LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles, where Magic Johnson brought "Showtime" to the Lakers and Jack Nicholson defined courtside cool, has a new game in town thanks to David Beckham.
The former England captain may have been limited by a nagging ankle injury in his 12-minute debut for Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy, but his appeal to fans both A-list and blue-collar appears to be boundless.
Even those who have made a career of naysaying when it comes to football, such as the Los Angeles Times' Bill Plaschke, couldn't resist.
"I was the guy who was bored by Beckham, remember? What's really crazy is, I'm not bored anymore," Plaschke enthused in Sunday's paper. "Turns out, even on a bum ankle, David Beckham is a blast."
The Galaxy's 27,000-seat Home Depot Center stadium was bursting at the seams on Saturday with a crowd that included long-time Galaxy season ticket holders, football first-timers and a welter of celebrities who were given the red-carpet treatment en route to their secluded luxury suites.
The stands were awash in Beckham's No. 23 Galaxy jersey - of which 200,000 had been sold just a week after it was introduced.
"We have never come across anything like it," said Chris McGuire, sports marketing manager for adidas soccer. "At this time the LA Galaxy David Beckham jersey is the number one-selling shirt in the world."
It's a good omen for the difficult task Beckham has taken on: to make football, the oft-forgotten step-child of US sport, a player.
"I think we've already been successful, because we've raised the awareness of MLS," Beckham told an ESPN interviewer, before he'd even kicked a ball in earnest. "I think we've achieved on that side already."
Certainly Beckham and his pop-star wife Victoria have gotten the attention of their celebrity chums.
Actresses Katie Holmes and Eva Longoria attended Saturday's match, albeit without their famous husbands Tom Cruise and Tony Parker.
ESPN deployed a "red carpet" reporter to document the stars' reactions to the match, which was preceded on the sports cable network by an hour-long special: "David Beckham: New Beginnings."
Sunday saw another injection of glitz as the Beckhams were feted at an invitation-only party at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Geffen Contemporary gallery, a bash co-hosted by Cruise and fellow actor Will Smith.
Cruise flew in for the party from Germany, where he is shooting his latest film.
But while Beckham basks in the Hollywood spotlight, he has been careful to give America's long-standing and long-suffering football fans what they want, too, vowing that he wants nothing more than to blend in with his new team-mates and help them pull themselves up from the depths of the MLS table.
With appealing modesty, Beckham said the crowd reaction to his every move on Saturday "made me feel embarrassed at times."
And he made it clear he didn't expect to be treated with kid gloves on the pitch, shrugging off a stoppage time challenge by Chelsea substitute Steve Sidwell that had the Home Depot Centre crowd - and no doubt Galaxy general manager Alexi Lalas - gasping.
"I saw him coming and I jumped just in time, so my foot wasn't actually planted when he hit me," Beckham said.
"I got up and you expect that in games. He's a competitive player, it's going to be his first start of the season, he's a good player, he's done well in the Premiership so far and now he's playing for a club like Chelsea so he's going to want to smash some people along the way, even if it's in a friendly,” said Lalas.
"That's part and parcel of being a footballer."
Team-mate Quavas Kirk was impressed.
"I actually thought he wasn't going to go into the guy, but he just gritted his teeth and went straight into him," Kirk said. "I like that. Even with the injury, he came and went out and played hard."
With Beckham still playing for Real Madrid through June in their successful bid to win the title, the Galaxy have struggled. But with his arrival on the cards, MLS back-loaded the team's schedule so that they have six games in hand on their rivals, and time to make up ground.
Beckham said the side's performance against Chelsea was an encouraging start.
"It was a good performance, because when you play against a team the quality of Chelsea where every player is comfortable on the ball, every player wants the ball and is capable of doing something in the game," Beckham said. "We kept them to 1-0 and we had chances as well."
The challenge for Beckham's team-mates will be to rise to his level on the pitch, while ignoring the circus that surrounds him off it.
Kirk was looking forward to it.
"It was believable," he said of the atmosphere on Saturday. "I loved it. I had never experienced anything like this before - ever."
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CNA
