Follow the Yellow brick Road

Thierry Henry's arrival in MLS marks the “Out of the Closet” moment of perhaps the worst-kept football secret of the last three years. Anyone who's observed the game over that time can't have failed to notice his open statements that playing football in the US was intriguing while MLS has been keen to lay its hands on anyone resembling a big star in order to grow their brand.

Let's not beat around the bush, it's a terrific coup for US soccer. Henry now beats the well-worn trail as David Beckham and Arsenal teammate Freddie Ljungberg did before him. Both have had some measure of success: Beckham's Galaxy has been consistent playoff teams, where Ljungberg's Seattle Sounders came close to topping the Western Conference in their debut season last year. But are these gentlemen stars of World Football really here for the soccer?

The simple answer is of course not. How could they be? Henry has made the move down (as did Beckham) from La Liga Champion to a mid-level MLS team and Ljungberg came from the EPL; the very peak of Association football to bang-on middle of the road. Make no mistake, these decisions are all about lifestyle and a pay cheque so large that team owners thank their lucky stars that MLS pays half. The move of an ageing superstar to the US soccer scene is driven primarily about money, lifestyle and future job opportunities: Ljungberg is a model, Henry has done some commentary and charity work and as for Beckham ... good grief.

MLS contributes 50% of these marquee salaries because it needs the boost. As the “fifth” league, it competes with LaCrosse, Indycar, NASCAR, tennis and even shuffleboard or curling for attention. Getting a bonafide superstar at an age where he's still of international class is a major win for the MLS, even at an overinflated price tag. And Henry is not shackled with being the first to walk this road. He's not the Football missionary sent to convert the heathen horde to the Beautiful Game; that path has been trod to varying degrees by Pele, Romario, Georgie Best and Paul Gascoigne. It's also telling that the most success at this has been achieved by “Brand Beckham”. Because he's joining a revolution and not starting one (MLS's words, not mine), Henry can now focus on doing what he does best: scoring goals. His languorous pace is not gone. His clinical eye for goal is still sharp – only twelve months ago he scored 26 goals in all competitions as his side won the Champions League on Barcelona's way to an unprecedented sextuplet of major trophies. He could easily have joined a midtable top-flight club, been an effective line-leader and maintained his European profile.

Henry's landing spot, the New York Red Bulls, have been the perpetual underachievers of the MLS, yet to make it to the championship series after being a foundation team created at soccer's US rebirth fifteen years ago. The Red Bulls optimistically rate tenth in the tri-state area in terms of team identity and popularity, behind every single NFL, NBA, baseball and NHL franchise. Even the New Jersey-based Nets or the Devils rank higher in the average New Yorker's consciousness than any soccer team.

But here's the catch. Thierry Henry has lived under a microscope since he was seventeen. Before his American Jaunt, he played for Monaco, Juventus, Arsenal and Barcelona: four of the biggest and toughest – and most visible - heavyweights of European football. His life has been subject to English and Spanish voyeurism since boyhood. And he spent the vast majority of his career in London – a city where the Quest for Celebrity has grown to a level that's more painful to watch than a kick in the groin. Then he followed London with Barcelona, a city so egocentric about their football (and footballers) that the only privacy he got in his three years was probably when he entered the smallest room. Is it any wonder he chose New York, a city where maybe 1 in 10 people has any idea about their faltering football team, and he can be an ordinary Joe and walk down the street unmolested by autograph hunters? If his ego needs a boost, New York has nearly 25 million people crammed into its Metropolitan area so if, as rumoured Henry likes to be the big fish in a small pond, there will still be those crucial pockets of adoration enough to soothe his ruffled ego.

It's different with Beckham. For better or for worse, Team Beckham has actively promoted a lifestyle and (shudder) brand (imagine kids born into “Brand Beckham”) that completely removes all trace of a normal life and replaced with living out a perverse iteration of the Oscar Wilde-ism: “The only thing worse than being being talked about is not being talked about”. They have made their bed and – failing Posh joining a cult and let's not rule that out, if only in hope – we're the ones cursed to lie in the bed Brand Beckham created for as long as we all shall live.

You get the feeling though that celebrity didn't sit that well with Henry. Sure, he liked the attention and adoration – who doesn't? But the public furore and inarticulate screaming that came first with his divorce (from English model Nicole Merry) and the “Hand of Frog” obviously rankled, especially for such an eloquent man who had tried to act always in a sporting manner. Now, whether this sportsmanship was an act or not is not the question, nor really does it matter. But the more the thought strikes me, the more it resonates: Henry had tired of having his entire life questioned publicly and perhaps though it time for an image reboot. Popular opinion of Beckham before his LA Galaxy move was of a washed-up player whose legs had gone; a guy more interested in pleasing his celebrity wife and her plastic Hollywood friends than in playing a perfect cross in to an open teammate. But his US exile has rehabilitated Beckham's image to such an extent that he's now congratulated and not derided for his innate marketability; he's now a guy who happens still to be very, very good at some aspects of the game. Focus has shifted from what he couldn't do back onto what he could. British culture now celebrates rather than attacks Brand Beckham, and Henry, a very smart and articulate man, has seen and observed.

To use an old adage: If you want to hide a tree, where better than in a forest? That's what Henry has seen and enacted. He became public enemy no. 1 last year for his blatant handball against the Irish in their World Cup qualifying playoff – and the public conveniently forgot that Ireland was not guaranteed a win, only a chance to go to extra time. After the match, he was ridiculed for what was seen as faux-sportsmanship. But, if you ask any average New Yorker about Thierry Henry's most famous moment, most would just reply with “Who?”.

So welcome to MLS, Thierry Henry. In footballing terms, Beckham has proved you don't lose top-drawer talent as a result of geography; he's also established that slowing down doesn't really matter, class is always evident. Henry has class both on- and off-field in spades. New York is a fantastic city, and if he wants a post-football career in the media he now has both location and personal advantages already in placed.

Steinbrenner's greatest legacy

This week, the North American sports fraternity mourns George Steinbrenner, former owner of the New York Yankees who passed away of a heart attack aged eighty on Tuesday.

Beginning in 1973, Steinbrenner's reign at the top of the Yankees proved tempestuous, going through growing pains for over two decades. It didn't pay too long to be the Manager of the Yankees - “Manager George” changed them with the same frequency as most of us change antivirus softwares – he employed 20 bosses through his first 23 seasons. General managers fared little better as the Yankees discarded 11 over a thirty year period. His teams started off winning sporadically, but over time fortunes improved and last season he saw his Yankees win their seventh World Series under his tenure with a 4-2 win over the Phillies. Along with those seven titles came 11 American League Championships. Famous initially just for his involvement with the Yankees, Steinbrenner was launched instantly into public consciousness soon after taking over for his tendencies to overvalue the benefits of personal grooming: shortly after purchase he took down the numbers of all the Yankees whose hair he decreed as too long. Other times reprimanded or even benched stars like Goose Gossage and Don Mattingly for having hair, beards or mutton chops not to his liking. Steinbrenner was the archetypal Meddling Owner and the forerunner for such fantastical owners as Mark Cuban and or Dana White*.

Unquestionably though, he became most famous of all for being George Costanza's boss on Seinfeld.

Voiced by series creator Larry David, the Steinbrenner character was portrayed as a random, constantly rambling buffoon who placed more importance on Calzones, Tyler Chicken and the merits of a good, hot soak, than he did the fortunes of his baseball club.

This was my first introduction to George Steinbrenner and to be fair, my defining knowledge of the man is of the parodies he engendered. So his passing got me thinking: Which sporting identities could be parodied in such a way as to become sitcom characters? Given that – let's face it – most secondary sitcom characters have only one defining characteristic or joke and are rarely afforded time or want for character development (cf. “The Todd” in Scrubs; Seinfeld's own Evil Genius Newman; any character in Big Bang Theory or Two and a Half Men – the list goes on), so each would really only need their own physical, mental or emotional idiosyncrasies and a profile large enough that the viewing populace could reasonably recognise them without assistance.

The first that leapt to mind were:

The 1987-88 Washington Bullets (Players, NBA, err ... Washington Bullets)
Well, really only two of them. The Bullets in 1987-88 sported the equal-tallest player in NBA history, Manute Bol (7'7), and the shortest, Muggsy Bogues (5'3). Call 'em what you want: Little & Large Show, The Odd Couple, Manute & Minime ... Coupled with Muggsy's origins in the toughest part of Baltimore and his mile-a-minute speech patterns; Bol's indeterminate age (he honestly didn't know how old he was), stories that he killed a lion in a coming-of-age ceremony in Sudan and courtside pratfalls make this comedy gold! Actually, why isn't anyone making a sitcom about this right now?

Terrell Owens (Player, NFL, Free Agent)
Perhaps the most naturally-gifted Running Back of the past twenty years, TO has already made a parody of himself without needing Hollywood's help. Not the only prodigy to do such (Stephon Marbury's gradual decline into insanity springs instantly to mind), TO's outspokenness, cross-promotability (I'm sure I just invented that word) and utter inability to get along even in the medium-term with anyone in authority just screams sitcom.

Jerry Buss (Owner, NBA, LA Lakers)
Real-Estate billionaire, adopts Playboy-style life, buys a sports franchise; Daughter poses for Playboy herself, joins her brothers in running the franchise then dates Supercoach; Jerry decides to play high-stakes poker. Actually I've got this wrong – this isn't sitcom (though it could be), this is Days of our Lives!

David Beckham (Player, MLS, LA Galaxy)
So what if we're picking on easy targets! Beckham's very life is a soap opera crammed with so much comic gold it's impossible to know where to start. He's actually fits the model of the sitcom character already – the beautiful jock who's perhaps just a couple of kangaroos loose in the top paddock. Add to this his American-Idol-reject of a wife and, to borrow a Seinfeldism, “That's gold, Jerry, GOLD”! Sadly this may never happen as it's eminently possible we've not seen a soccer player this aware of his own marketability before.

Don Nelson (Coach, NBA, Golden State Warriors)
Zany, off-the-wall basketball tacticians, thy God is “Nellie”. After creating a legacy as an innovator while coaching in Milwaukee, Nelson has become th all-time leader in NBA coaching victories. But he's done it amidst rosters no sane man would assemble, the occasional feud with his former-BFFs – he's apparently never left a job on good terms – and the occasional lawsuit thrown in, you can just see him as Crazy Uncle Don, who begins and ends each sentence with “The Power of Christ compels You to DO AS I SAY!”. Nelson comes in to address the quarter-time huddle “The Power of Christ compels You to DO AS I SAY! The next play is an alley-oop to Mullin, run it quickly from the sideline as we don't want him picked up by an athlete. The Power of Christ compels You to DO AS I SAY!”

Kevin Sheedy (Coach, AFL, Greater Western Sydney)
Don Nelson's Australian counterpart! With antics like tying the windsock down at Essendon's home ground; coining the phrases “Marshmallows”, calling a trio of field umpires “Martians”, Sheedy could be the madcap Grandpa – I'm sure you, like me, would have to check Williams Shatner's availability. Picture Shatner waving his jacket over his head on beating the West Coast (http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=662764&page=2). Now reverse the image, and see Sheedy screaming “KHHAAAAAAAAN”! Perfect, eh? (smug smile)

We'd love to hear your suggestions: please feel free to let Balanced Sports know!

* I know White's really the President & minority owner of the UFC. A little poetic licence, please.