Beckham Arrives to Find a Sport Thriving in Its Own Way

New York Times - United States - Whatever David Beckham is — soccer icon, husband of Posh Spice, global marketing brand, free-kicking metrosexual — he will not arrive in the United States this week as an intended savior.

“I don’t want anybody to think Beckham will save soccer in America; it doesn’t need to be saved,” said Don Garber, the commissioner of Major League Soccer, the top professional league in the United States. “Soccer is doing just fine. Beckham will help it do a little better.”

When Beckham, 32, joins the Los Angeles Galaxy and is formally introduced at a news conference Friday — having signed a contract worth at least $5.5 million a year and potentially worth $250 million over five years in marketing and profit-sharing deals — he will bring unprecedented buzz and credibility to a league that has grown by small, careful steps and not giant, reckless leaps.

The question that has yet to be answered is whether Beckham’s presence will have a shooting star’s bright but quickly fading arc, similar to Pelé’s path in the 1970s in the North American Soccer League, which ultimately went bankrupt. Or will Beckham’s charisma provide sustaining momentum until the next soccer superstar arrives, the way Magic Johnson and Larry Bird reinvigorated the N.B.A. in the 1980s and prepared the way for Michael Jordan’s ascendancy?

“What soccer strives for in this country is acceptance in the mainstream,” said Sunil Gulati, president of the United States Soccer Federation. “No doubt David Beckham’s arrival for a period of time makes it mainstream. The question is, can it be part of the cultural fabric as we go forward? This will help. But I don’t think one player, one event, can do it.”

Soccer officials said that the United States might have to win the World Cup before the sport entered the mainstream at home. Still, there could not be a more inviting time for Beckham to arrive and for American soccer to be able to capitalize on his skill and celebrity.

Beckham’s career, which was fading after a disappointing 2006 World Cup, has been rejuvenated. He won a Spanish league title with Real Madrid last month, and he has returned to the fold of England’s national team, where he formerly was the captain. Even the career of his pop-star wife, Victoria Adams, has gained a lift with an announced reunion of the Spice Girls.

Soccer, while not enjoying the consuming interest that it has around the world, has seemingly never been more popular in the United States. It has arrived — if not by a long-anticipated revolution, then by slow, steady, stealthy growth.

The final of last month’s Gold Cup, a regional tournament that featured the United States and Mexico in the championship game, drew 40 percent more television households than did the concluding game of the N.H.L.’s Stanley Cup finals.

The combined American television audience for the final of the 2006 World Cup on ABC and Spanish-language Univision was 16.9 million viewers, compared with an average audience of 15.8 million viewers for the 2006 World Series on Fox.

Soccer has become a staple of autumn weekends in suburbia. According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, 14.5 million Americans played soccer in 2006, and two-thirds of them were younger than 18.

Given the increasing Hispanic influence in this country and the viewing choices available with two cable networks devoted exclusively to soccer, “we can’t expect the 18-to-35-white male to be the sole metric for sports on television,” said David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. “The interest in soccer on a global basis is clearly penetrating the domestic market.”