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Lincicome: Adding Beckham, MLS has lowered its goal standard

Published January 13, 2007 at midnight

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The generational impulse to save soccer for those who ignore it in America, to have it ready just in case all those tots scrambling around while their mothers check their watches grow up to become adult fans, turns hopefully to David Beckham.

As it once turned to Pele, or more recently to teenager Freddy Adu, the game refuses to believe it cannot be more than it is.

And it is quite something everywhere but where it matters, here in the land of Us.

Thus does Beckham, who is still more the tag line of a movie title than an actual athlete to Americans, accept the chore of invigorating the beautiful game and pricking our reluctant curiosity.

It would be like us sending Terrell Owens to Iceland - not a bad idea, by the way - to bring the quaint subtleties of tackle football to an unconcerned society.

Or maybe Nomar Garciaparra and his lovely wife, Mia, to China to teach the hit- and-run, and they could, while they were there, thank the folks for lending us Yao Ming.

What would the rubes know, or care, except that fame is supposed to be portable, even if it is not entirely clear why this particular tourist is famous.

But we do have the word of various authorities on these matters, tabloid journals and celebrity magazines and the like, reassuring us that Beckham is the most famous athlete in the world, no disrespect to Shaq or Tiger Woods.

And we also have the word of one soccer figure whose name and title escapes me who swore that the inclusion of Beckham on the American sports scene is the greatest event in the history of . . . ah, I don't remember the rest, but you get the idea.

Clearly, the peak of soccer in America was when Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt for the national ladies, and that is something Beckham might consider, being every bit as attractive.

The price for whatever Beckham brings is quite high, more than the entire league and its equipment, I am guessing, some $250 million, which means that Beckham picks up the check for Alex Rodriguez should they ever have lunch.

That this should happen in Los Angeles is fitting, since image is everything and pro football is somewhere else.

I must point out that this was once tried in L.A. with an even better player than Beckham, the equally celebrated and dazzling George Best, just as it was tried in New York, with not only Pele but master midfielder Franz Beckenbauer, and in other outposts, with goalie Gordon Banks and famed striker Gerd Mueller.

For a while there in the '70s, we became Boca Raton for faded foreign soccer celebrities, a place to retire with wages, and the result was the same as it will be with Beckham, indifference, bankruptcy and collapse.

As in war, the lessons of the past never seem to keep the new guys from making them all over again.

When last we paid attention to the grand strategy of American soccer, it was to grow with American players, such as the aforementioned Adu, a child wonder since grown into something less, and Landon Donovan, who is the incumbent star of the Los Angeles Galaxy, the team Beckham will be indulging.

Major League Soccer, which is sort of the toy train set of mega-moneyman Philip Anschutz, was to endure economically and secondarily, taking in its 15,000 to 20,000 fans with gratefulness, being anything but foolish or excessive.

The real arrival of soccer would come when our native-born or naturalized citizens became good enough to challenge the world, or at least Italy and Brazil, without apology or alarm.

American soccer would get the moment that American ice hockey had at the Lake Placid Olympics and the rest would be . . . well, hockey may not be the best example, but something good was sure to happen.

Granted, we were something less than that at the last World Cup, so much so that we fired our national coach and are hoping we can get Germany's, but still it was a good plan.

What is not a good plan is to try and juice the game with a faded poster boy who is off his national team and unable to start for his club team, Real Madrid.

Why soccer should think that we are suckers for such silliness is its problem, though Beckham does take a nice picture. His wife, Posh, as well.