voyage: on the bench. Simon Bruty/SI

By Paul Gardner, Special to SI.com, World Soccer

Question: When is a fiasco not a fiasco? Well, the answer has to be, "when it's David Beckham." His much-ballyhooed, incredibly hyped arrival in the U.S. to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy managed to take in, simultaneously, both ends of Kipling's equation: both triumph and disaster.

On the positive side, Major League Soccer immediately gained a ton of much-needed publicity, air time, ink, gossip-column stuff and online chat. And however cynical one might feel about that, it's a very big deal for soccer to get itself into the headlines in the U.S.

It can, of course, be argued that it wasn't really the sport that was getting all this attention; it was the personal attractions of superstar Beckham and his show-business wife, Victoria, which attracted the news hounds. And, by and large, that would be true. But it hardly matters. Getting MLS talked about, especially when the talk involves lots of money, is the important thing.

MLS commissioner Don Garber exalted that the publicity was far beyond anything the league had dared to imagine. And it sold tickets, too. There was immediate demand for Galaxy season tickets, while the other 12 clubs found that their home games against L.A. were suddenly a hot item.

That heady, euphoric atmosphere ought to have been shattered by the fact that Beckham was hardly to be seen on the field. He arrived injured, was injured again, played in only seven games and scored one goal. Clubs that had sold huge amounts of tickets for their game against the Galaxy found that the star attraction was sitting on the bench.

The Galaxy didn't help matters by being a decidedly awful team. They failed to make the playoffs, and coach Frank Yallop -- clearly exasperated and worn down by the Beckham circus -- quit at the end of the season.

But even that turned into something of a success, for the Galaxy then brought in Ruud Gullit, and "sexy soccer" became the theme for next year's team. So it can be argued that 2007 should not be seen as a flop or even as a mildly damp squib. Rather, it was a dry run -- we now await the real arrival of Beckham, a fit Beckham, in '08.

There are clear signs that Beckhamania will mean the Galaxy adopt the role of a touring team, traveling overseas in the offseason (to Asia in particular) to play exhibition games for large fees.

The Galaxy's first such game -- in Australia against Sydney FC last month -- continued the good-news-bad-news theme. L.A. lost 5-3, and Beckham picked up another injury. But he did score a great free-kick goal, and the attendance was an amazing 80,295.

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