One evening last year, I found myself sitting beside a lake in Norway with
the two foremost experts on US suburbia. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, the brilliant cartoon send-up of the suburbs, were attending the same conference as me. At one point we talked about soccer in the US. Yes, this really happened.

That evening comes back to me as David Beckham packs his many bags
for Los Angeles. As the new boy at the LA Galaxy, Beckham has been handed the task of popularising professional soccer in the American suburbs, the real-life equivalents of South Park. In the words of the cliché, he must “put soccer on the map” in America. He will find that impossible, because soccer is already on the map in America. The US has a strong soccer culture. It is simply different from any other country’s soccer culture and will remain different despite Beckham.