The Beckham Experiment: Go read it already

By: NathanHJ | August 10th, 2009

A month ago, the marketing folks at Crown Books sent me a preview copy of The Beckham Experiment, Grant Wahl’s inside look at David Beckham’s Big US Adventure. I’d like to think this is because Grant has me on speed dial and we spend a lot of time dishing about sport celebs, but Grant’s so busy never returns my calls. Or voice mail. Or email. And it turns about that IM name I had was really for Gary Wahl. And there’s this software glitch that keeps me from posting any comments on his SI articles. Every time. But now that I’m gaining fame as a powerful futbol blogger, his people got in touch with my people and, well, here I am reviewing the book that I got for free because I’m back to being BFF with Grant.

After reading this book, though, I don’t think David Beckham is going to want to be BFF with Wahl, despite the respectful and professional relationship the two had in the several years prior to its publication. More on that in a minute.

First let me say that if you are a Galaxy fan and you haven’t read the book, then you really really need to. The mysteries of the craptacular 2008 season are explained. And let me say that the truth is pretty much even worse than you ever imagined. I love a good trainwreck story as much as the next guy and the 2008 season, the second of the Beckham Years, was one of the greatest sports trainwrecks of all time. Wahl does a good job in putting the reader on the inside and I had fun remembering, from my outsider viewpoint, how I was seeing that various episodes that Wahl describes.

Like the introduction of Ruud Gullit as head coach. Remember that? Sext futbol and whatnot? This is from page 156,

As he took his seat, Gullit flagged down Galaxy press officer Justin Pearson, “Justin, could you get me an espresso, please?” When Pearson returned from the café counter, he had bad news: They didn’t serve espresso.

Gullit frowned. He wasn’t in Europe anymore. He was in America, a fact highlighted by what was availble at the café, the Special of the Day advertised on a nearby sign: CHILI-CHEESE DOG. If there was a defining metaphor for Year Two of the Beckham Experiment, this was it.

Could Europe and America coexist on the Los Angeles Galaxy, especially after Tim Leiweke had dropped millions of dollars on high-priced Europeans (David Beckham, Ruud Gullit, Terry Byrne) whose arrivals had turned the worlds of the team’s ruling Americans (Landon Donovan, Alexi Lalas) upside down?

Yet Gullit vowed he was going to adjust. Not to chili-cheese dogs, mind you, but to the peculiarities of MLS. “I have to adapt myself to the American way,” he said. “I’m not going to put myself in a position that I know better than the rest. I can’t. I don’t want to be a wise guy and tell them I want to change this and this. I have to accept it.” Already, however, the transition had been difficult — and the source of the predictable worlds-colliding unintentional comedy. Just days after Gullit had taken over, Lalas tried to explain to him the rules of the MLS expansion draft, which called for each team to submit a list of twelve protected players. The first year San Jose Earthquakes could select one player from each team who wasn’t protected. (The Galaxy ended up losing Gavin Glinton.)

“Ruud, you can protect twelve players,” Lalas told him.
“No, I want to protect them all,” Gullit replied. “I don’t want to lose any of them.”
“Okay, Ruud, I understand what you’re saying, but the rules are you have to protect twelve.”
“Why would I not protect them all?”
“Well, you can’t.”
“Then the player should just refuse the transfer!”
“Number one, it’s not a transfer. Number two, this is MLS, and you can’t refuse that. There’s very few players with no-trade clauses.”

Gullit threw up his hands in disgust. He felt the same way about the MLS salary cap and roster limits. As preseason training neared, Gullit wanted to bring in new players, but it wasn’t nearly as easy as it had been in the Premier League. “This trading thing, it’s so complicated,” he said.
“It’s like a stock market. If you want a player, then you have to get rid of another player to get under the salary cap.”

Gosh, who knew hiring a European coach with no US or MLS experience would lead to the kind of disaster that Galaxy fans suffered through last year? Who knew?

Wahl’s writing is fluid and detailed, allowing for a full picture to emerge without bogging the story down. While I felt the beginning of the book was a bit turgid, I think that was because its written for the non-fan who doesn’t know the ins and outs of the game or MLS, so lots of filling-in-the-cracks stuff happens in the beginning. However, as the book moved forward, I wanted even more details about the story than I was getting. This was more about the MLS/Galaxy junkie in me coming out than in any shortcoming on Wahl’s part.

The best part about the book, though, was how thoroughly Wahl was able to depict the life of the entire team, not just Beckham. The players really come alive in the pages of the book, and I’ve been able to, in some cases, completely revise my opinions of them. Alan Gordon for example. All is forgiven. More on that later as well.

Within the context of the book, perhaps the two people who come off the worst are Tim Lieweke and Beckham himself. That’s right, Alexi Lalas is not on that list because he puts himself on the road to rehabilitation (though he still has a lot to answer for, especially nixing the trade of Peter Vagenas for Kyle Beckerman! Yes, you read that right. Unbelievable.). With Becks, it is perhaps an unfair conclusion since he didn’t give any interviews specifically for the book. In fact, that’s the major weakness here. However, the extensive access to the rest of the organization, plus the all the pre- and post-game press conferences compensate adequately for that.

Lieweke, on the other hand, has no defense. Wahl does a very good job of making the case that AEG’s business relationship with 19 Entertainment got in the way of the management of the Galaxy as a futbol team, treating it instead as the wrapping surrounding the repackaged Brand Beckham. This, he argues, was the reason that the 2008 season went so very very very bad in every possible way.

And that is also the reason that Wahl and Becks are unlikely to have much of a warm friendship for the foreseeable future. Wahl makes the case again and again that it is really inconceivable that Becks didn’t know a lot of the backroom machinations that were going on since his long-time best friend Terry Byrne was at the center of all of them. And, as team captain, Beckham pretty much did nothing to try to make any of it any better. At least according to the book.

You’ll notice I’m not talking much about the whole Landon Donovan – David Beckham flare up over the “unprofessional” comments and whatnot. It’s been covered to death. In the book the section is pretty anti-climatic and Wahl does a good job contextualizing the comments so they don’t seem so sensational.

There’s much much much more to find out in The Beckham Experiement and as a Galaxy fan I ate the entire thing up. Any fan of MLS will find it entertaining and informative, while the Galaxy-haters will have a grand old time reading page after page of debacle writ large.

For me, the seeming turn-around engineered by Bruce Arena this season is put in much greater context because of Wahl’s book.

I’ll be doing more occasional excerpts from the book over the coming weeks, especially of those passages that I found to be the most interesting or intriguing, but which are far from the thrust of the overall thesis. Like why I’m now much more understanding of Alan Gordon.

If you’ve read the book, what did you think? If you haven’t read the book, are there questions or comments you have about my review? Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below.