This Week in Football History: David Beckham joins LA Galaxy

David Beckham joined LA Galaxy this week in 2007

In today's look at football history, Adrian North talks about David Beckham's mega-dollars move from Real Madrid to LA Galaxy and why it sparked a speedier rise for 'soccer' in America...

January 11, 2007 - Beckham becomes the biggest star in the Galaxy

Last week's biggest football story was one that broke my heart. In my fantasy world of football romance Steven Gerrard stays at Liverpool for another three years, wins the League in his final season, retires a champion and eventually manages Liverpool to a level of glory that rivals my most successful Football Manager saves.

That last part may one day come true in the real world, Gerrard will never see a Premier League medal having decided to follow in the footsteps of England's most famous recent export - David Beckham.

And Gerrard has quite the boots to fill. Sure, he is a better player than Beckham was but perhaps no footballer ever, even Pele, has ever had the level of fame reserved for him as the former Manchester United and Real Madrid midfielder.

The gorgeous blond locks, the pop star wife, the pin-up boy of post millennium English football, not to mention all the underwear and cologne ads, have seen Victoria and David combined accumulate a net wroth of close to $600 million, and the Beckham brand itself is estimated to push a billion in the next few years.

On January 11, 2007, while still a Real Madrid player, Beckham announced that he had signed a contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy of the MLS on a five-year contract worth $6.5 million per year. But the Beckham brand was to earn considerably more than his comparatively impoverished salary which came to $125,000 a week.

The media reported the deal to be worth $250 million. The result of a brilliant PR stunt from Beckham's people who claimed that through all of his revenue sources his five year stint in LA could see him make close to a quarter of a billion dollars. Whether or not the Beckhams did make such a value over that period is anyone's guess.

Beckham had seen his playing time limited by Fabio Capello during the 06/07 season and at 32 years of age decided he not only needed a change of club, but a change of lifestyle. And for Beckham, I would venture to guess the lifestyle of Hollywood and being mates with Tom Cruise seemed far more appealing to him than anything back in Spain or England.

A few weeks ago I gave a brief history of the MLS and the state of football in the United States. In that piece I claimed that the state of 'soccer' in the US in 2007 was such that "everything was in place for Becks to succeed where Pele had not".

And succeed he did. The MLS has expanded from 13 teams in 2007 to 20 teams for the forthcoming 2015 season. David Villa, Kaka, Frank Lampard (perhaps) and Gerrard will all be entertaining thousands come next year.

Football in America was on the rise long before 2007, but it was the arrival of not the footballer David Beckham, but the brand of David Beckham that served as a key spark for the exponential growth in soccer's popularity in the states over the course of the next few years.