Honestly, the ladies weren't home long before another adventure beckoned. Auntie Jayne's birthday gift to Q of a ticket to a New England Revolution soccer match was cashed in just yesterday. Q and I departed for Foxboro, home of the Patriots, at noon on Saturday, checked into our hotel not four miles from the stadium, and then headed for the game.
I don't get to many professional games of any sort, and I really enjoy myself when I do go. The excitement, the crowds, the gorgeous weather (luckily) - it was a very electric atmosphere. And not least because this was to be the Revolution vs the Los Angeles Galaxy - and their erstwhile captain, David Beckham.
You may have heard of David Beckham. Just to keep you interested if you haven't, this is him:
I mean, goodness. If that's not eye candy, you don't have eyes. And he's also very good - former captain of the English national team, played for Manchester United at the age of 17, on and on. Excellent player, who's made a big splash by coming to play in the US.
Now, granted, he's done so at the age of 34, when his skills are in decline. And a lot of the money he makes here, he makes because of who he is, not what he does on the field - he's an automatic draw for fans, not just to the stadium in LA, but all round the country. I mean, I chose this game specifically because of him. It's very unusual for a top European player to decide to play here - so unusual, in fact, that it's unheard of. There's so little prestige here compared to Europe - almost anywhere in Europe. Less exposure, less money, less respect, etc. If they can play in Europe, they do. And frankly, every one of the players in the MLS teams stateside would drop MLS like a bad habit if they could go to Europe. No question.
And yet he's here. It might have been hubris - the US is the only market in the world he hasn't conquered, and perhaps he saw dollar signs in the possibility of capping his legacy by becoming a top draw in this gigantic money machine of a country. TV, movies, his own team, etc.
'Course, last year, he had second thoughts, and tried to break out of his contract to go and play in Europe again, for AC Milan. In addition, according to a recent article and book quoting / written by Landon Donovan, the US' best player and Beckham's teammate, Beckham wasn't really putting his all into his new team in LA. Seemed to be sleepwalking through it, wasn't quite as devoted to his teammates, the schedule, training, as he should have been. Donovan, who had been the captain, was strongarmed into giving the armband over to Beckham, and Beckham didn't do a damn thing with it. No leadership, etc. Then Beckham tried to jump ship, making every accusation of being half-hearted about the US ring all the truer. The Italian league is top-notch, and they wanted Beckham at AC Milan. But the Galaxy said no, and now he's playing out his contract here. Reluctantly, perhaps. Donovan is the captain again, and Beckham either plays stateside, or he doesn't play. So there's plenty of drama.
The Revolution, on the other hand, apparently are another team, and have a lot of players, and appear to have won the championship last year.
So the stage was set.
Q and I had watched the Galaxy play a friendly against Barcelona on TV recently, so we knew something about them. Barcelona was last year's European championship team and is widely held to be the best team on Earth, with the planet's best player, Lionel Messi, an Argentine. Q is crazy about Messi, and we had really enjoyed watching that game. Which Barcelona won, 2-1 - the one goal for LA coming on a set piece, a free kick that Beckham took. He is world-renowned for his free kick prowess - the movie, you may recall, "Bend It Like Beckham", deals tangentially with this particular gift of his. And he lived up to the hype - he bent the shot right, around the wall of defenders, and all the way back left to the left side of the net and in. Holy cow. Q and I were very excited indeed to get to go see him play.
Q talked for days before we drove to Foxboro about the possibility of getting Beckham's autograph. I didn't throw any cold water on the notion, although I knew full well that our chances of getting close to Beckham were close to nil. But even so, I was very glad that we'd decided to book a hotel room there and thus not have to worry about driving back after the game. We'd have time, if he wanted to try, for autograph-hunting.
Q had also seen US vs Brasil, where Landon Donovan had scored two goals and the Americans had taken an early lead; and he had also seen the US beat Spain, 2-0, so he was very familiar with Donovan as well. Fast, fast player, is Donovan, with supreme skills, and not necessarily that big, to be generous. (Putting him close to Q's heart, along with Messi - and making Donovan's autograph and Beckham's pretty much equally valuable.)
Thus setting the stage even further.
Q wore his France national jersey - it's red, white, and blue, so he blended into the crowd. We decided we would be cheering for the Galaxy, since we like Donovan and Beckham, and entered the stadium.
We caught sight of the teams warming up and stood there, watching; I had this strange, morbid fear that for some reason Beckham wouldn't play, and so easily convinced myself that the blonde man stretching there at the corner of the field wasn't him. But the binoculars, trained on his back, confirmed it: There was the signature tattoo on the back of his neck, wings spreading out toward his ears. And then he turned my way and smiled:
Ka-bam. I mean, jeepers. I'm very firmly and comfortably in the "Hetero" aisle at the "Preferences" market, but it just plain leaves you speechless. Like when I see a buck step out of the brush in the woods unexpectedly. I am awed at the beauty of the thing, its majesty - I feel like I'm in the presence of something pure and perfect. Do I want to kiss the buck? No. No, I do not. In fact, I want to shoot it, and when I'm lucky, I do. But I get weak-kneed nonetheless because I'm in the presence of something so gloriously perfect. Similar with Mr. Beckham - Ka, bam.
(And, for the record: I did not have the slightest urge to shoot him.)
The warm-ups were cool, because they looked like any old team warming up - drills, jogging, goofing around, pinnies, etc. Same as anyone. Despite being David Beckham and Landon Donovan. They're just people, we found. Something we who don't deal with fame or with famous people sometimes forget. We found our way to our seats (which were excellent - Row 14 of the main section, near midfield, right on the aisle), got us some beverages (one adult, one less so), listened to the National Anthem, and settled in to take in some damn soccer.
Watching Q play his games over the years, and taking him to soccer events because of his interest, I have come to have a VERY rudimentary understanding of what works and what doesn't in soccer. I watch the high school games my students play in, the occasional Williams game, men's or women's, and then, more lately, I watch more and more of it on TV, thanks to Q's interest and our newfound cable access to the Fox Soccer Channel. And here's what I've noticed, in general, about the top levels of soccer: There is an innate feel, a higher-level command of the field, that certain teams have that transcends individual brilliance. It's a fluidity and a sense of common purpose among the whole team, all 11 on the pitch, that's unsaid, or seems to be - a bone-level soccer tune-in. Many teams at the high levels don't have it - the US national team, for example. We watched them beat Spain, largely due to a couple of very lucky pounces on dangerous situations, and due to the individual skills of the right player, at the right time. But then later in the game, as Spain was trying desperately to come back, there was no doubt as to which team was better. Spain was a hive mind - each individual did what the whole needed done, knowing he could count on the other parts of the whole to do the same. And they had the US pinned back on their end the entire time, because the US could so rarely break up, completely, what the Spanish were trying to do. They couldn't get close enough to the ball to interfere - Spain would effortlessly, wordlessly, bounce away as one, passing and passing and never losing the ball, moving and probing for an opening. And then when the US was at the other end of the field, their own attacks would evaporate almost as soon as they'd begun. They just didn't appear to have a sense of purpose. Donovan was brilliant a time or two, individual defenders were valiant and very skilled, and the US won. But they are not better.
Same against Brazil. The US went ahead 2-0 on the sheer power and speed of Donovan - but thereafter, they were helpless against Brazil's hive-mind. The US was playing checkers, and the Brazilians were playing chess, and Brazil put three (four, really, but one was called a non-goal) over in the second half and won, deservedly. It made me sad, but you had to admit: Brazil was just better.
It was a similar thing to watch the LA Galaxy and the Revolution play. Donovan should be playing in Europe - he's just super-skilled, aggressive, knowledgeable, and ridiculously fast. And Beckham, playing midfield, was the glue that held everything together. Between the two of them, they so elevated LA's game that the Revolution looked like children - or like the US did against Brazil. Outclassed.
Donovan and Beckham communicated wordlessly all game long, weaving past each other and laying passes to where the other ought to soon be, confident that the other would not fail to be there when the pass arrived. And 90% of the time, that's exactly what happened. When other players on the Galaxy were called upon, they looked herky-jerky, clunky, compared to those two - they were George W Bush reading a prepared text, and Beckham and Donovan were Barack Obama. Just no comparison at all.
The Galaxy were up 1-0 at halftime on a brilliant, lightning-strike of a goal by Donovan, who took a cross out of the air with his left foot and bent it some 30 yards around the outstretched hands of the goal keeper and into the left side. Wow. I actually felt on a couple of occasions that he was a titch selfish - he would approach from the right side and Beckham, at the precise moment, when the man marking Donovan would trend inside to prevent Donovan from charging straight to the goal, would blaze around behind Donovan and head for the right corner - all but unmarked, as everyone on defense was still afraid of Donovan toward the center. And it seemed that the universe wanted Donovan to send it toward the space where Beckham would soon be. He did do so a few times, but on what was certainly the best opportunity, Donovan instead shot, and it ricocheted off a Revs player and harmlessly into another, who cleared it. I looked to Beckham to see if he would throw up his hands in frustration.
He absolutely did not. I have to say, watching Beckham play, and that's all I got to see him do, I feel like I got a certain amount of information about him as a person. I'll tell you a few reasons why - One was this refusal to complain about his teammates' play. Even when the obviously junior-varsity Galaxy players would blow something, his only reaction was perhaps a slow-motion, hands-pressing-earthward, "Calm down", reassurance-type of gesture, even as he bounced and trotted to the right spot to make up for the mistake his teammate had committed. He seemed like a very mature player, unselfish and generous.
With the opposition, there was a certain amount of jawing going on - Beckham has set himself up for it with his actions last year, and the Revolution players were letting him have it. Their midfielder, a big, braided-hair guy named Shalrie Joseph (here he is:)
- was continually talking to Beckham. At first it seemed very friendly - Beckham would approach and listen and give a handshake, smiling, and once turned away, laughing, tossing they guy's hand away in either a "You-big-palooka" kind of way or a "F--k you" kind of way - hard to tell, what with the joy in his smile.
(For reference:)
But in the second half, as the frustration and desperation on the part of the Revs grew (it was 2-0 by now), the tackles on Beckham got harder and harder, and he would come up jawing with the players. "That's just stupid," I lip-read once; he would approach in a confrontational way, as if to fight, but would turn it into an "I'm-just-trying-to-help-the-guy" stance at the last second. He's very good at playing the "I'm-not-the-bad-guy" game, the subtle art of provoking without getting a card yourself, that's so maddening to watch in European and South American players. He's brilliant at it.
But eventually the over-aggressiveness and the personal nature of the tackling got to be too much for him. The paper reported that the biggest incident came about because Beckham got an elbow to the head, but from what I could see, he appeared to be upset about an elbow that was thrown against one of his teammates going up for a header. It was on the opposite sideline, but Beckham got right in the Revs player's face, no subtlety anymore, and eventually they were separated. Donovan came over and pulled Beckham away, and Joseph came in and talked to Beckham - playing Beckham's game, approaching in a peacemaker stance, and then saying something nasty, which got Beckham riled again. That ended with Joseph jabbing Beckham in the chest with a finger, and Beckham realizing that he'd get carded soon if he didn't pull out, so he turned and dismissively walked off. In the end, Beckham and the player who threw the elbow got yellow cards, and play resumed. By the way, Beckham was booed thunderously throughout - although, from my vantage point, he looked perfectly justified, and much more the gentleman than the Revs.
Not five minutes later, the player who'd thrown the elbow (I assume) was up against the sideline around midfield, in a bit of a pickle, and Beckham absolutely pounced. It was a very rough challenge and scramble for the ball - nothing overtly intended to harm, no punches or elbows, but a distinct ratcheting-up of the urgency, of the level of violence, which left a few players on the ground. A primadonna, Beckham, unequivocally, is not.
The Galaxy were going left-to-right in the first half, and Beckham tended to stray right, so we got our best looks at him in the first half, when I saw him do a couple of throw-ins. Both times, the ball had bounced just off the field and into the privileged seats that are right there behind the barriers - themselves only three to three and a half feet high - such that someone in the seats there would be able to hand the ball to whichever player came to do the throw. Both times that I saw (or remember), the ball was given to him by a child. The first time, it was a kid I remember as being almost a baby - maybe two or three, given the ball by an adult and then held out toward Beckham to hand it to him. And Beckham's face went fully into Dad mode - a big, exaggerated "Hi!" grin, wide-eyed, with that surprised "Goodness!" look that I've felt myself give to tiny kids, which disarms, delights and reassures them at the same time. In fact, at the pool the other day, I gave it to a one-year-old as he looked at me over his mother's shoulder, and she turned to see me and smiled, saying, "They can always find the dads in the crowd." I laughed and said, "Well, we help them by giving the 'Dad' look." And that's exactly what Beckham gave this kid. It was just perfect - and I suddenly remembered that he is a Dad, of quite young kids. Just that little moment, and I was pretty well sure: Not just a Dad, but a devoted one.
Observe:
The second time, the kid in question was probably nine or ten, and Beckham was in a hurry, so he took the ball from the kid poliltely, with a "Thanks" that I could plainly see, definitely said, but said quickly. Then, though, as he was about to throw, it became clear that his teammates weren't ready - he'd have to wait a few seconds. So he quickly turned back to the kid, stuck out his hand, and gave him a low-five. Fully aware, of course, that he's just made that kid's day - hell, year. Childhood, maybe. Also aware that he was in the middle of a game, and had to keep concentrating - but that this kid's world was also big and important, and that he had the ability to quickly make that world much more fun and memorable, the opportunity, and of course took it, despite the fact that it won him absolutely nothing, other than that kid's happiness. I don't mean to go on about such a small thing, and perhaps I'm not conveying what I found great about the moment - I mean, I saw so many other players that day take the ball from a fan, turn back to the field, and say nothing to the fan. Not one word. "Thanks" would have cost them absolutely nothing, not even time, but it was too much to ask. And that's of course somewhat natural - they're concentrating, after all. But Beckham, despite being far and away the best overall player there, the most focused, the most famous, didn't turn up his nose at the chance to quickly make a fan (of the opposing team) very, very happy. That's important, he believes, so he does it.
I got the feeling that he appreciates all the game has done for him, and earnestly, honestly wants to give back. In just a quick glimpse, sure - but I've seen so many star athletes act like spoiled children, and to see the one active athlete who, world-wide, inspires probably the most fan shrieking and adulation, who's more photographed than any other athlete alive - to see him go those extra three feet, despite there being no obligation, was a very pleasantly surprising thing to see. He has time, even when he doesn't have time. He has the emotional space to keep it up. He's had more demands on him from fans than anybody, anybody - and he's still got more to give, in a hostile stadium, for fans who've been booing him all day and hold signs that malign his heart and his skills.
Yep. I have a man crush.
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