ALL these years of being mercilessly lampooned as not being exactly the sharpest blade on the sole of a football boot - and look at David Beckham now.

Destined for a new career in the fledgling Major Soccer League of America on a reported contract of £128 million over five years, or £492,000 a week, or £70,000 a day, or £50 a minute. Now ain't that stoopid'.

Becks, or rather Brand Beckham, is about to trade the los galacticos of Real Madrid for the LA Galaxy of the MSL. Whichever way you cut it, it is truly a staggering switch in events in the bewildering life of the 31-year-old former Preston North End loanee.

The self-styled icon of the modern game declared so earnestly as to appear to put him in the running for a Nobel laureate that he wanted a new challenge'. That's football-speak for I'm getting nowhere with the current gaffer'.

Notwithstanding the fact that Real Madrid's offer of a another two years in the Spanish capital would exile him to the Bernabeu bench for more than was good for the Becks factor, the boy David dreamily added how he wished to grow' the beautiful game in America. That's right, in the land of the free, where football - yes football, not that palooka-strewn gridiron rubbish - trails a woeful fourth to baseball, basketball and the aforementioned gridiron assemblage of over-muscled mastodons.

So in another re-invention of himself, Beckham the ambassador will now straddle the global game with a fistful of dollars that Messrs Eastwood and van Cleef could only dream about.

But while Beckham, and his advisors, have shown eminent acumen in knowing the number 23 was up at Madrid, if there is one player who might challenge the monopoly of the unholy trinity of baseball, basketball and American footba - I can't bring myself to call it that - then it is the one-time Manchester United winger.

There are arguably just two footballers in the world who could hope to make any significant inroads in the United States, where the popularity of football tops all other sports in schools until university and college scholarships call. Barcelona's Ronaldinho is one, the other is the soft-spoken boy from Leytonstone.

Even though Ronaldinho is a World Cup winner, he still pales in marketing strategy to the streak of blond who, in his Old Trafford prime, graced both Bootham Crescent and Selby Town's Flaxley Road. Now there's a quiz question.

Beckham is not a stranger to the US, where he has already established football schools in his own name. He is arriving too in a physical condition which, though it may have laboured amid the pell-mell of the Premiership, will enable him to flourish in California unfettered too by any dreams of recalls to the England shirt. Those days are gone, he can concentrate fully on his Galaxy orbit.

If football is finally to crack America, then Becks could well be the bud to provide a tonic for a thirsty MSL.