Hey, David Beckham and Posh Spice have snubbed better people than rubes like us.
Nevertheless, soccer lovers in this dusty old cowtown have good reason to be bent out of shape.
It’s a kick in the teeth to anybody who paid good money for Beckhamania, only to be told the jet-lagged and bruised star of the one-man show would not be working this evening’s performance by the Los Angeles Galaxy in Colorado.
When soccer in America is marketed as celebrity gawking rather than competitive sport, all you get is a major-league mess.
That’s why selling this MLS season on Beckham’s sex appeal was ill-conceived from the start. And shame on the Colorado Rapids for cashing in on Beckhamania, when the local franchise refuses to spend money to make itself a worthy championship contender.
“The picture here is very clear,” Rapids coach Fernando Clavijo told me recently: “L.A. went around the world to find all kinds of players. The same thing with Chicago. We (in Colorado) have Americans. And there’s a reason for it. A clear reason, and it doesn’t come from me.”
Money.
“If they gave it to me, I would spend it,” Clavijo said. “But I don’t have a dime.”
Unless Beckham is in the building, the Rapids, with their often inept attack and crummy 6-9-6 record, are not worth watching.
That’s the real rip-off.
Why does pro soccer in Colorado stink?
All you have to do is stand outside the stadium and listen to the birdies sing.
Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.
When the MLS loosened payroll restrictions to shed its image of a minor soccer league, Los Angeles made a splash worthy of Tinseltown by signing Beckham to a deal worth $6.5 million per year, while the Chicago Fire has asked Mexican playmaker Cuauhtemoc Blanco to manufacture goals for the tidy sum of $2.67 million.
The individual salaries of those two international stars dwarf the money Colorado is paying for the entire starting 11.
“Our starting goalie makes less money than a first-year school teacher,” said John Bratt, spokesperson for the Centennial Firm, a rabid group of Rapids fans.
The salary of charismatic Colorado keeper Bouna Coundoul is $30,000, which might not cover the annual spa tab of Posh.
The most valuable member of Colorado’s offense is Herculez Gomez, who has admitted to being ticked about his salary of $49,350, which might not fill the spare change jar in the Beckham household.
“I’m going to continue to suffer for my art, probably until the day I retire. Those are just the cards I was dealt,” Gomez said earlier this summer, when some wise guy suggested he might be able to find more gainful employment as a bus driver. “It makes me hungrier. It drives me crazy inside.”
As an observer who has fallen in love with soccer because the game’s appeal is born from the same melting pot of many splendid ethnic flavors that made America so beautiful, what drives me crazy is the Rapids built a brand new soccer stadium and thought we were too stupid to care that it’s the players on the pitch who really count.
No offense to highly decorated Rapids veteran Pablo Mastroeni, but this won’t be the first time that Dick’s Sporting Goods Park feels like high architectural style devoid of any real soccer substance, which is why the absence of Beckham from the L.A. starting lineup leaves such an empty feeling.
We can’t really blame the bloke for sitting this one out. After three games in six days across two sides of the Atlantic Ocean on a gimpy ankle, it’s no wonder Beckham wants to take the weight off shoulders asked to raise soccer awareness to part of the everyday sports conversation in the United States.
The Rapids are guilty of the same sucker bet as league honchos. Everybody’s foolishly gambling Beckham alone will make you look.
The trouble is that in the absence of a big, sexy star, ticket-buyers usually feel cheated.
Put it this way: Would “The Bourne Ultimatum” have been a summer-movie smash if fans had walked in the theater expecting Matt Damon, only to see the leading man played by Danny DeVito?
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
