{"id":2158,"date":"2007-01-24T19:05:52","date_gmt":"2007-01-25T00:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2007\/01\/americanizing_s\/"},"modified":"2007-01-24T19:05:52","modified_gmt":"2007-01-25T00:05:52","slug":"americanizing_s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2007\/01\/americanizing_s\/","title":{"rendered":"Americanizing Soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure in some corner people have been talking about how David Beckham will transform soccer in America.  I haven&#8217;t heard the conversation, but then again I usually don&#8217;t hear anyone talking about soccer.<br \/>\nI do see that in at least one aspect, Beckham&#8217;s $250 million arrival will make soccer more American.  No, I don&#8217;t think Beckham will necessarily cause more Americans to watch soccer, or play soccer, or even like soccer.  But this deal definitely makes the MLS pay structure <a href=\"http:\/\/www.4thegame.com\/features\/feature\/199337\/beckhamwatch_stuck_in_madrid.html\">much much more Americanesque<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Unfortunately for Becks, clouds have apparently started to circle over his new club, even before he joins them. His extraordinary wages are causing some friction with his future team-mates, with midfielder Peter Vagenas telling FiveLive: &#8220;Of course there is resentment. But a wise man once said you are worth what you negotiate. On the one hand you would say more power to him but on the other hand you think &#8216;why can&#8217;t I be earning that?&#8221; He gets \u00c3\u201a\u00a363,000 a year, hardly peanuts, but when compared to Becks&#8230;<br \/>\nHowever, LA Galaxy coach Frank Yallop insists that Vagenas&#8217; comments were tongue-in-cheek: &#8220;I know our guys and they&#8217;re not the jealous type,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We have players on $31,000 a year, but we also have someone like Landon Donovan on big money. The salary cap is a way of life over here. He will drive the sport on here. Every kid under 10 in America plays soccer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So the Galaxy now embody your good ol&#8217; American corporation, with one guy (CEO) getting paid 500 times more than all the other workers.  Imagine you are one of the no-names getting paid $30,000 to do pretty much the same thing as Beckham.  Yeah, that ought to work well to build team unity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2007\/01\/americanizing_s\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Americanizing Soccer\"><p>I&#8217;m sure in some corner people have been talking about how David Beckham will transform soccer in America. I haven&#8217;t heard the conversation, but then again I usually don&#8217;t hear anyone talking about soccer. I do see that in at least one aspect, Beckham&#8217;s $250 million arrival will make soccer more American. No, I don&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}