The Beckham Experiment and Group C
In the three years since David Beckham joined the team, the Los Angeles Galaxy have dominated what little attention the MLS has been able to garner. Back in 2007, the sports world was ablaze with the news of David Beckham’s enormous contract. Celebrities packed the Home Depot Center, and ESPN aired the games with an hour pregame show to allow fans across the country to see Beckham bring his game to the United States. The tone has changed since his subsequent injury and failure in that first season. The drama that has come from his “temporary” move to AC Milan has been followed more recently by his teammate Landon Donavon’s tell-all book, “The Beckham Experiment” in which Donovan questioned his teammate’s work ethic, and called Beckham “uncommitted.” And then Major League Soccer’s dream came true in the 2009 MLS Cup. The league’s most popular and dramatic team made it to the finals, to the league’s biggest stage. The game was tight and after overtime the teams were tied 1-1. Beckham (who’s free kicks and crosses inspired the movie “Bend it Like Beckham”) made his penalty shot before Donovan (the best penalty kicker on the American National team) sent his sailing over the crossbar, leading to the Galaxy’s 5-4 loss to the mind-bogglingly named Real Salt Lake.
Names like “The Columbus Crew” (2008 Champions of the MLS Cup – who knew!) are likely to sound more like a dance group from MTV’s “America’s Best Dance Crew” than a professional sports team to most Americans. But if there is something that the Beckham experiment accomplished, it is that the “Los Angeles Galaxy” has become one of the few phrases non-enthusiasts would associate with American soccer besides “Landon Donovan” and “the Europeans call it football!”
So it was no surprise that when the draw for the 2010 World Cup was announced (practically a national holiday in some countries), the LA Galaxy again became a focal point in American soccer. The Americans were placed in Group C along with Slovenia, Algeria, and you guessed it: David Beckham’s England. There are many story lines involving these four teams, the first being that Slovenia has never won a World Cup game, and Algeria is currently the 72nd ranked team in the world. Since the top two teams advance, many have called this the easiest American draw in history.
However, when the World Cup finally gets underway on June 12th in Rustenberg, South Africa, I will be most interested in the role of the LA Galaxy’s two most famous players: Donovan and Beckham. Sure, neither player will likely address the rivalry that has developed between the two. Sure, both stars will be focused on simply performing well for their countries. And of course, both teams have many other great players to watch – in fact Beckham’s role on the World Cup team has yet to be fully determined, though he did play large portions of the qualifying games. However, there can be no doubt that Landon Donavan will be trying to seek redemption for his performance in the 2009 MLS Cup Finals and it will be Beckham there trying to stop him.
England comes into this World Cup seeking blood after embarrassingly missing out on the 2008 Euro Cup. They enter undefeated in the qualification round, and after looking dull for the last few years have been reenergized under new Coach Fabio Capello. America will come into the World Cup looking to regain their form in the Confederations Cup, which saw them reach the final game after beating the Euro Cup champion Spain, before losing a close battle to world-power Brazil. Recently they have had more trouble than expected, and cannot take the Slovenian and Algerian teams lightly.
However, next summer I will be looking forward to the matchup between the two players that have provided great entertainment and maintained the primary focus of American professional soccer. And as Beckham prepares to rejoin AC Milan this January, I will be looking forward to the matchup that could be their last together on the same pitch. Hoping that this time, Donovan comes through in the clutch.
Here’s the 2012 World Cup draw that took place last Friday, listen in to TIMEOUT this Friday at 4 p.m. to hear our picks:
Group A:
- South America
- Mexico
- Uruguay
- France
Group B:
- Argentina
- Nigeria
- South Korea
- Greece
Group C:
- England
- United States of America
- Slovenia
- Algeria
Group D:
- Germany
- Australia
- Serbia
- Ghana
Group E:
- Netherlands
- Denmark
- Japan
- Cameroon
Group F:
- Italy
- Paraguay
- New Zealand
- Slovakia
Group (of death) G:
- Brazil
- North Korea
- Ivory Coast
- Portugal
Group H:
- Spain
- Switzerland
- Honduras
- Chile
World Cup 2010 Draw – USA could be in big trouble
So, the seeds for the World Cup draw, to be performed on Friday in South Africa starting around noon EST, have been published. The seeds are decided in some convoluted and complicated fashion that takes into account FIFA rankings (as meaningless as they are) in October, to avoid giving an added benefit to teams that had to play more competitive fixtures to reach South Africa.
Each group of four will take one team from each “pot” (as the seedings are called) without any regard to where the teams are from. The pots are arranged to put together teams from the same continent, as well as actual skill level (for the first pot), to avoid having teams from the same continent together in the same group, if possible, although, for example, this is notably impossible for European teams, since there are more teams from that continent than groups (as the USA knows quite well, having drawn a “group of death” last time around in 2006 with the Czech Republic, Italy (the eventual champion), and Ghana). How this is done practically is that the first pot has the “seeded” teams (these are the supposedly best teams, plus the host South Africa), while subsequent pots have teams from different continents. The pots for the draw are as follows:
Pot 1 (seeds): South Africa, Germany, Brazil, Italy, Spain, England, Holland, Argentina.
Pot 2 (Europe): France, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia.
Pot 3 (Africa and South America): Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay.
Pot 4 (Asia, Oceania and North/Central America): Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Mexico
What these pots mean is that the US could conceivably draw a group with Brazil or Spain or England (all three are equally difficult, in my opinion), Portugal or France (at least talent-wise, far superior to the US), and Ivory Coast or Ghana. A group like that would, I think, spell doom for the US effort before it began. What US soccer fans have to be hoping for is to draw South Africa from Pot 1, and Greece or similar from Pot 2. We’ll see, but some luck will be required for our boys to have a chance to advance out of the group stages (must finish in the top two places after a round-robin). At least Charlize Theron will be doing the actual drawing…