Next spring, when the US Soccer Hall of Fame welcomes its newest class, there will be pomp and circumstance. The hall, which sits in a corner of Toyota Stadium, home of Major League Soccer’s FC Dallas, will feature the enshrineds’ signature red jackets. There will be glad-handing and speeches from players and coaches, misty-eyed reflections on their upbringings and their careers.
Many involved will be American-born soccer legends, of course. Yet every once in a while, a player whose footprint extends well beyond the borders of the United States graces the stage. Such may be the case next year when the hall potentially welcomes English legend David Beckham into the fold.
Some readers abroad – and certainly plenty of readers here in the States – will wonder why an ostensibly American Hall of Fame would admit non-Americans, something it’s done since its inception. The answer lies in the nature of the American game itself. Even our earliest heroes – Joe Gaetjens and the like – were immigrants, with Gaetjens scoring his famed goal against England in the 1950 World Cup when he wasn’t even a US citizen (he never ended up becoming one).
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Advance through the decades and big-name, American-born heroes do start to emerge, but they are still outpaced by those from abroad. The history of the North American Soccer League is replete with foreign-born members of the country’s hall of fame such as Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto. Even the Major IndoorSoccer League got its due eventually: just last year, Steve Zungul, the “lord of all indoors”, was inducted. Tatu, another foreign-born legend of the arena, seems likely to go in this year.
All of which is to say, there’s precedent for this. If you made a sizable contribution to soccer in the United States, you’re eligible – period. It’s the way it should be.
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By that standard, there’s no doubting Beckham’s credentials. Perhaps the most direct analog for his contributions is the career of Pelé, who arrived stateside in 1977 and transformed the landscape of the game in this country. Like Beckham’s stay with the LA Galaxy, the Brazilian’s playing career was successful. He won a league championship in 1977 and was wildly productive throughout the entirety of his stay in the US. He did every interview, signed every autograph, more or less, and went on to found a soccer camp in New Jersey that produced thousands of soccer-mad children, more than one of whom went on to feature for the US men’s national team. He remained a presence for decades after his retirement.
Still, after all of that, professional soccer in the US more or less collapsed within seven years of his departure.
Beckham’s playing career with the Galaxy (2007-2012) was in some ways more successful than Pelé’s. Much has been made about his tumultuous arrival in the US, so expertly told by the late, great Grant Wahl in his book The Beckham Experiment.After the smoke cleared, though, Beckham was a mainstay for the Galaxy, working alongside Landon Donovan (a Hall of Famer himself) to lead the club to a pair of league titles and two Supporters’ Shields.
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His true effect, though, came at a league level. Major League Soccer created an entirely new roster mechanism – the designated player rule – to accommodate Beckham’s arrival, a guideline that fundamentally changed its reality. Like Pelé, scores of uninitiated fans filled MLS stadiums to see Beckham. And just as the Brazilian did, Beckham stayed well beyond the end of his playing days, eventually founding Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami, the current standard bearer of the league.
The Hall of Fame inducts candidates in three categories: player, veteran and builder, the last of which is reserved for those whose work was primarily off the field. Beckham’s inclusion this year comes in the veteran category, where he’s nominated alongside nine other deserving candidates. The presence of his name has been the subject of much debate among the hall’s voters, of which I am one.
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Arguments against his inclusion center on the fact that, in several years, Beckham’s name seems likely to come up on a list of “builder” nominees. Certainly, helping to found Inter Miami, and luring the greatest player in history to play there, is worth considering by that standard. So if he stands a good chance of making it in that way, then why not save this spot for someone else?
To me, though, voting him in now is an easy decision – why wait? Beckham’s playing career alone stacks up favorably against many members of the hall. And while he is unquestionably a “builder”, so much of that work was simultaneous with his career as a player.
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His mere presence on field legitimized a still fledgeling league and led to a decade-long boom that saw it nearly double in size. This, of course, is not solely Beckham’s doing – far from it – but I could easily make an argument that Beckham’s influence on American soccer is as big as Pelé’s – and Pelé, of course, has a place in the hall.
So, English-born Beckham will be getting one of my votes for induction. In truth, three of my five selections for induction (Beckham, Tatu, Ken Cooper Sr, Tiffany Roberts and Clint Mathis) are foreign-born. That feels truly American to me.
