Becks Will Travel to Toronto. But What Will He Do There?

By: Laurie | August 3rd, 2007

According to MLSnet, David Beckham will be making the trip to Toronto. The question is, will he play?

Frank Yallop was working hard to keep people’s expectations low. Apparently the ankle is getting better, but fitness needs some work. “It’ll be tough to put him in the lineup with what he’s been doing,” Yallop said, citing Beckham’s lack of training with the club. “The chances are probably slim, I would think.”

I’m thinking, and I’ve said this before, that he’ll limp onto the field at about the 78th minute. Then some overzealous TFC defender will take him out at the ankles. Then he’ll limp off the field and not play again till the next nationally televised game (when he will limp onto the field in the 78th minute…)

Or maybe he’ll just wave prettily from the sidelines? Wouldn’t that be better for all concerned?

Jeff Bull’s It’s a Simple Game, one of my favorite thought-provoking blogs, had an interesting post yesterday on what, exactly, is David Beckham? A player? A commodity? An ambassador? What, exactly, should MLS expect from him, especially in the wake of the Dallas no-show that disappointed so many people?

An interesting quote:

Turning to the player theme, there’s something about the pressure for Beckham to play that rides the ridge of off-putting and tilts a bit to the alarming side. The day he played in the friendly against Chelsea, a shift in the kind of commodity he was occurred: he went from “brand” to slab of meat. My “mind’s ear” heard echoes of “Dance, Monkey!” That’s kind of the scary side of all this.

I agree with this. For the most part. And this is the price one pays to have seventeen servants and a twenty-some-million-dollar house in Beverly Hills. Off-putting? Absolutely. But we all make our choices in life. Beckham willingly made the choice to be the monkey and to dance the dance when he signed on with Simon Fuller and leapt into the American Idol life.

I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic to what he’s going through with his injury. Truly, I’m not. But when you sign on for this kind of money, particularly relative to the other players, you cede a certain amount of control of your life. It’s just the way life works.

When Beckham signed, I don’t know that I fully understood how little his soccer skill really mattered to his American life. I’ve begun to see this since his arrival. (And this has very little to do with Beckham himself — a man who lives to play the game.) A large number of Dallas fans didn’t really care whether or not he played; they just wanted him there, in the flesh, for them to see. And maybe to sign a few autographs.

MLS made the choice this year to move toward a celebrity-based league. (And be sure to stop by Jeff’s blog to read his thoughts on this; I’d quote a lot more if I had more time and space.) Originally I thought this would be a wonderful thing for the league.

Now, though? The words “mixed blessing” seem more appropriate.