Video of the Day: Your East Side Moment of Zen
The Big Pink @ El Rey Theatre 11/18/09
If You've Got the Time: Sunday Brunch @ Casa del Mar
The Great L.A. Walk Treks Adams & Washington Today
They Might Be Giants @ Royce Hall 11/14/09
Photo by Brad Westphal for Shanghaiist.
The Los Angeles Galaxy wrapped a 3-0 win in Shanghai on Wednesday night (yup -- big time difference, folks!) thanks to a hat trick by Carlos Ruiz. Shanghaiist, our sister site, has been covering Beckhamania and has great analysis of the match against Shanghai East Asia Hong Kong United (it's unclear at this time if that fits on a jersey). In fact, they've got a lot more insight than, say, ESPN's Soccernet.
Becks did notch an assist and pulled out of the game early, playing it cautious with a minor injury.
Much like in America, there were some empty seats. It's like a billion people had something better to do. Only 10,000 showed up in a stadium that could have held eight times as many.
Last month, the Galaxy was in a tournament in Hawaii where the average attendance for four games was less than five-figures. LAist had some spies out there and the only sign of footie in Waikiki was a small Landon Donovan autograph signing.
Another similarity between the Shanghai and Honolulu games? Both had very bad pitches. Hopefully Sunday's match in Hong Kong will be better.
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It did, however, go down very well in Wellington, NZ, where the stadium was almost full, despite a very high ticket price and general apathy to football. NZ is a rugby nation.
Good point! There was the NZ (and Australia) tour about three months ago, and I think one of those games may have set the all-time soccer attendance record for the Kiwis.
Since then, Beckham has been officially axed from England. I hope there's not a correlation between that and attendance at the last few games. Hawaii was especially disappointing. With the lack of any other major sports out there, it should have been a much better draw. Their fans generally root for local players who go on to play elsewhere -- and they even had a big-name local in the tournament!
This is probably a good moment to explain my position on Beckham ... as much as I rant about the price tag on him playing here, I am really hoping the Galaxy can pull in huge crowds and do a lot for the game's popularity.
I also like watching him play and think he's probably an awesome person. I'm just frustrated with the decision that brought him to LA.
$250,000,000 could have been used for 100 million-dollar salaries over and the rest could have been spent on advertising and marketing. I believe that ultimately that could have done more for the sport in this country.
So when I sound down on Beckham and the Galaxy, I'm not trying to outright hate on them ... just vent frustration at something the players don't actually control. (Though it'd be nice to see Becks spend more time in town.)