Disasterous injury

Just as David Beckham managed to get back on the field and log some actual playing time, he once again sustained an injury. This time he suffered a sprained right knee in the Los Angeles Galaxy's SuperLiga final against Pachuca. The injury is severe enough that Beckham will miss the remainder of the MLS season.

Los Angeles played from behind for most of the match until Chris Klein scored with an amazing bicycle kick during the second half stoppage time. The Galaxy went on to lose the match, however, after Landon Donovan and Abel Xavier both missed penalty kicks at the end of the game to give Pachuca the victory.

The loss of Beckham will have a strong affect on the rest of the MLS season. Losing the leagues most recognizable face will definitely hurt the league, especially since Beckham and the Galaxy will not be a part of the MLS playoffs and championship. The Galaxy also lost their shot at the one million dollar purse awarded to the winner of the SuperLiga final. It looks to be a long offseason of anticipation for Beckham and Galaxy fans.

Below is a video of the previously mentioned Chris Klein goal. It was number one in SportsCenter's top ten plays of the day.

Bench It Like Beckham & Jersey Sales

Upon arriving in the United States to play with the Los Angeles Galaxy, David Beckham was suffering from an injured ankle. The injury was enough to keep him out of several games, which caused a sports media stir. In this day and age of expanded media coverage, this type of reaction is to be expected, especially when dealing with an athlete of Beckham's stature. The term that was commonly thrown around was "Bench It Like Beckham", a spin on the film Bend It Like Beckham.

The picture above was taken from the August 27th issue of ESPN The Magazine, and shows a satirical take on the Bench It Like Beckham phrase. While the criticism is a bit extreme (it's not exactly easy to play 90 minutes of soccer on a bum ankle), it isn't completely unexpected that sports commentators like Jim Rome and Tony Reali have been having a field day with Beckham's lack of playing time.

Look closely at that picture again. Even though it jabs at Beckham, it still shows seven children wearing his jersey, which leads to the business angle of this blog entry. An article on Examiner.com, which is a collaborative website of three seperate newspapers located in San Francisco, Washington DC, and Baltimore, recently reported that Beckham's jersey is the best selling in the United States. This is an amazing feat for a soccer player to outsell other, more American sports, especially with fans in an uproar about his lack of playing time. By selling more than 200,000 jerseys in a little over a months time, it looks like the decision to pay Beckham big money is already starting to pay off.

The Beckham Effect Introduction

This fall, as part of my Business and Administrative Writing class, one of my assignments is to maintain a business related blog. With loose guidelines, I was tasked with creating a business related topic to write about for the next 16 weeks. I am a passionate sports fan, so I decided to focus on an area of sports that also relates to business. Over the past few years, my interest in professional soccer has been growing. I have been following David Beckham's transfer to Major League Soccer very closely and have decided to create a blog about the effect David Beckham is having on the business aspects of Major League Soccer.

Throughout this blog I hope to catalog what effects, if any, he may have on American professional soccer. I will be updating this blog several times per week with news articles, important match highlights, interviews, web links, and videos. Hopefully my professor, classmates, and anyone else who finds this blog will be entertained and informed by my writings. In conclusion to this first introductory post, I leave you with this video of Beckham's first MLS goal, scored against DC United on August 14th, 2007.