Opinion: Beckham can't sell sport when it's played like this

COMMERCE CITY - It's a grand tradition.

Titans from England invade our United States, earn an obscene amount of cash along with throngs of female admirers and then return home to brag to all their blokes.

This process has worked marvelously for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Daniel Day-Lewis.

It's not working for David Beckham.

Sure, he's an international icon, stupendously wealthy and adored by women all over our globe. Trust me on that last one. I hear, quite often, about Beckham from my wife and daughter. "Gorgeous" is their word of choice.

Yet Beckham's journey across the pond teeters on the edge of catastrophe. He traveled here to sell Americans the world's most popular game.

This is a big task. Maybe too big.

Beckham can't even rescue his Los Angeles Galaxy.

On Saturday night, Beckham stood at the midfield stripe, hands on hips, grim look in his eye. He wiped his nose with his right sleeve, then his left. He glared at the scoreboard.

He couldn't believe what he saw.

The Colorado Rapids, hardly burdened with great expectations, led the Galaxy 4-0 with 10 minutes left. The hustling, no-name Rapids dominated their lazy visitors from the West.

After the game, Beckham faced TV cameras and reporters. He was polite, patiently answering each question in the rat-a-tat style of his native London.

But he never smiled at the conclusion of a painful trip to Colorado.

"We've got a good team," he said. "We've got good players."

He sounded as if he was trying - and failing - to convince himself. Beckham had no reason to apologize. He played with precision, repeatedly launching his trademark crosses into the goal mouth.

Problem was, his teammates had no clue how to handle such mastery. Strikers Landon Donovan and Carlos Ruiz discovered imaginative ways to avoid scoring.

Beckham made his name in the English Premier League and Spain's La Liga by passing to the game's greatest players. He's a star, one of the biggest, but he's a generous soul. It's not his nature, or his gift, to dominate a game by himself.

He's surrounded by mediocrity. The Galaxy has won only 20 of its past 62 games. Beckham's teammates play passively. Their defense is porous.

Major League Soccer badly needs the Galaxy to soar, and Beckham could serve as the ideal spokesman. He remains, even at 32, on the tail end of his prime. He's still a snarling, rowdy competitor. He's not a weary, depleted has-been.

And he's a celebrity, married to Victoria, a perilously thin sex symbol. Together, they find silly routes into the pages of those magazines at your local grocery checkout.

He's a star on Fox Soccer Channel and "Entertainment Tonight". He can take soccer to new heights, sell the game to Americans who barely realize the sport exists.

But he requires help from his mates, and so far this invasion ranks as a disaster. Beckham, like those English greats before him, is expected to conquer America.

Instead, he stares at scoreboards, wondering why he traveled so far to witness such hideous soccer.