Beckham 'to leave Real in summer'

[Bullitt]

LA Galaxy is owned by a company called AEG[/b]

Now, that is very Interesting, after the rumours that were going around 6 months ago which linked Beckham with a return to United...

 

[Ripper]

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I played soccer and baseball until i was 11 or 12, ill tell you what i was pretty damn good at soccer.. if i had lived in england i'd be in the acadamies now, but i soon lost interest in it and focused more on baseball...
[/b]

Exactly...we'd have some superstars if they didn't leave soccer for other sports. Same with Rugby...if it was given the attention Football is in our country we'd be unstopable. Those small towns in the south and midwest eat, live, and breath high school football...imagine if that were rugby.
[/b][/quote]

I can imagine

I mean you just have to look at your national Basketball,Baseball and Hockey teams..... UNSTOPPABLE!
[/b][/quote]
Yeah, and we all know how seriously they take those sports at International Level.

And where in his post did he say anything about those 3 Sports?

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

Basically MLS is a group of billionaires who owned football teams in the NFL and also had an interest in soccer so they decided they wanted to start a professional soccer league to coincide with their football teams. An example of this is Robert Kraft who owns the New England Patriots (the most prolific NFL franchise of recent years). To coincide with his ventures in Football craft also created the New England Revolution, an MLS soccer team and he completely financed this venture himself, simply for his love of the game.

Another example of this is Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment whichowns Toronto Maple Leafs (richest NHL team in the League), Toronto Raptors, and the new Toronto FC MLS franchise. This group is owned by the Ontario teachers union and is racking in profits of 100s of millions of dollars off tv revenue, sports and entertainment, and real estate. They own Television networks for both the Raptors and Maple Leafs and they own the facilities there teams play in.

Starting up a new league in North America is easy you just need the right people with a lot of money and some good old American marketing to make it work. These people know how to run sports franchises as they run some of thew most successful sports teams in the world and they have very deep pockets. Beckham is only the beginning you will see it happening more and more with big american sports teams luring coveted players away from Europe and other areas. Its already happened with Ice Hockey (Sweden, Finland, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Latvia have all had there best players drained from there own professional leagues) and Baseball where players are recruited from Asia and all across central and south america to play MLB. The best baseball players no longer hail from the States anymore but that doesn't mean their league isn'tthe strongest.

 

[fcukernaut]

Well first off Beckham isn't making $250mil, he's making $10million a year plus a reported share of the clubs profits. The rest of the money is coming in from his old sponsors and of course the countless numbers of new ones he's about to receive.

The gimmick will die down immensely.......even if he earned more $$ than the avg NFL star, they wont talk about it, cause soccer over there is like rugby League in the UK...or even worse

Pele wasnt the talk of the town when he arrived....in fact not many people know Pele even played there - thats an indication of the USA approach to soccer.[/b]

What are you on about? Pele brought rediculous amounts of fans to the game. The New York Cosmos or whatever they were called averaged well over 40,000 a game sometimes packing in over 70,000 people on any given night. Not only that they were the toast of New York city. They owned the night clubs notably those like studio 54 which Joe Namath still frequented and if you know anything about American pop culture you'd realize his signifcance, without Broadway Joe there wouldn't be the Beckham-esque superstar(only Joe was actually the coolest guy on the planet). This wasn't only in New York this was right across the board places like Vancouver also brought over 30,000 a game. The problem was that they opened the flood gates with the Pele signing. Once he signed everyone else started saying "well he got a big signing, where's ours?" and it just spiraled out of control. They couldn't afford the contracts so the league decided to expand which brought in big expansion money. This was all well and good but the league was starting to tank because they just outspent their resources. Which brings us to today.

This is the beginning of the end of the MLS. Don't be mistaken this isn't just a one guy gig, there will be more. At $10million a pop they aren't going to come cheap and there goes your profits. On top of that there isn't another name out there like Beckham. Like it or not he transends the sport and is known by virtually every single American. Should Ronaldo come over, he'd walk down the street and nobody would know who he was, hence a less significant impact and a waste of money. Also must be noted that Beckham isn't a scorer and if you know anything about American sports fans they're all highlight-whores. They just want that big dunk or the top shelf goal. They don't care about cross field kicks, they only care about goals and considering Beckham only scores once every 8 or so games played the novelty will run off quickly.

The new BMO field which will be the home of Toronto FC is a prime example of this.[/b]

This is without a doubt one of the most illogically built stadiums I've ever seen.

In Ice Hockey players have gotten bigger, no longer can you be a small man and hope to make it anywhere playing the sport. Everyone playing has to be a 6'4 230lb brusier to be of any significance.[/b]

Well that's changing and changing very quickly. The NHL has changed it's rules so that dinosaurs can no longer play and those small quick buggers are coming back into the league. Just watch the CHL and you'll see that the game is getting smaller and faster.

I personally believe that in the next 20 years you are all going to see major changes to the soccer scene in North America. It is growing very fast and rapidly and with the amount of money that is thrown around in North American sport I think you will see stronger more competitive teams emerging from this side of the ocean and the awakening of the giant.[/b]

This is a very naive thought. Soccer will never be a major sport, it just will never happen. Americans don't take to a game like this, simple as that. Furthermore, the number of soccer players rivals or surpases all the other major sports in the US and has for quite some time. So why do they still get crap ratings for the WC and other major events? Why do the US still effectively suck in world competition? It's because Americans don't care and will never care.

Sure you'll see the Galaxy playing every single Saturday night on ESPN 7 but they aren't going to be watching for the game, they will be watching for the spectacle. Don't get those two confused because they are drastically different.

This is a very similar situation to that when Wayne Gretzky went to the LA Kings. He was also someone who transcended their game, they made the hockey games the place to be. They were more popular than Lakers. What did this do for hockey in the USA? 0.

 

[An Tarbh]

generally Americans don't give a rats ass about sporting events that take place outside of America hence all the hullabaloo about getting the swimming finals at the olympics moved to the morning so they can take place at Prime Time in the States, it's an absolute joke, but to me it seems to sum up the attitude to sports in the US. Take Michael Johnson, a household name pretty much the world over bar the States, that was prior to him winning the 200m and smashing the world record, which had it not happened in Atlanta Johnson wouldn't have been elevated in superstar status in the States, he himself said as much. It will be interesting to see what effect that the next world cup the US hosts has on the sport and on the league in America, methinks it'll be far greater than it was in 94.

 

[DC]

94 did in fact have one of the best attendance ratings of all time

BUT soccer is growing here, the older generation of baby boomers seem to not like it, i.e. my parents dont at all, but my generation seems to enjoy it a lot.. thats why high school soccers gotten so big here, in terms of participation.

 

[Ripper]

Starting up a new league in North America is easy you just need the right people with a lot of money and some good old American marketing to make it work.
[/b]

Somebody forgot to tell the USFL that.

 

[An Tarbh]

94 did in fact have one of the best attendance ratings of all time

BUT soccer is growing here, the older generation of baby boomers seem to not like it, i.e. my parents dont at all, but my generation seems to enjoy it a lot.. thats why high school soccers gotten so big here, in terms of participation.
[/b]

I wasn't talking about the success of the actual tournament, which was amazing but more the fallout after the tournament and the impact that it had on soccer in the States

 

[fcukernaut]

<div class='quotemain'>Starting up a new league in North America is easy you just need the right people with a lot of money and some good old American marketing to make it work.
[/b]

Somebody forgot to tell the USFL that.
[/b][/quote]

There's a big difference there though as there was already a well established league in place and the USFL offered no different experience like the AFL did back before the NFL merger. That is to say there was no Joe Willy Namath.