EDITORIAL BECKHAM-MANIA HITS L.A. SOCCER SUPERSTAR GENERATES BUZZ THAT NFL NEVER HAS.WHO knew it would take a world-famous soccer superstar to finally get the passions for professional football roiling through Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. once again? Of course, we're talking ``futbol,'' as soccer is known in much of the world, and not the National Football League. Within hours of the announcement that David Beckham  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. -- the English soccer superstar known for his singular sartorial sar·to·ri·al adj. Of or relating to a tailor, tailoring, or tailored clothing: sartorial elegance. [From Late Latin sartor, tailor; see sartorius. style as well as his Spice Girl wife -- was joining the L.A. Galaxy, the buzz of excitement across Tinseltown was greater than anything the NFL NFL abbr. National Football League NFL (US) n abbr (= National Football League) → Fußball-Nationalliga could have inspired. This is the biggest sports news to hit Los Angeles since Wayne Gretzky Noun 1. Wayne Gretzky - high-scoring Canadian ice-hockey player (born in 1961) Gretzky joined the Kings and put hockey on the sports fans' map. Bigger, actually. On Thursday, the L.A. coup was the talk of the world. Beckham might not be the world's greatest technical soccer player, but he's certainly the flashiest. He's an L.A. natural. Certainly more natural than an NFL team that no one seems to want that badly, which would explain the on-again off-again interest in locating a team at the L.A. Coliseum. L.A.'s passion for football, the American version, anyhow, seems to have fizzled out since the Raiders and Rams slinked away in 1994. Maybe it's just as well. Beckham's arrival, set to take place this summer after his Real Madrid team's season ends, changes the meaning of football in this town. Soccer is the world's most popular sport and has been soaring in popularity for years, especially in L.A., where everyone from suburbanites to kids whose families emigrated from all over the world have fallen in love with the game. Yet even as soccer's popularity has risen among boys and girls boys and girls mercurialisannua. , professional soccer has not captured the imagination and passions of people like soccer does in Europe and Latin America Latin America, the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. . Even the introduction of an L.A. version of one of Mexico's favorite teams, the Chivas, failed to whip up the mainstream support. But Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles has changed all that in an instant. |
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