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While I'm on the subject of London media coverage of L.A. celebrities, The Independent gets a little snarky about David Beckham's transformation from European soccer superstar to American celebrity. Or as the paper puts it, "the world-famous footballer who now lives in a country that cares little about the game, yet nonetheless celebrates his standing as a member of the global show-business elite."
Since he moved to the US with his family nearly 18 months ago, one half of Beckham's life has revolved around playing football. Recently it's been going almost unthinkably badly. The other, however, has revolved around what you might call living the Los Angeles dream – and by all accounts, that bit's been going very well indeed...At 33, the best years of his career are behind him, and his move to California in 2007 was a tacit admission that his life was entering a new phase. But the speed of his subsequent professional decline, and the ungainly manner in which his club and international careers are now disintegrating, may have caught him by surprise.
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To understand what exactly went wrong, you need to head south on the 405 freeway from Beverly Hills, where Beckham lives, to the Home Depot Center, where Galaxy play their home games before a crowd of roughly 20,000. The ground is in south Carson, an unloved district – which represents, pretty accurately, where soccer (to use the local vernacular) sits in the pecking order of American sport.