Send Beckham to Iraq

Why Not?

Before all is said and done, soccer superstar David Beckham will be motorboating back to England with a quarter of a billion dollars piled up behind him. In his wake will be the burst bubble of American interest in a sport we'll never accept, with all the pundits talking about our "irrational exuberance" for a guy who essentially does the job of the least-respected athletes in normal American sports, placekickers. (If the movie had been "Bend It like Morten Anderson," we could be living in a very different world.)

We've got enough of an attention span to bullshit about the sport's pinnacle once every four years, and occasionally we give it some post facto attention when our own women's team beats the rest of the world (assuming at least one of them tears her shirt off). That's about it. Professional soccer should have learned its lesson long ago that interest will never be sustained in their sport, and instead only develop around players we're told are Great and headbutts we can tell are awesome. That much was evident at Beckham's MLS debut in the second half of the Galaxy's game at DC United earlier this month, when the sold-out crowd of 46,000+ burst into cheers every time Beckham so much as touched the ball.

But what's done is done. Stupid water under the idiot bridge. Now that the United States has leased David Beckham, we should at least send him where he will actually accomplish some long-term good. I'm talking, of course, about Iraq.

Not to fight; insurgents wouldn't really care if we tried giving them a yellow card for tripping in Sadr City. Instead, we should send him to Iraq to play soccer.

Remember when Iraq beat Saudi Arabia in an international soccer match a few weeks ago? A handful of people died as a result of "celebratory gunfire" as soccer fans flooded the streets. Think about the positive PR spinning options we would have if Beckham were playing for them. "Celebratory IED takes out American convoy after miraculous Beckham corner kick"; "Iraqi parliament declares war on Syria after hard foul goes uncalled." If this really is a war of ideas, I don't know why he's not over there already. Even if he tried objecting, which I'd hope his contract doesn't allow, it's really hot in the desert and the guy loves taking his shirt off.

The American public wouldn't have to miss out, either. We could produce a reality TV show featuring Posh Spice complaining about life in the Green Zone and marketing her own line of bedazzled burkas. "The Simple Life" meets one of those stupid shows on Bravo meets the Russian roulette scene in "The Deer Hunter."

I hope this is part of the Petraeus report. For a paltry $250 million, the United States has an obligation to its own people, its marketers, and the rest of the world to put Beckham on a one-way flight to Baghdad. We misplace that kind of money like it was going out of style. And there's nothing David Beckham would hate more than going out of style.

Comments

[Crowhaul]

Baffling post. Soccer, or football to we purists, is more played at the youth level than any sport in America right now. Furthermore, many of today's parents played as youths. Personally, I grew up playing the sport and still pay extra each month to watch as much as possible. Sure as hell beats watching corn-fed dudes running around in tights. You can have that, I'll keep my football, thank you very much.

[LM0028]

Brilliant, Sr. Powers.
Why not take Michael Vick along for the ride? Alberto Gonzales?
Imagine a colony of America's favorite pariahs -- collectively fallen from grace and whisked overseas in the care of MTV and VH1's bastard reality TV child ("The Surreal World: Baghdad"? A girl can dream). It's beautiful, isn't it? Just keep Vick away from the camels.

[Ankhst]

The biggest problem with soccer in the US is that advertisers can't make enough money on it and then tell us how much we love soccer.

To me (and I know I'm not in the majority),
baseball is one of the most freakin' boring sports ever. Better than golf or bowling (to watch), but what's that really saying?
NFL is not much better, with all of the
stoppages. Yes, I know soccer has stoppages too, but not as many and not as long.

Basketball and hockey are closer; at least
the action is pretty continuous, and either team can score at any time.

Bottom line though, in soccer, World Champion actually means something.­.. and if US soccer players got paid like NFL/MLB/NBA players, we'd probably already have beaten down Brazil by now (even if
we had to do it by paying a bunch of Brazilians to relocate to the US). The money's just not there so far... but to think it will always be that way is very naive.

[Nommo]

Yes, baseball may not be particularly suited to the ADHD crowd. Soccer strikes me as a bunch of stoppages, while all are trying to figure which way the ball went...wha­t's a "stoppage" anyway?

Well, naive I may be, but in the meantime, until "soccer" fully globalizes, I'll take the world series.

[Nommo]

"especially when more youngsters are playing the game over any other "American" sport."
And a good thing that is, as it keeps the ones who ought not to be playing baseball, basketball, hockey, or football off of those respective fields. Eventually, we can send 'em all to Iraq
to raise some nets or something.
Soccer seems an exercise in futility, seems as tho for every pass worth watching, one's gotta bear a thousand that just seem, like, so what?

[tecumseh80]

I do appreciate the snark at the end of this post and how it does reveal that even the World's Sport cannot keep violence out of Iraq.

Yet, the beginning makes me pause. If you cannot see or understand why Beckham is more than a placekicker, then you have no idea what soccer is all about. Soccer is quickly becoming a major sport in the United States - both in attendance and marketing money. It will never replace the big three, but does that mean there could not be a big 4?

Does he deserve the salary - of course not, but we can hardly hold Beckham accountable for a system that offers this money. Regardless, what I cannot understand is why so many Americans hate soccer - is it really because we did not come up with it or did not make it popular? If so, then we are certainly a more xenophobic, ignorant, and silly people than I thought.

Oh, and by the by - when Beckham does leave our shores (and why would he want to?) I'll wager that the fans will be quite pleased with what he left behind. You cannot keep us "football" fans quiet forever...­especially when more youngsters are playing the game over any other "American" sport.

[Nommo]

I am guessing that you, tecumseh, are an American. You can't figure out why you don't like soccer?

[Blackspeare]

You do know why people play soccer----so they don't have to watch it!

[hopeless277]

Iraq is old news. Send the bastard to Iran! That's where the Kewl Kids want to be. He may want to wait until the nuclear fallout lessens a little though. Yeee Ha!!!!

[dadw5boys]

NO! Send Senator Craig, Folie, Romneys's sons, and a few other COWARDS to see what our poor solders have to live with daily.