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The fact that the MLS website publishes articles in Spanish on MLSsoccer.com is a testament to learning, a testament to the fact that our league is learning quickly despite past mistakes. In the beginning, MLS was rightfully criticized for misunderstanding outreach into Spanish speaking communities in the States. But since those early days, MLS has worked hard to get things right. Although MLS faces constant criticism about what it doesn’t get, every now and then, we should also give credit for  self-correcting. MLS isn’t perfect, but it is working on perfecting. Kudos to the web team for its work on its relatively new website, and its attempts to make its content more relevant and accessible to an audience that has been, and will continue to be, integral to the league’s success.

As a child, it doesn’t take much to become involved in idol worship. Often, simply having an advanced age is enough for children to develop worship-like tendencies toward pretty underwhelming characters. All you have to do to comprehend this mindset is stroll into a kid’s room to see the array of magazines, posters, dolls, cards, and other collectibles reflecting their worldview.

And there’s nothing wrong with any of that.

We set up children to be let down from birth, feeding them visions of an obese man who lives in the North Pole and moves about on flying reindeer, and sneaky, almost criminal fairies who break into bedrooms, fumbling around under pillows trying to land loose teeth. Adding a few super athletes to the list of mythical, yet false idols hardly seems out of bounds.

The only problem is that our fixation with idols seems to remain far beyond adolescence, a reality painfully evident every week when athletes let us down, even though they should have never let us up in the first place.

We adults have billion dollar industries focused on propping up above average athletes until society views them as gods. Public relations machines create campaigns to make us fawn over fellow human beings who are only much better than most of us at playing with a ball. Media machines report on every aspect of athletes’ lives, covering the most mundane facts that we gobble up as if they matter. Ultimately, our expectations rise, much as they did when we were kids. Except as adults, we should know better. At no point was having talent supposed to inherently coincide with moral superiority.

But the problem doesn’t end there. It turns out that a prominent side effect of creating a hero infrastructure is a pool of athletes who view themselves as infallible heroes. From a business perspective, that’s mission accomplished.

When fawning fans and egotistical athletes (shielded by greasy PR teams) converge, corporate entities win. We become segmented demographics broken down by S, M, L, XL, and especially in the United States, XXXL, and monitored to gain insight into our consumption habits, all the while being injected with heavy doses of worship serum by companies trying to convince us that their products (yes, once this transformation takes place, athletes become products) are worthy or worship.

The result is often fans willing to back players of questionable character who are affiliated with their team in spite of mountains of evidence pointing to chronic character flaws. Prior to his most recent straying, there were significant swaths of fans standing behind John Terry as a model leader. That’s in the face of a checkered history of alleged moral turpitude. Steve McClaren got behind him; Fabio Capello followed suit soon thereafter. And of course, Terry agreed with both of them.

Back in 2005, at an event where Terry and other players were launching a Premier League literacy drive, the leader noted, “It’s important to act as a positive role model.” And abstractly, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean that one is a positive role model just because one objectively deems it important to be one.

I should note, I don’t place all the blame for Terry’s flaws squarely on his broad shoulders, just as I don’t exclusively blame Steven Gerrard, TheBron James, Pete Rose or Tiger Woods for making egregious errors in judgment.

Athletes are just as fallible as anyone else, if not more so. Think of all the mistakes you’ve made in your life. Now think about how much more trouble you might have gotten yourself into if you made tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars a week, received free everything from everyone ever since your early days of being sized up for sponsorships, and spent most of your waking hours fending off grown men and women who just want to be close to you or take pictures with you to show their adult friends. It’s not a stretch to imagine that you might err on the side of being a slightly unsavory character.

Reality suggests that these coddled athletes are precisely the people who we should expect to act in ways that are completely foreign to the average human. If they turn out to be solid human beings and great role models, then great. But it’s odd to think we should expect them to behave any better than the rest of us regular human beings, especially once they step away from the seemingly never-ending vacuous interviews and start diving around in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck at the beginning of DuckTales.

But there are still pockets of civilization that are not yet compromised.

It seems that the U.S. soccer universe isn’t as advanced in the hero infrastructure sector. At a glance, our soccer players have always been relatively well behaved (one particularly notorious exception aside). But that may just be an illusion.

While the hero apparatus is hard at work in basketball, football, and baseball, if the theory stands that everyone has a relatively equal opportunity to be fallible, a percentage of our soccer players are carrying on acting fallibly. It’s just that either no one is watching, or no one cares, which is how it should be, and which is why it is no longer that uncommon for European players to crave the anonymity that MLS provides.

It also helps that in MLS, our highest level of professional soccer, a not insignificant percentage of players make less than those who are meant to worship. In 2010, the MLS Rookie of the Year had an annual guaranteed salary of $58,000. One player who started in the MLS Cup final for eventual champions Colorado Rapids made $40,000. These aren’t exactly figures that should significantly skew the behavior of young, impressionable adults.

I guess my point is that if you must worship someone, start with a pool of people in your income bracket or below, and then arbitrarily choose. That way, you won’t be that disappointed when you realize that the Santa at the mall is just a pudgy substitute teacher with a pillow in his suit who just patted himself down with Jack Daniels aftershave. And more importantly, the rest of us won’t have to read countless articles about how Santa is a disgrace and not fit to wear the suit.

This David Beckham character has the world in his palm.

After successful stints at Manchester United and Real Madrid, Beckham decided to pursue a new challenge in America (the North one). As part of Beckham’s unique deal with MLS, he was given the option to purchase an MLS club if he stays with the LA Galaxy for the remainder of his contract. That’s a good deal for Team Beckham. And now, long-time Daily Mail football writer Martin Samuel wants to give Beckham English football.

I think we may be approaching the “David, I want you to have my wife” territory, which is fine, as long as everyone knows that that’s where we’re heading.

According to Samuel, “the moment [David Beckham] finishes playing, he should be given his own office at the Football Association and whatever title he wants.”

Samuel continues, “In Beckham, English football may have a genuine ambassador and a figurehead with the support and profile to effect change.”

Powerful stuff.

One can only be fascinated by how Beckham, a man once perceived as being only good for a cross and nice drool, is now a figure prominently courted around the world for his substance. It seems that almost everyone needs Beckham involved in anything soccer-related that requires transformation or evolution. When it comes to Beckham, the answer is usually an emphatic yes. It turns out that the only people who can say no to Beckham are Sir Alex Ferguson and members of the FIFA Executive Committee.

Beckham was never the greatest soccer player in the world, which suggests that he doesn’t occupy his position purely because of his technical ability. For if footballing excellence was all that was required to acquire Beckham standing, countless players would have been offered what Beckham is repeatedly offered.

Beckham holds his position because his brand and perceived integrity are so powerful that seemingly well-educated, reasonable people want to give him things, a reality made even more fascinating by the fact that Beckham’s offerings are all on the table before he’s even considered the prospect of retiring.

Whatever this man has done, he has hit the sweet spot. Whether parties are interested in Beckham for his mind, his brand, or a combination of both, the fact remains that people will remain wanting to give David Beckham things of increasing importance for the foreseeable future. First it was endorsement deals, then his own brand, then an MLS franchise, and next English football. The man is only 35 years old. I think Michel Platini and Sepp Blatter can see where all this is heading.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Back to Martin Samuel’s piece. Samuel certainly doesn’t have the power to appoint Beckham as the next head of the English FA. But this career football journalist is so emphatic about Beckham’s ability to transform football that he’s willing to write an article making his position well-known. The article wasn’t about Paul Scholes, Gary Lineker, David Dein, or any of the hundreds of other possible candidates. It was about David Beckham. Why? Samuel suggests that “he has one advantage over all alternative contenders: the love of the common people.”

And there you have it. Beckham’s off the field success originates with his physical ability. But it is the evolution of his brand – from his technical skills, to his commercial success, and into the substantive arena – and the connection that his brand has made with the people over the years that gives him the standing to get what would be impossible for so many others.

What Beckham may have inadvertently learned over time is that technical expertise has it’s place, but when it comes to issues of transformation and evolution, popularity and brand may prove to be just as powerful a tool in bringing change, or at least in getting hired to bring change.

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The former Aston Villa man is looking for a team. While talking about his search for employment, Hendrie said, “An opportunity in the MLS didn’t materialise after San Jose Earthquake signed Geovanni from Hull.” (via The Daily Mail)

And there you have it. We don’t know the level of negotiations. We don’t know whether Hendrie would have signed if Geovanni passed on the opportunity. But we do know that MLS and Hendrie shared a moment. How’s that for some quasi-transfer news. Exciting, right? Yeah, not so much.

Nevertheless, the Hendrie article is an interesting read.

Sometimes you need to just take a deep breath and appreciate what you have. That goes for all of us. We complain a lot about MLS, and often our complaints are warranted. But at times we make it painfully obvious that we have as much perspective as Preki has patience.

I was preparing a rant while watching the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions League match between Toronto FC and Motagua of Honduras. Venting about what we take for granted was the goal. For example, I pondered venting about the fact that:

1. In 1995 (fifteen years ago for the mathematically challenged), we had no professional league. Now we have have a full-fledged professional league with teams that regularly play the biggest clubs in the world (yes, in friendlies) and travel across the region to play in a Champions League. Oh, and the fans have scarves, even when it’s warm outside. It’s not the promised land, but it’s land nonetheless.
2. We can now watch soccer literally 24 hours a day without leaving the couch. During many of those hours, we can even watch Americans playing soccer. Not that Americans are so special, but it wasn’t too long ago that you would never see domestic talent unless you went to see a game live. And if you’re so unfortunate to miss a game, you’ve got DVR, unless, God forbid, you forgot to press a button on your remote control. Compare that to a singular option of watching shortened Bundesliga matches on Soccer Made in Germany on PBS in black and white. This wasn’t that long ago. Really, it wasn’t.
3. In 1990, if someone told you to go find the best player playing in the United States, you wouldn’t be crazy to head over to UCLA (where you would have hilariously found Sigi Schmid) or the University of Virginia (where you would have found Bruce Arena, the former Virginia lacrosse coach, getting ready to win three straight national titles). At UCLA, you would have found Cobi Jones, Brad Friedel, Mike Lapper, Joe-Max Moore and Chris Henderson, among others. And at UVA, you would have found Jeff Agoos, Curt Onalfo and Richie Williams. Not bad. Today, the best player in the United States is a player who very recently might have been the best attacking player in the world. And now he plays in New York. Ok, Harrison, NJ. And no one has to say his name.
4. At one point not too long ago, youth players obsessed over where great high school players were going to go to college. Now we only pay attention to the ones who don’t go to college.
5. We have stadiums that are soccer-specific that can realistically be classified as stadiums. Not parks where people congregate to watch a bunch of anonymous guys play soccer. That’s what we call an improvement.
6. In 1995, good luck finding a U.S. National Team anything, let alone the U.S. National Team. Now you can buy USA undergarments and find Landon Donovan bouncing around the late night TV circuit, for better or worse.

That’s something, no? Times have certainly changed.

I’m not in the business of blindly advocating for MLS, a product that has consistently challenged my patience over the years. But there are times when the level of soccer on display does surpass some of the soccer that people assume is superior simply because it’s foreign. That’s not a reason to love MLS, but it might be a reason to support its continued growth, especially when you consider how far we’ve come in such a short time.

Here’s another way to look at it. Many non-MLS soccer fans in the United States consider themselves die-hard fans of foreign clubs. So die-hard, in fact, that they swear allegiance to the club until their last breath. Now if you’ll endulge me for a moment, if you’re one of those fans, suppose your team starts sucking. Sucking so bad that they get relegated, not once, but twice. Are you still signed up? Still a supporter? For those still on board, why are you willing to support a foreign club regardless of how good they are, but only willing to follow a local team if they pass some sort of aesthetic test? It doesn’t quite make sense.

All I’m saying is that every now and then, it’s good to have some perspective about what’s being built right here in our backyard. Every now and then it’s theraputic to recognize that it wasn’t too long ago that the closest you could get to professional soccer in the United States was a poster of Pele and Maradona at a soccer store or your uncle from abroad coming to the States over the holidays to tell stories about players who were probably as talented as Titus Bramble. Again, perspective doesn’t mean you have to love MLS, but it might make your expectations a bit more realistic, which might provide a different lens to view the league, which might persuade you to take a dive into the previously unthinkable. Yes, it might not. But it might.

Anyway, this time, I’ll spare you the rant. Only because I found someone who has given this a little more thought.

I think you get the point, or not.

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