E-Mail This Article to a Friend Becks makes US soccer look legit BY DON MAHONEY

It’s hard not to pity the American soccer team. As a young team trying to establish its identity in a sport played with as many tones and pitches as you’d hear at a Barcelona street scene, it is the constant underdog; in the world of football’s perception, the Americans are the perennial goats, accidental emissaries on one of the world’s crudest diplomatic fronts, the soccer field. Witness the drubbing "The Star-Spangled Banner" endured at the Confederations Cup matches in Paris — in games played, ironically, against France, Turkey, and Cameroon, all players in the pre-Iraq diplomatic disaster. America is now to the world what the Russians used to be for us — the token villain, even if the only distinctly American trait the US soccer team displays is a seemingly unassailable ambition in the face of universal skepticism. Americans’ ignorance toward soccer is old hat, though it’s interesting to think what these anti-American outbursts could do for support of the team on the home front.

Strangely, however, the beautiful game itself seems amenable to American values — that is, if you’re getting your definition of America from an anti-globalization rally. It’s more than old reliables like advertising overkill and the mass-media stranglehold on the game: to grasp fully the emerging state of soccer as product, one must spend some time in the tabloid universe of English captain David Beckham, a man whose extreme, baffling celebrity makes him bigger than sport. In the middle of a summer of ceaseless promotion, he may be as big as life itself.

Faced with the prospect of Beckham’s move from English giant Manchester United to Spanish colossus Real Madrid (the only entity in soccer as image-driven as he is), everyone within an earshot of the English media spent the last few weeks eating and drinking Beckham. That speaks to the ability of the tabloid media to run an interesting story with attractive faces right into the ground.

What is also shows is the shocking effect Beckham has on the collective unconscious of Europe. For two weeks, Western Europe seemed to be held hostage more to a face than a story — the face of a man so relentlessly marketed that he has become his own brand. When the climax finally came, it was a moment of perverse pride for US expatriates everywhere: while America may have set the standard for celebrity worship, this time the Europeans surpassed it. The groveling and uproar that David Beckham’s vacuous gaze has inspired seems completely beyond both sports and pop culture.

While it’s impossible to consider the mass appeal of the signature American athletes of the past 25 years, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, without addressing their limitless marketability, something — be it ability or personal restraint — kept them from becoming pure products. Beckham, though, has sacrificed the adoration of Joe Punter for pin-up immortality. He now takes fashion risks weekly. He is famously wed to a pop star, Posh of the Spice Girls. While his dedication to his wife and his young sons, Brooklyn and Romeo, is beyond doubt, the fact that both Posh’s and Beck’s visibility has increased tenfold since their union indicates self-interests made mutual. Their crowning, a kind of glorious revolution, has come this summer.

When Beckham’s celebrity began to interfere with Manchester United’s success on the field, and his results-mad coach Alex Ferguson (a kind of Scottish Bill Parcells) began to bench him, the move to Madrid became the ideal solution for all involved. Only the public, steered by the tabloids, which use Beckham’s face as an unofficial logo, couldn’t let go and turned the transfer into bloodbath.

And therein lies the utter madness of Beckham’s appeal, a syndrome popularly known as Becks Effect: to the tabloids and their readers, Beckham became the victim — a part of United since he was 14, now scorned by a coach, lost to the times, and a pawn in the power plays of multi-billion-dollar soccer clubs. Ridiculous quotes about him being treated "like a piece of meat" and rumors of his willingness to play for United "for free for the rest of his life" began to surface. The truth, as it trickled out, has Beckham almost begging to be picked up by Madrid, which don’t have much space for the Englishman among its roster of galácticos, but should have no problem selling a few thousand Beckham jerseys during its tour of the Far East this August. Beckham’s value may be in doubt to the throngs of Europeans who spend entire Sundays glued to SkySport’s football feast, but he has won the hearts and minds of the under-18 female demographic, the only audience pop stars ever play to.

That Beckham was in Los Angeles as his future was being negotiated makes perfect sense. Self-promotion is his career, and the ongoing efforts of Beckham and his wife to "break into America" offer far more entertainment than any match Beckham will ever play in. Trying to rise from the pop purgatory where the Spice Girls are currently mired, Posh has enlisted Roc-a-Fella Records guru Damon Dash to develop some urban appeal. A hit single seems frighteningly imminent, although its success hinges on the strength of America’s memory of Posh as the least talented or likable Spice Girl. Beckham, for his part, was rumored to be changing outfits five times a day, sporting everything from Rocawear to Versace, seeming more and more like his wife’s devoted rag doll.

The day Beckham agreed to play for Madrid, he was conveniently in the middle of a publicity tour in Tokyo. Seeing throngs of teenage girls hopping madly for a glimpse of Beckham was eerily reminiscent of the Beatles’ first landing in New York, minus the historical context. After all, Beckham had been to Japan before, and this time he wasn’t even there to play a game: he was filming ads and planning photo-ops. At least the Beatles frenzy seemed due in part to the foggy desires songs like "Twist and Shout" awakened in their teenage audience. Besides, what celebrity goes to the ends of the world simply to promote himself? More and more, Beckham’s soccer playing seems superfluous; the footballer is an American breakout away from becoming his sport’s first hyper-celebrity, famous only for being the most famous.

Tellingly, Becks and Posh have spent their summer in white. What else would you expect from England’s celebrity king and queen? Interestingly, Real Madrid is infamous for its white jerseys, which inevitably evoke, to those who remember, residues of the club’s long connection with Franco. Though hardly comparable to fascism, David Beckham’s cult of celebrity, at full pitch, seems like the doctrine’s remotely related cousin.

That America’s spirited, unpretentious national team has become one of the last bastions of hope for a sport evolving quickly into a Sunday soap may be the greatest irony of them all.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com.