Bend what into where again? (Photo: Some Blog)

[by Amy Bass]

When the Farrelly brothers wanted to turn Nick Hornby's brilliant soccer memoir Fever Pitch into a film, they had to do one key thing to make it work in the United States:  switch the sport to baseball.  The book, of course, had already been made into a film in 1997, featuring Colin Firth as an English teacher trying to balance his love of Arsenal with his love for a woman named Sarah.  Flash forward to the Farrelly's version in 2005, and Colin Firth has become Jimmy Fallon, the English teacher is now a math teacher, and Arsenal is the Boston Red Sox.  Much more palatable to an American audience.

Why?  Because America doesn't care about soccer.

Until, perhaps, now.  The one thing that Major League Soccer has been lacking is a superstar – an athlete that transcends his or her own sport and is able to walk a red carpet as a bona fide celebrity, supported by photos in In Touch and People and pages of blogs about who they might be shacked up with at any given time and which designer they are wearing.  While players like Landon Donovan and Freddy Adu have, at times, been heralded as soccer's next big thing, Mia Hamm is still more famous than both of them put together.  And you just can't have a professional American sport with its most famous player being a woman.

It took some savvy planning on the part of Major League Soccer to make America's pastures green enough for its superstar.  What is now being heralded as the “Beckham Rule” is a genius intervention into salary-cap regulations that gives MLS teams the ability to grab players outside of their $2 million-per-team limit.

The details of how the new salary structure works are boring – the outcome, obviously, is not.  Because the aptly nicknamed Beckham Rule has now produced MLS's first celebrity player:  David Beckham.  Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.  He is exactly what MLS needs, an athlete as famous off the field as he is on the field.  And how fitting – he's landed in the world of Hollywood, signing a contract that is speculated to be the largest in the history of sports, some $250,000,000, with the LA Galaxy, headed by the business-savvy and American soccer great Alexi Lalas, who knows a thing or two about stardom, at least in terms of how to turn a long red goatee into a late night talk show staple.

And Bex (or Becks… we'll see what American marketing does to the nickname, but I personally vote for the use of the letter “x” whenever possible) isn't coming alone.  He brings with him his right foot, his ringing endorsement for metrosexuality, and his wife, a woman so fancy that her Spice Girl name was, oh yes, Posh.

But when it comes to American fame, this couple has proved to be Sisyphus on a soccer field.      American paparazzi, by and large, hasn't really cared much about either one of them.  America, for all of its tabloid fervor, seems to be a bit choosier than other lands in terms of who it lets into its headlines.  Bex has been relegated, up until this point, to the American fame level of Robbie Williams, who might be a colossal – and quite talented, actually – global pop star, but he's barely made a scratch on U.S. charts.

Just how badly does Bex want to make it in America?  He named his firstborn Brooklyn, for goodness sakes.  And it isn't that American companies don't care about him – he has millions from both Pepsi and Adidas, who sells his Predator cleats for hundreds of dollars (which they are totally worth, because there is an imprint of his thumb on each one.)

But still, he's tried and failed for so many years:  what makes this time different?  Will Bex finally cross that final frontier of fame, nailing a hat trick with the covers of People , Us, and In Touch all within the same week?

Absolutely, but not because of his soccer talents or even his own good looks.  I say his secret weapon is his wife, the one woman in the world who was able to shed her image as a Spice Girl and become a real, if incredibly emaciated, personality.  Because Posh Spice/Victoria Beckham has made the swiftest play of all:  she has become friends with Katie Holmes.

When PoshKat (I think it works, don't you?) was spotted by paparazzi – or should I say threw themselves in front of paparazzi – in Paris, where they dressed to the nines to go shopping and attend the YSL show during Fashion Week, it was Katie who was under the scope of the tabloids for her quick engagement to Tom Cruise, the odd ebb and flow of her almost instant pregnancy, and the mystery surrounding her daughter, Suri.  At the time, there was speculation that Katie was researching a role for a possible biopic of Bex, and was simply hanging out with his wife in order to better emulate her on the silver screen.  Posh and Bex then attended the Cruise/Holmes wedding in Italy, further cementing the appearance of a close relationship between the two couples.  And most recently, bloggers announced that Holmes was trying to help Posh make her way into Hollywood society, setting up a meeting for her with Steven Spielberg.  It was a play Holmes undoubtedly knew well – do you think she had Spielberg's number before her marriage?

So just imagine:  TomKat, who have been pictured countless times in tabloids cheering on Cruise's children, Isabelle and Connor, in their youth league soccer games, sitting at a Galaxy game this summer, after Bex has fulfilled the remaining days of his contract with Real Madrid.  Americans may end up feeling no differently about soccer.  But they certainly are going to show up to snap pictures of the couple, who will undoubtedly be sitting next to Posh as she roots for her man.  As soccer guru and former MLS player Greg Lalas confirms for me:   “It's true. This is a win-win situation. Becks gets the US market – and TomKat and a house in the Hollywood Hills – and MLS gets the publicity, including TomKat. That's a big part of it for the league.  They get more than just Becks. They get all the entourage and the paparazzi that come with it.”

I hope the Los Angeles Scientology Center is ready to learn how to bend it.

January 12, 2007

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