In an instance of almost unbearable poetry, the LA Galaxy ground is called the Home Depot Center. Approach it from the 110 freeway and it rises up at you at the end of a wide, palm tree-lined boulevard, where a small army of liveried gardeners are using leaf-blowers to vacuum azalea petals from the sidewalks. Crikey, you think. Could it be any more like White Hart Lane?
When he signed for LA Galaxy back in January, David Beckham drew the facile condemnation of those bewildered that he should choose a move to Hollywood as opposed to, say, Tottenham. But as so often with the Beckham story, resistance is futile. Earlier this week he was formally unveiled at the team's ground -- it's pronounced the Home Dee-po Center -- as the all-new, US$262 million spokesmodel for Major League Soccer. His first game will be against a touring Chelsea on Saturday.
At the Galaxy's HQ, his advent has sparked fevered activity. Hectares of parking lots are dotted with cars belonging to the retinue of support staff preparing for perhaps the biggest press conference in the club's history. Several of the vehicles sport Christian fishes, with one bumper sticker reading "Jesus Saves." Here, adding the words "and Beckham scores off the rebound" would not be an instantly recognizable cultural reference. This is not a heritage site.
PHOTOS: AGENCIES
Meanwhile, across town, the August issue of W magazine is hitting the shelves, carrying an exclusive photoshoot with the Beckhams that might delicately be described as "lively." We see David wandering through a rocky desert in ecosystem-inappropriate clothing (tightly laced leather trousers). We see David easing Victoria into a corset. We see a heavily tattooed David sprawled across a bed in his underwear. We see Victoria, also lingerie-clad, spreadeagled in a chair. The entire shoot may as well be captioned: "This is your future, Major League Soccer! It'll hurt less if you bite down on that leather strap." In reality, the cover line runs: "When the soccer star married the pop singer, it was a match made in British tabloid heaven. Now David and Victoria Beckham are determined to become the new American idols."
Grit and determination
And as always with the Beckhams, it is the determination that's so hypnotic. You could power small countries off their extraordinary drive. It might be a strategem, it might be unconscious, but their most brilliant way of short-circuiting the sneerers has been never to hide how much they want it - whatever "it" might be. Breaking LA may be the couple's greatest challenge yet, but truly, how could their story not end up in the town where the movies get made?
The municipal motto of Carson City, the south-eastern suburb in which the Home Depot Center is located, is "Future Unlimited." It could double as a statement of MLS's hopes. Yet shifting one's gaze from the cover of W to the little league soccer practice taking place by the stadium, it doesn't feel like a big fish is about to arrive in a small pond. It feels like a whale is about to splash down into a bathtub.
Not that the complex is not well appointed. It houses a tennis arena and a velodrome. In the distinctly corporate reception area, there hangs a huge photograph of a recent occasion where the pitch was covered in dirt for the staging of a motorcycle event. "Pretty cool, huh?" says a passing employee. "Can't see it catching on at Real Madrid's stadium" is one's first thought, but so polite and gentrified is the atmosphere that it is impossible not to murmur assent.
If you are used to thinking of football grounds, even when empty, as partially held together with the sweat and tears of generations of supporters, then you might find the Home Depot Centre something of a departure. No doubt the 27,000-capacity stadium is a repository of tribal passion on a match day, but the fact that the Galaxy shares it as a ground with their bitterest rivals, Chivas USA, ought to indicate just how very mannerly the place seems.
It is an atmosphere that permits the existence of food stands with names like Goalie's Grill, where fans can purchase a US$12 beer, or perhaps a margarita, during games. So how quickly do things spill over into mindless violence? Do they keep a lid on it till after the final whistle? Or can things kick off as soon as half time if the Galaxy are one-nil down and there's been a dodgy sending-off?
"Well, about 200 of us do stand up for the whole game," laughs Eddie Garcia, who, along with his friend Jeff Skinner, is a founder member of the Riot Squad, the club's most vocal supporters' association. Their motto is Veni, Imbibi, Vici (you don't get that in the Shed at Chelsea), they all sit in block 138 of the ground, and as a group they consider themselves the club's most hardcore fans. Think of them as the Galaxy Ultras, only polo-shirted, unarmed, and totally benign.
"We only kill our own," explains Eddie, a graphic designer, in reference to several rituals involving beer kegs. Unusually for Galaxy fans, they like to talk about football the game, as opposed to football the family picknicking experience. "It's so great watching [former Real Madrid coach] Fabio Capello and [England manager] Steve McClaren having to eat their words about Beckham's form," these two local men agree over two black and tans in a pub called the Fox and Hounds, whose traditional English decor would be totally unremarkable were it not located in the middle of Studio City, Los Angeles. Jeff, a film editor, underscores his dedication by revealing that he took a month off work last year to follow the US team round Germany for the World Cup. He's still taking their loss to the Czech Republic fairly badly. "I don't have good memories of Gelsenkirchen," he sighs. But then, which of our great soccer-playing nations does?
Unfortunately, for some, this kind of extremism spoils it for the rest. Margie Banuelos, a teacher from Pasadena, is involved with alternative supporters' association the Galaxians, and offers a flavour of the security protocols in place for local derbies. "When we play Chivas, the fan clubs now sit on opposite sides of the pitch," she explains. "We used to sit next to them, but people ... people got out of hand." How out of hand? "Some people chanted against each other," she reveals darkly. "Some of them yelled." Happily, Galaxy games are preceded by a loudspeaker announcement that foul language will not be tolerated. It's fair to say that Posh has probably heard That Chant for the last time.
Wholesome Soccer
More representative still of the game's support base in this country is Greg Delgado, a local father of three who coaches an after-school girls' soccer club, and epitomizes its wholesome and family-oriented image. So thrilled is Greg at Beckham's arrival - "the best thing that could happen to soccer in the US" - that he wishes to immerse himself in anything that might make him feel at home. "We really admire the Brits for their soccer chants," he says. "We're going to start copying them here so we can sing them at Galaxy games." Really? Looking at the apple-pie pretty 12-year-old girls practising their keep-ups, it feels far from seemly to imagine them passing unflattering judgment on the referee. "Actually," admits Greg, "I'm not familiar with some of the words in them."
His daughter Kendra, 12, outlines the task facing US soccer's newest ambassador, in a country where it drags so far behind NFL and baseball in the popularity stakes that declaring you want to be a soccer player when you grow up is likely to make your parents question where they went wrong. "It's mostly a girls' sport," she stresses, "because boys get really competitive, so they change to other stuff when they're 15."
For her father, though, the revolution is already under way. "You know, because of David," he beams, "they're now going to get the players special matching jackets and ties to travel in when they go on the road." Aha, the club travelling kit. A fine tradition. "Exactly! We had no idea you guys did that, but now we're going to too. It's just those little pro touches he's bringing."
There is something genuinely infectious about being in the company of people who are thrilled at the innovation of the away-game suit, and it would take a hard heart to warn them that they are setting out on a road that ends in Rio Ferdinand signing for Manchester United apparently dressed as John Travolta, then going on to announce: "The music, the fashion, the TV - it all goes to make up Rio Ferdinand."
As far as visions of the Beckhams mingling with the grassroots go, Greg is a realist. "They are completely different to the rest of the Galaxy couples," he laughs. "They're already superstars." He speculates that Victoria will prefer to hang out behind the glass of the Stadium Club, a members-only restaurant at one end of the ground. "It's all hardwood floors and brass, and you can look down from your table while you're eating dinner," he explains. "It's a really nice place to watch soccer."
The Riot Squad have alternative plans. "We thought it would be funny to buy a season ticket in Victoria's name," explains Jeff, "so we've done that, and we're inviting her to come sit with us." There is even talk of making it into a throne, "because we've seen her wedding photos and she likes that kind of thing." "We figure she may not actually sit with us on every game," they concede. "So the rule is that whoever gets her seat has to come in a Posh wig and an extraordinarily small Spice Girls T-shirt."
Whatever Victoria's decision on her seating arrangements, the club may have a job on its hands enforcing the rigid apartheid system that keeps LA's celebrities from having to share facilities with its civilians. To read the reports, you'd think every star in town had bought one of the season tickets, which have gone up from around US$660 to US$860 for the best seats. As Galaxy coach Alexi Lalas confirms: "We're expecting a lot of beautiful people in the Home Depot Centre."
Quite apart from newly minted Beckham fans like Tom Hanks, there is a thriving football scene among British expats in LA. Robbie Williams has his own pitch and team - Hollywood Vale - while Lalas himself turns out for former Sex Pistol Steve Jones's Hollywood United, a side that also features Vinnie Jones, who is still amusingly convinced that anyone over here has the faintest clue who he is.
And then of course there is the Beckhams' new best friend, the enduringly sane Tom Cruise, who was last month spotted clapping regally down from the Bernabeu stands as Real Madrid won La Liga. He was wearing sunglasses at 11pm, naturally, and you mightn't want to get trapped in a conversation about the offside rule with him. But it's all bums on seats, isn't it?
Down to Earth
Though David and Victoria seem rather keener on establishing a support network in this particular echelon of LA society, Lalas has been keen to stress how close-knit the Galaxy are. "It's a down-to-earth family," is the coach's claim. "Victoria will just be one of the wives."
And so, inevitably, to the Galaxy Wags, as the club's Web site now officially refers to them. "They get a kick out of what's happening," Lalas recently explained, "but they also have a perspective that, maybe, is lacking in players' wives around the world." As if to back this up, one of their number recently added that she was sure Victoria would join them for the "chips 'n' dips" get-togethers they host when their husbands are on the road. Yes, you get the feeling this woman has better things to do than indulge in a designer handbag arms race with the likes of Alex Curran. But she may find herself with excess guacamole when Victoria declines in order to spend the afternoon shopping for Bentleys with Jennifer Lopez. Or, come to that, to be Scientologically audited with Katie Holmes. Say what you like about the old girl, she's certainly given herself some options in this town.
However great the lifestyle chasm between Beckham and his new colleagues, it is important to remember that he has always been the most popular of team players wherever he has been. Nevertheless, driving out to the Home Depot training ground along the route Beckham will take from the US$22.5 million house he and Victoria have bought in Beverly Hills, one conclusion seems unavoidable. Namely: he's going be taking a helicopter.
Even if he does decide to endure the unbearable traffic for appearances' sake, it is difficult to see how his presence can avoid causing a small amount of resentment in his teammates. Beckham has been allocated the dressing room locker next to erstwhile cock of the Home Depot, Landon Donovan, whose public statements detailing how excited he is to have been so spectacularly usurped in the fame stakes may or may not have been made through gritted teeth. As for Quavas Kirk, the erstwhile wearer of the number 23 for the Galaxy, he informed Margie Banuelos that he had been strongly encouraged to give up his shirt for the new arrival.
But Beckham's true challenge will be effecting what he was hired to do: widen soccer's appeal from a niche sport or one for kids. Even on the level of physique, it's intriguing to see how one culture's idea of athletic perfection is another's idea of a wimp. As part of a cross-promotion campaign, Galaxy's newest star recently appeared with NFL star Reggie Bush in an Adidas advert, in which he taught the New Orleans Saints running back how to take free kicks, and Reggie showed him how to throw a pass. Were gridiron fans dazzled by the sporting Adonis that is David Beckham? "Look at his tiny arms," sniffed one contributor to the popular sports Web site Deadpsin. "He's like a goddamned T-Rex." Hop around a few of LA's sports bars and you hear the same deafening indifference. As far as their denizens are concerned, if you wished to hide a map giving Osama bin Laden's precise location, inside a Major League Soccer event would be the place to do it.
In the end, there is no shortage of people on either side of the Atlantic who are hoping the Beckhams fail in their latest endeavour. But what are our LA debutantes if not forces of nature? It would hardly be their style to worry about the odds.
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