I have no doubt that more than a few new spectators will show up around the league to watch the quarter-of-a-billion-dollar-man play soccer for the Los Angeles Galaxy. They will have a natural and understandable curiosity to see what all the fuss is about, and if they keep their minds open, they may learn something about this game of ours. So what is David Beckham going to show them? And why did Anschutz and others pour millions upon millions of dollars into a 32-year-old player’s pockets?

They will see a very fine player, even if he is no longer in his prime, and they will see him play an unspectacular but effective style. The way he plays may not excite spectators who want to see flashy one-on-one stuff, or dribbling the way that Pele and Maradona and George Best did it. But they will see the following:

• He is a fine passer of the ball, able to knock a pass forty yards to the foot of a teammate;

• He sends crosses into the center and flanks of the opponents’ defense with an accuracy and timing that are sometimes beyond belief, curling away from defenders into the path of his own forwards;

• Beckham can be lethal at set-pieces, from the corner arc or from free-kicks. His curving and dipping shots on goal force the defenders into a state of anxiety every time he approaches the ball;

• As a midfielder, he is in constant motion; in the parlance of coaches, he has a high work-rate. Yallop, his coach in L.A. has hinted that he may play the multi-million-dollar-man in the center of midfield, to allow him more opportunities to be on the ball and distribute it;

• Beckham is an exemplary professional, shown never more clearly than during this last month, when the Real Madrid coach publicly declared he would not play Beckham again. The player did not protest, did not sulk, but worked as hard in training as he always did. He’s back in the team. You won’t see the player hiding a lack of conditioning by ‘resting’ during play, the way that some of the ageing stars of the NASL did years ago.

The fans of Major League Soccer will see a tactical player, not a spectacular one. He will win matches with the work he does, the opportunities he creates for teammates, and every now and then, with a shot struck so skillfully that he can bend it . . . well, like Beckham.

At first thought, the result of the election for the presidency of UEFA was a good one for the most important people in the game—the players. Michel Platini, former captain and coach of France, was a world-class midfielder who will bring much-needed technical knowledge of the game to the business of administering the most important confederation in FIFA. And already prior to the vote, he had said that he would not forget that soccer is first and foremost a sport, not just a business, despite the amount of money involved. Already, prior to the vote, too, it was clear that Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA supported the Frenchman’s bid.

The win for Platini was nevertheless a bit of a surprise, because he was running against the long-time president of UEFA, the Swede Lennart Johansson, who was seeking his fifth term. But the biggest surprise of all was Blatter’s public endorsement of Platini in a speech delivered to the UEFA congress of 52 nations. In a shameless few sentences, the president claimed neutrality, at the same time as he pushed Platini in front of all the members. Machiavelli was naming his prince.

“Both contenders for the presidency have asked me,” Blatter said, “whether they should run as candidates and I have answered yes to both, and I would also have said yes to other candidates.

“By saying no to one or another I would have abandoned my neutrality, but also as president of FIFA I have the right to say – and this is nothing negative and does by no means reduce the merits of Lennart Johansson – that I do have a sympathy for the man who has been accompanying me since 1998, Michel Platini.”

As Platini himself might have said: “Incroyable!”

To understand what happened, let’s go back a few years. For perhaps a decade, some national associations in Europe have grumbled about their membership in FIFA. With more than 50 members, UEFA supplies a lot of money to the coffers of FIFA, more than CONCACAF, more than CONMEBOL, and yet, the members claim, they have no more power individually than does Fiji or Bermuda or Benin. Some have asked: “Why do we have to stay in FIFA? Since most of the world-class players play in Europe, why do we need FIFA?”

In some ways, they are expressing the frustration of big clubs that seem to have little control of their destiny and their players’ destiny in disciplinary matters. In other ways, they see FIFA as too highly-political, in which administrators in Switzerland curry favors with third-world countries in order to get votes in the big elections (like the presidency of FIFA, or the location of future World Cups). But the loss of UEFA would be a major embarrassment for Zurich.

There have been suggestions of money changing hands near election time, and there are certainly corrupt practices involved in international competition. A recent one involved money earned from television contracts held by the son of a Caribbean FIFA executive member, who was exonerated after an investigation, incidentally not for the first time in his career. And a few years ago, an investigative journalist published an expose of a FIFA election, citing bribes, favors and other devious devices. FIFA tried through the courts to suppress its publication, but failed.

All is not squeaky-clean in Zurich, and Sepp Blatter, who has been in FIFA administration for more than thirty years, is a master of the political process there. Now what does all this have to do with Platini and the Swede?

Four times in recent years Johansson has opposed candidates or policies advocated by Sepp Blatter, and four times he has lost. He ran against Blatter for the presidency in 1998, but lost after some last-minute vote-switching. Then four years later he and others in Europe supported the candidate from the Confederation of African Football, who also lost in an election colored by accusations of corruption. You might say that Johansson, even in failing, was at very least an irritating thorn in Blatter’s side. There’s only one way to stop such an irritation, and that is to remove the irritant.

What better way than to support an opponent of the Swedish thorn in a major election in the biggest soccer confederation in the world? And how better to do it than to groom a youthful and popular candidate as the opponent? Platini is a prince of European football, a household name, famous for his playing and for his involvement as co-chairman of the successful World Cup in France in 1998. But Blatter had more up his sleeve.

Prior to the speech, he had evidently lulled Johansson into a state of confidence, by urging him to reconsider an earlier decision not to run for the fifth term. The endorsement of Platini was nothing short of a betrayal.

Corrupt? Probably not. Unethical? Maybe. Dirty politics and shabby behavior? Most certainly. We who have been in FIFA have seen this before…

Welcome to the devious world behind-the-scenes in administration of the “beautiful game”. At the age of 77, and despite presiding over the amazing growth of European football and the champions league since the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster, Johansson is finished politically. Meanwhile Platini, at 51, has the possibility of a long association with the man in Zurich, a Machiavellian expert at dubbing princes and removing irritating thorns.