The A-League is sooooo hot right now. Fresh on the back of the wildly successful Alessandro del Piero, Emile Heskey, Shinji Ono signings comes word that David Beckham has identified the A-League as his preferred destination for an off-season sabbatical. With the Major League Soccer season and Beckham’s LA Galaxy commitments wrapping up in a few weeks, Beckham, who has previously enjoyed off-season stints at AC Milan in 2009 and 2010, has already been offered to several A-League clubs as part of a 10 game cameo package.
Realistically, it’s only Sydney or Melbourne that would be commercially viable cities for the limelight friendly Beckhams. It hard to see Sydney FC being able to fit Beckham in along with Del Piero leaving the Melbourne Victory, Melbourne Heart, and Western Sydney Wanderers as the leading candidates.
While the man himself is said to be keen as mustard, the white elephant in the room is money. It’s always the money. At the start of the season, Beckham took a $1.5 million pay-cut to stay at the Galaxy indicating he’s not ALL about the Benjamins but few (if any) clubs would have the kind of spare cash lying around that would be sufficient payment to a player of Beckham’s caliber. New league chief David Gallop and the Football Federation Australia would have to chip in but considering the success of this years marquee signings, on and off the field, they’d be mad not to.
