CARSON, Calif. — David Beckham has reached the grand finale of his five-year Hollywood saga.
The English superstar will play for his first Major League Soccer championship tonight with the Los Angeles Galaxy, hoping to lift the MLS Cup alongside Landon Donovan in vindication of his groundbreaking American experiment.
After posting his best season stateside during the Galaxy’s dominant campaign, the midfielder needs only one more victory to earn something he didn’t even realize he wanted when he moved to Los Angeles amid all that fanfare in 2007.
“It’s only the last year or two that I started to understand the playoff system, to be honest,” said Beckham, who finished second in MLS with 15 assists this season. “It’s something I’ve got used to now. We’ve had success in the last three years, but we want the big one. We want the MLS Cup.”
For the second straight season, the star-studded Galaxy won the Supporters’ Shield as MLS’s best regular-season team, which would be the ultimate achievement in any other big soccer league.
Los Angeles then rolled to three straight playoff victories, and now it is favored in the MLS Cup against the resilient Houston Dynamo, which must play without injured star Brad Davis (torn quadriceps).
