The person most in the dark appears to be Bruce Arena who woke up to the news that his prized midfielder was shipping out.
“The first I heard about it was today but I would think, given the position the Galaxy is in and the fact that we’re rebuilding our team and trying to have a successful year, it would seem very odd to me if we were loaning out our top players at the start of the season.”
This encapsulates how the Galaxy have fared this season. The management and the players have frequently been out of sync. The end result; another missed opportunity.
In a very fundamental way this goes back to why Beckham actually moved to the MLS, if indeed his focus was to keep his place in the England squad alive. The MLS was never going to be the league for him purely from those standards. He now has Fabio Capello to keep his Peter Pan aspirations up for the 2010 World Cup, a personal quest which would wipe out the memories of the last one that ended so poorly for him. Capello has emphasized regular appearances and physical fitness key issues in player selection.
With Capello’s belief in Beckham seemingly vindicated with his cameo performance in the Belarus match, one can only extrapolate that there might be pressure to make the Milan loan a permanent one, since it was Capello pulling strings at Milan who have gone nowhere this season. Beckham might be able to actually impact a team’s performance in a meaningful way filling for the injured and off colour Pirlo.
Beckham’s loan contract will also need to be worked out so that he does not miss the first three months of the 2009 MLS season. Usually loan contracts are for six months.
Whichever way you look at the Beckham situation, the MLS comes off as a way station.