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As promised, Allenby For Heisman! was in frozen Columbus Saturday night as the Crew kicked off the 2007 season against the New York Red Bulls. I’m not gonna lie. It was miserable. The game-time temperature was thirty-one degrees. If that wasn’t enough, the twenty-one mile-per-hour wind made it feel like seventeen degrees. But, hey, it was Major League Soccer’s opening day, and A4H! wasn’t going to miss it.

Sadly, the Soccer Gods failed to reward my dedication with a Crew (or Red Bull, for that matter) goal as the match ended in a goalless draw. As the Soccer Fan knows, there are boring nil-nil draws, and there are exciting nil-nil draws. Now, this wasn’t quite breathtaking end-to-end stuff, but it was closer to the latter than the former. [Match highlights available here.] [Columbus Dispatch match report here and Monday’s Crew Review here.]

Despite not scoring, the Crew looked much more dangerous in this season-opener than in last year’s 1-1 season-opening draw with the Fire. Offensively, Eddie Gaven, Ned Grabavoy, and Joseph Ngwenya impressed while Andy Herron and Jason Garey underwhelmed. In A4H’s eyes, Gaven played his finest game in a Crew shirt. Grabavoy was solid throughout and excelled in the final twenty minutes after Herron made way for Duncan Oughton in the seventy-first minute, allowing Grabavoy to push forward as Oughton played a holding role in midfield. Grabavoy almost had the winner in the eighty-eighth minute. His low, curling effort beat Ronald Waterreus, the New York keeper, but rebounded off the post. [Edited to add: I have no explanation, but Grabavoy’s shot isn’t included in the MLSnet.com highlight package.]

In defense, Marcos Gonzalez turned in a wonderful display for the Crew. The Chilean was always in the right place at the right time and turned away a number of Red Bulls attacks. In goal, second-year man and University of Kentucky alum (Wildcat shoutout!) Andy Gruenebaum had one major positional gaffe when he came flying out of the box for a ball he was never going to win, and he flapped at the occasional cross, but he still kept a clean sheet and delivered two stunning saves. He parried Dema Kovalenko’s dipping volley in the thirty-fourth minute and produced a kick save to deny New York youngster Josmer Altidore in the fortieth minute. I’m anxious to see Gruenebaum build on this, and I think he did enough to ensure he keeps the starting job on Saturday as the Crew head west to take on Freddy Adu and Real Salt Lake.

As I’m a Crew fan I’ve made little mention of New York. They started brighter than Columbus, and had the better of the first half. But I thought Columbus definitely outplayed them in the second half, when several New York players appeared out of gas. It was odd seeing Claudio Reyna in MLS after all these years. He was the best player on the field for the first twenty minutes or so, but he took a knock after colliding with a teammate. He was limited to a holding role for the rest of the match.

A4H! MoM: Gonzalez. I’d like to give it to Grabavoy or Gaven as I’m partial to the offensive-minded player. But as dangerous as each was, neither scored or created a goal. Gonzalez ensured the Crew took at least a point.

A4H!’s Final Take: I’m sure they’re better than last year’s team, which isn’t necessarily saying a whole lot. And it is hard to get excited about a goalless draw in the season opener at home. Ultimately, this has to be viewed as two points dropped rather than a point gained. Nevertheless, I feel much better about the team after one game than I did at this point last season. And three potentially key players were missing due to injury – center half Chad Marshall and wingers Ricardo Virtuoso and Jacob Thomas (not to mention Danny Szetela, but the poor kid’s never been healthy long enough to ever be a key contributor). The result didn’t change my opinion that this is playoff-caliber team.

Onward and upward!

So, long time between posts. A4H! was stuck at a conference the last two days where I ran into some old friends who were disappointed with the lack of posting. There has been no posting because I didn’t really know if anyone was reading, and it seemed egocentric to carry on. But there are at least two readers out there, so it’s once again fingers to keys for me.

–The big news today, of course, is that Billy Donovan isn’t coming to Kentucky. But I’d decided about a week ago that he wasn’t coming, and A4H! is over the whole Donovan Thing. He’s a great coach, and it would have been brilliant if he’d come. But he didn’t. So I move on.

Now to answer the question on the tip of your tongue: who is A4H!’s pick for UK coach? Billy Gillispie with a bullet. I’ll admit to knowing little to nothing about this guy before the NCAAs started up. I’d really only looked at box scores, which told me that Texas A&M didn’t exactly score a ton of points. And I knew they were very good defensively. This led me to assume Gillispie was a Ben Howland/Tom Izzo/Tubby Smith type. Those guys are all good coaches who have had great success. But A4H! hates that brand of basketball. It’s ugly. It puts me to sleep. And the most gifted kids don’t want to play it.

Anyway, that was my view of A&M. Then I saw the Aggies play twice in Rupp Arena in the first and second rounds of the NCAAs, and I remembered that sometimes it’s a good idea to educate yourself about things before making up your mind about them. (While good practice, this, sadly, disqualifies me from ever appearing on “Around the Horn,” “PTI,” and any number of sports radio programs.)

The Aggies push the ball. They get up and down. They look for good looks in transition. But if those looks aren’t there, they run a patient halfcourt set and don’t settle for bad shots. I think UK fans would have no qualms with his style.

By all accounts he’s a good Xs and Os guy, he’s a workaholic, and he’s a scratch recruiter. What’s not to like?

I now make the following Allenby For Heisman! guarantees: If UK hires Billy Gillispie as coach, we will be hugely successful within three seasons, and he becomes a legend. Fact.

(For further reading on the man and other candidates, check Crazy Gregg Doyel, who also hearts Gillispie (and is becoming an A4H! favorite; something I definitely didn’t foresee)).

That’s UK basketball out of the way. Now a few random thoughts:

–Liverpool FC demolished Dutch club PSV Tuesday in the first leg of their quarterfinal Champions League tie. My beloved Reds now have one foot in the semifinal.

–Speaking of knockout tournaments, I’m watching Major League Soccer side Houston Dynamo take on Pachuca of the Mexican first division in the CONCACAF Champions Cup action on Fox Soccer Channel. Houston took a two goal advantage into this game and looked set to reach the finals of the competition. But Pachuca has already scored twice in the first twenty minutes. Houston is falling apart. It’s looking like an all-Mexican final.

–I’ll be in frigid Columbus Saturday night to watch my Crew open the 2007 MLS season against Red Bull New York. Expect a mini-report early next week. (FYI: Columbus’ status as a massive club has been confirmed.)

That’s all for now. Onward and upward!

The 31-year-old former England captain - who two weeks ago signed a £127 million deal with the LA Galaxy soccer club - appears with singer Beyonce Knowles, country star Lyle Lovett and actors Scarlett Johansson and Oliver Platt in the Disney campaign. (Daily Mail)

Blare the Neil Diamond. Queue up Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall.

Becks is coming to America.

The 31-year-old Real Madrid midfielder announced today that he won’t be signing a new contract at Madrid, or with any other European club, and will be joining Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy in August of this year. According to which Web site you visit, he’s signed a five-year deal worth somewhere between 200 and 256 million US dollars.

You read that right, MLS – the league that caps each of its teams’ salaries at about $1.9 million – could be paying David Beckham about $50 million per year. But really, it isn’t. The figures being thrown about in the media reports include the projected value of Becks’ image rights, which are estimated to earn him between $30 million and $44 million annually (A4H!’s boyish good looks earn shockingly less). It’s reported that he splits that figure 50-50 with Madrid. To entice him to sunny SoCal, Anshutz Entertainment Group – LA Galaxy’s owner – is believed to have given Becks total control of his sponsorships and off-the-pitch deals. So, if you take away the $200-$220 million Becks may earn through his image rights, AEG is paying him $15-$36 million over five years. That’s still a ton of money – remember the $1.9 million cap I noted – but $36 million is much more reasonable than $256 million.

Now that that’s out of the way, A4H! presents today’s featured article: Why A4H! Loves the Beckham Deal!

First and foremost, it’s a PR bonanza. Now, I’m no MLS basher or Euro snob. To the contrary, I’m pretty much the only person I know here in the Athens of the West who watches it regularly. But today, MLS is everywhere. It’s the top story on ESPN.com and was a lead story on CNN’s site. It even made the Drudge report. That’s pretty much never happened for MLS. [Quick aside: whoever at MLS HQ decided to report the $250 million figure and not the base salary figure deserves a promotion. While certainly misleading, the ridiculous figure means this is undoubtedly front-page news.]

Second, the attendance spike. Sure, many of these people will only go once for curiosity’s sake, but many of them will come back a second time. No doubt MLS diehards – trust me, these people do exist, there just aren’t very many of them – are already cringing at the thought of the Soccer Moms U11s screaming every time Becks gets near the ball. But I’ll take a stadium packed with kids and casual fans over one where the empty seats outnumber the spectators anytime.

Along with the attendance spike, expect a TV ratings spike. For the first time in the league’s 11-year history, ESPN is now paying for the rights to broadcast MLS games. You can bet the Beckham rumors were part of the reason the people in Bristol made the deal. He’ll certainly give ESPN something to promote, and ESPN certainly excels at promoting leagues it has contracts with.

Although I’ve talked exclusively about how Becks’ arrival will influence matters off the pitch, he’ll have an impact on the pitch, too. Beckham’s career has come full circle from his nightmare sending off against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. In the wake of the tournament, he was England’s public enemy No. 1. But the scorn turned to praise and adulation as he led England through qualification for the 2002 World Cup and, once there, scored the penalty that sent Argentina – England’s archenemy in international football – crashing out of the tournament.

Beckham fever was at an all-time high from the summer of 2002 through the summer of 2003, when he was transferred from England’s Manchester United to Spain’s Real Madrid. But his career has been on the decline since. Madrid won nothing during the 2003-04 season and have won nothing since. At Euro 2004, Becks captained England but missed two crucial penalties as England were knocked out in the quarterfinals. And he was made the scapegoat for England’s 2006 World Cup flop. After the tournament, he handed in the captain’s armband, and new England manager Steve McClaren has refused to name Beckham in the England squad. His new boss at Madrid, Fabio Capello, has used Beckham sparingly and primarily as a substitute this season.

What to make of this rise and fall? To paraphrase Dennis Green, Beckham is who we thought he was. That is, the player the British press is slating as past it in January 2007 is pretty much the same player they declared a national treasure in 2002. It’s bizarre to think that, in the span of five years, Becks went from being the most overrated player on the planet to perhaps the most underrated player on the planet.

Beckham can’t dance past defenders with a mixture of speed and grace like Chelsea’s Arjen Robben or Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo (that was for you, Status Quo). He isn’t a creative ball wizard like Barcelona’s Ronaldinho or his former Madrid teammate Zinedane Zidane. He can’t play the roll of midfield destroyer like Chelsea’s Claude Makelele or Liverpool’s Momo Sissoko. Then again, he was never any of these things. He wasn’t in 2002 and he isn’t in 2007.

So what does Beckham bring to MLS? The same qualities he’s always had. He remains a great crosser of the ball, he can still strike a dead ball as well as anyone, and he still works as hard as any midfielder in the game. Combine this with the facts that he’s the most well-known soccer player in the world and far from over the hill at 31, and A4H! says that Beckham’s arrival is fantastic news for MLS and US soccer.

One final thing: I don’t think his arrival is just about the money. His critics will says he would rather settle for a big payday than try to cut it in one of Europe’s premier leagues. And, obviously, with control of his image rights, he stands to make much more in MLS than he would in Europe. But he had nothing left to prove by staying in Europe. He had already played for two of its biggest clubs, and he’s already won everything at club level. What else could he prove by returning to England and signing for a club like Bolton or West Ham? Or by going to Italy, where Milan and Inter were reportedly interested in his services?

By coming to America, he takes on an entirely different challenge. He’s here to make soccer something more than a niche sport. If he does that, he’ll succeed where the game’s greatest legends — names like Pele, Cruyff, and Best — failed. It’s as much about ego as it is about money.

First, a word on the beating A4H’s beloved Liverpool took from Arsenal yesterday. Again, Arsenal knocked Liverpool out of a cup competition. Again, at Anfield. Again, in humiliating fashion.

But a bit of perspective, please. It boils down to two things: Rafa Benitez doesn’t rate the Carling Cup – even in his first year when we made the final, we got there playing kids – and Arsenal’s reserves are light-years ahead of Liverpool’s. We still finished ahead of them in the league last year, and we’re ahead of them in the table this year. Yesterday’s loss doesn’t change that, just like a win yesterday wouldn’t have magically transformed the club into genuine contenders for the league.

The real news from the match is the injuries to Mark Gonzalez and King Louis Garcia. The former is expected back in six weeks, the latter is gone for the season. Garcia’s loss is a huge blow. [ Objectivity alert! Objectivity alert!: I am the proud owner of a Louis Garcia shirt.] I know many don’t rate him, but his goal-scoring record as a midfielder has been excellent since he arrived, and he’s one of only a handful of players in the squad who can make a goal out of nothing. I’m the first to admit he’s maddeningly inconsistent, but he seems to always perform well in the biggest of matches, especially in Champions League play. And he’s by far the team’s most creative player. He’ll be sorely missed in the upcoming tie with Barcelona.

With that thankfully out of the way, onto the soccer news I want to discuss: Becks and Bake. We’ll take Becks first. The lingering rumors that Real Madrid’s David Beckham will land in Major League Soccer took legs for the fleetest of moments this morning when his club’s sporting director said Becks’ contract would not be renewed. That was news to Beckham, whose camp was under the impression that player and club were still negotiating. Evidently, it was all a big misunderstanding, and negotiations are indeed ongoing. I have a lot to say on Becks’ possible arrival in the States, but I’ll save for when it does or doesn’t happen. (Sneak preview: I want him in MLS. MLS won’t turn into the NASL. He’s still a very good player.)

Now to Bake. The Columbus Dispatch reported today that the Columbus Crew intends to use its designated player spot to bring Brian McBride back to Ohio. [Crash course on what the Designated Player Rule a/k/a the Beckham Rule available here]. McBride plays for Fulham Football Club in England’s Premier League, and will be out of contract at season’s end in May.

I’ll get right to the point: I’m all for this. McBride was the face of the Crew for MLS’ first decade, and he remains the best striker the United States has produced – apologies to Eric Wynalda fanboy CCC. This is a great move on and off the pitch for Columbus.

I know some in Columbus are grumbling about this proposal, arguing that it’s merely a PR ploy, and that, at 34, McBride is past his best. I couldn’t disagree more. Obviously, a big part of the move is generating interest in the club. McBride’s return will do that. He’s the best-known player to ever pull on the Crew shirt. And if he indeed signs, I can say with certainty that I’ll make the three-hour drive to Columbus Crew Stadium more times this year than I did last season.

But suggestions that he’s past it are laughable. He’s been in great form for Fulham so far this season, and he was the fans’ player of the season last year. With his level of fitness and professionalism, he has at least two or three good years left in him (remember that he retired from international football after the World Cup). And maybe I’m a sucker for buying into cheesy sports clichés (who isn’t?), but I expect his leadership and experience to benefit the team, one of MLS’ youngest, particularly the strikers. And I’m not talking merely intangible benefits, I’m talking W/L benefits. A4H! will go on record now and state that if McBride comes to Columbus, the Crew – MLS’ worst team last year – are playoff-bound.

In closing, a word on the Much Maligned Mike Archer. The MMMA is gone, off to pastures that may or may not be greener at North Carolina State University. A4H! wonders if he’s the only one who thinks Commonwealth of Kentucky Wildcats coach GPa ‘Rich’ Brooks might have nudged the MMMA out the door. Of course, if the reports of Archer’s salary are accurate, it looks like it was his decision to go.

On the vacancy, GPa said he’ll announce a hire quickly and that he doesn’t expect a change in defensive philosophy, which indicates he’ll likely be promoting from within. That means, of course, that scratch recruiter and Louisville Icthyornis defensive co-coordinator Mike Cassity probably won’t be making the drive down I-64. For what it’s worth, Cassity has stated that he prefers to stay in Louiville and work with Bobby Petrino’s replacement, Steve Kragthorpe.

And a quick add on: The Wildcats Oompa-Loompa backfield remains intact for 2007. Tailback and punt-returner Rafa Little announced today that he’ll return for his senior season.

Onward and upward!

The Times is reporting that Clint Dempsey will be the next American to move to Fulham.  The move would allow him to join fellow American’s Brian McBride and Carlos Bocanegra.

Is soccer starting to gain a higher profile in the US? Well the World Cup final drew 17 million views or more than any single game of the World Series. Fans of the EPL can now watch nearly every game through either Fox Soccer Channel or Setanta Sports. In the October 9th issue of Sports Illustrated there were two soccer advertisements and a feature story on Jay DeMerit (CNNSi Story). So it’s clear that soccer is gaining a foothold all that is lacking is a more dynamic domestic league.
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Since Beckham will only be 32 at the end of his current contract it’s probably a bit to soon but you never know. 

ESPNSoccernet: MLS add up the benefit of Beckham swoop