Compared to England, This Is Just Kid’s Stuff
From over here to over there, from one side of the Atlantic to the other, the gap grows smaller every day.
They did not win the men’s World Cup in any of the previous nine tournaments. Neither did we. They lost in the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup. So did we. They liked “Bend It Like Beckham” a great deal. So did we. They buy a lot of tickets to watch Manchester United play. So do we.
We now even have our own media-generated soccer sensation, same as they do, even though ours is half the age of theirs, was born in Ghana and has yet to score a goal or record an assist or even start a professional match.
On the plus side, ours has yet to be accused of two extramarital affairs during the same week.
America has Freddy Adu, England has David Beckham, and therein lies the biggest remaining difference between soccer over here and soccer over there.
Over here, it’s, “Why won’t Freddy start?”
Over there, it’s, “Why can’t Beckham stop?”
Over here, every pass Freddy makes on the field is dissected and critiqued by soccer analysts on television.
Over there, every pass Beckham allegedly made to Malaysian model Sarah Marbeck via mobile-phone text messaging is reprinted in the Sun.
Over here, the media obsess over every single touch by Freddy.
And over there, the media ...
... obsess over every single touch by Beckham.
Freddymania is a distinctly American phenomenon. It could only happen here, in the land of the terminally impatient and the home of instant gratification, with the added attraction of a struggling 9-year-old professional soccer league desperate for buzz of any kind.
Adu is only 14, but he has been tabbed “the future of American soccer” for so long, America got tired of waiting.
In any other team sport, he’d be a precocious high-school freshman stepping up to varsity. In any other team sport, his first professional paycheck would still be years away -- especially considering the older-might-be-better rethink in U.S. sports, with the NFL’s going to court to try to thwart Maurice Clarett’s early declaration for the draft and the NBA’s consideration of a 20-year age minimum.
The NFL and the NBA can afford to wait. Unlike soccer, they are established American pastimes with established fan bases. They don’t need to force-feed a 14-year-old phenom into the system just to make sure their highlights get shown on “SportsCenter.”
Major League Soccer can’t make that claim. It needs Freddy -- now -- a good deal more than Freddy will ever need it. So MLS rigs its draft, allowing Adu to stay close to home by playing for D.C. United, makes him the highest-paid player in the league, builds its 2004 season marketing campaign around him and basks in a few early-season sellouts that leave novice viewers wondering why Freddy’s not starting and not already pumping the nets full of goals.
This would never happen in England, where soccer is king and 14-year-olds of Adu’s ability are sent to youth academies to train for eventual employment in the Premier League, as Beckham once did as a schoolboy, learning his craft at the Manchester United academy.
Then again, the media fervor over every move Beckham makes wouldn’t happen here. In Beckham’s marriage to former Spice Girl Victoria Adams, the British media struck the mother lode of English obsessions -- soccer, fashion, pop music and faux royalty -- all rolled into one convenient photo op.
It’s different here. We don’t comb locker rooms and concert halls just to find those we can treat like pretend kings and queens. That’s what “The Bachelor” and “The Apprentice” are for.
Right now, the English tabloids are agog over Beckham’s alleged affairs with 26-year-old Rebecca Loos, his former personal assistant, and the 29-year-old Marbeck, a model he reportedly met in Singapore during a Manchester United exhibition tour in 2001.
Last week, the News of the World reported that Beckham, in his first season away from home, now with Real Madrid, had a sexual relationship with Loos from September to December of last year. The Beckhams had barely had time to circle the lawyers and regroup for some all-together all-is-well family photo shoots when the Sun and the News of the World broke the news of Marbeck’s allegations over the weekend.
“I Waited 2 Years For Becks,” read one headline in the Sun.
Another Sun story quoted Marbeck’s claiming she and Beckham had exchanged “racy text messages” over their mobile phones. The Sun then printed some of those messages, with a variety of words deleted, after a disclaimer that read, “The exchanges are said to have looked like this.... “
Longtime Beckham observers were shocked. They never guessed their boy was such an accomplished speller.
On top of this, the so-called “all-galactic” Real Madrid squad -- Beckham, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Zinedine Zidane, et al -- crashed out of the Champions League quarterfinals last Tuesday, then lost at home Sunday night to Osasuna, 3-0, to fall from first place in Spain’s La Liga.
El Mundo tactfully described the defeat as “Suicide in the Bernabeu.” Marca dismissively compared Beckham to Forrest Gump -- likable yet dim-witted, running all over the place for no apparent purpose.
All things considered, Adu has it easier at the moment. All he’s being asked to do is carry a league and sell a subtle, low-scoring sport to a country that demands everything, final scores included, super-sized. Before his 15th birthday.
Beckham has to deal with Sun reports that claim Marbeck text-messaged him, fantasizing about “making love on the bonnet of the Ferrari 550 that Posh bought him.”
It’s different over here. America’s biggest soccer star is too young to drive.
