Is Thierry Henry the Best Designated Player Signing in MLS History?

With two goals—including an MLS Goal of the Week nominee—and an assist in the New York Red Bulls 4-1 victory over the Columbus Crew on Sunday Thierry Henry was named MLS Player of the Week.

It’s the third week in a row he’s earned those honors and is the first player in MLS history to ever win three consecutive Player of the Week awards.

His historic run and impressive start to the season—seven goals and four assists—has New York Red Bulls fans excited. Since coming to the team in the middle of the 2010 season he has delivered the goods and has been a great Designated Player signing, worth his hefty contract (second-largest in the league).

Signing a player as a Designated Player contract has not historically meant success on the field. Many players, such as Luis Angel Landin, Blaise Nkufo and Geovanni have been failed signings.

Henry has been a success. In 42 MLS regular season games he has 23 goals and 11 assists. Has the Frenchman been the best DP signing in league history, though?

To properly gauge his impact we first have to exclude guys that graduated to DP salaries. Players like Landon Donovan, Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Alvaro Saborio, Fredy Montero and Shalrie Joseph came into the league on normal contracts. They played so well that they earned a raise, one that put them over the DP threshold. While they’ve had great careers in MLS they weren’t typical DP signings. They were given the contract because of past success in the league, not as high-profile transfers from teams around the world that have an uncertainty if they can adapt to MLS.



Robbie Keane had a nice run at the end of the season for the Galaxy, scoring four total goals in nine appearances across all competitions but he needs to play more games in MLS for us to be able to really determine his impact.

The real competition for best DP signing is between Henry, Juan Pablo Angel, Cuauhtemoc Blanco and the man the rule was created for, David Beckham.

Blanco was a huge success for the Chicago Fire. In all three seasons his team made the playoffs and in 2007 and 2008 Blanco was selected as a finalist for the MVP award. He was an exceptional talent with a fiery attitude to match.

There could be two slight downsides to his time in MLS—and it could just be nitpicking—but one was that the Fire never made it past the conference finals. In 2009, his last year with the team the Fire were upset by wild card (and eventual champion) Real Salt Lake.

He also played forward but only scored 16 goals in three seasons for the team. A player’s value is not measure in goals alone, but as a forward it is your main job and Blanco did not light up the stats sheet.

Angel was a lethal scorer for the Red Bulls. He owns the record for most goals scored for the franchise in all competitions with 62 and was a fan favorite.

Angel was eventually moved out in favor of Henry however, and the Frenchman hasn’t disappointed especially with Angel slowing down in past years. Angel spent a lot of time in New York with injuries, struggled mightily with the Galaxy only scoring three goals all year and now finishing with Chivas.

As for Beckham, the English-midfielder was the reason the DP rule was made. Off the field he has lived up to all the hype. Beckham-mania has hit the country with all the commercials, magazine covers and jersey sales.

He’s sold out MLS stadiums on the road and his presence has gotten the league more attention, more respectability and influenced others, like Henry, to come over and play in the league. It’s hard to imagine any player ever making the kind of commercial-impact Beckham has had on the league.

His play on the field however has been more tumultuous. Yes, he was on the league’s Best XI last year and was a major component in the Galaxy winning the MLS Cup. That being said there has been so much negativity associated with Beckham’s on-field performance.



For the first four years of Beckham’s MLS contract he spent time either on the bench injured or on loan in Italy. He openly talked about his desire to go back to Europe in order to continue to play for the English national team. He fought with teammates, most notably Landon Donovan. All in all, he didn’t look like he really wanted to be in or play in America or with the Galaxy.

It wasn’t until his final year in his first MLS contract that Beckham seemed engaged and committed to Los Angeles and MLS.

Since coming to MLS, Henry has fully committed to the Red Bulls. He has retired internationally and is giving his full attention to his club team. He’s sometimes cantankerous as a player, has high expectations for himself and his teammates and he has no problem unleashing his emotions.

What he has done however is score lots of goals and he is always the hardest working player on the pitch for the Red Bulls. He knows when to take charge himself or when to set up his teammates. He was also part of the MLS Best XI last season.

He still needs to score more goals in big games (like Angel), dominate the league and receive individual attention for his play (like Blanco) and win a championship to go along with his ability to bring in more fans to games (like Beckham) but Henry has only played in 42 games, just a bit more than one full season.

What he has done in a short amount of time has been incredible. He is absolutely one of the best DP signing in league history and still has a lot of time to do even more.



Video from YouTube.
Photo Credits.
Thierry Henry: AP Photo/Mel Evans
Cuauhtemoc Blanco: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh
David Beckham: AP Photo/Jonathan Moore

To Care Or Not To Care

Photo Credit. AP Photo/ Rich Schultz

Tomorrow evening, David Beckham returns to the MLS when his Los Angeles Galaxy travel to New Jersey to play Red Bull New York.

The burning question: does anyone care?

The fans, the media, his teammates, Beckham himself, do any of them care?

When he first crossed the pond, some were claiming he would be the soccer savior in America.

While savior was an extreme title to give him, there was some legitimacy in the idea that Beckham’s name was popular enough that it had crossover appeal outside of soccer to draw more casual, or non-fans, to MLS and the sport as a whole.

Beckham’s arrival did generate a lot of buzz about MLS and soccer in the media and at the gates.

The Galaxy had the highest average attendance in the league, and when they were the visitors, the home team saw an incremental spike in attendance, like when over 66 thousand people showed up to see Beckham’s first trip to Giants Stadium against the Red Bulls. Beckham jersey sales also did well.

However, a few things really hampered his first season.

For starters, Beckham’s health was not 100%.

Knee problems, including a sprained right medial collateral ligament, kept him from making only seven appearances in his first season with the club, in which a handful he only came on as a substitute.

The Galaxy were also a terrible team.

Losing never helps a player’s profile, and Los Angeles lost a lot. They were eliminated from the playoffs, which meant one of the bigger stages of the MLS season would be without its biggest marketing tool.

Another disappointing aspect was the level of expectations that were placed, unfairly, on Beckham.

What non-soccer fans expected out of the player from the two biggest clubs in the world, Manchester United and Real Madrid, was for him to dominate the league and score a lot of goals.

What they didn’t understand was that that wasn’t the type of player Beckham was.
Beckham was a playmaking midfielder, a facilitator of the ball, with extremely good touch and a deadly free kick. He was not a goal scorer.

Spectators were building him up to be something he wasn’t, and when he didn’t deliver, they felt something was wrong with him and they were cheated by all the media hype.

What didn’t help Beckham’s case was that along with not scoring he was also not doing a great job of distributing the ball.

In his Galaxy career, he has only registered a total of 12 assists, certainly not what one would expect from a player of his caliber. Just last season, Columbus Crew midfielder Guillermo Barros Schelotto lead the league with 19 assists.

Nothing was worse, though, when Beckham was loaned out to AC Milan in the offseason.
One reason for the loan was because Beckham wanted to keep playing at a high level in order to continue to fight for a spot on the English national team.

While one can never berate a guy for wanting to play for his country, it is unfortunate that he would only be considered if he were playing abroad.

Things got uglier when he stepped on the field.

Beckham looked like a rejuvenated player. He scored two goals in his first four matches, assisted a number of others, and looked to be playing at top form again.

It was great to see a player who had been in MLS the past season and a half performing at a high level in the Serie A, but one couldn’t help but wonder why Beckham couldn’t perform this way in an L.A. uniform.

Where was this skill, talent, and production?

Why was it all of a sudden just showing up in Italy and not the states?

Then he pushed to extend his loan.

Beckham was supposed to return in time for the beginning of the MLS season. Yet he forced his hand into staying with Milan until the end of the Serie A season, not making him eligible to return to MLS until today. What Beckham really wanted was to be sold to Milan for good.

Now Beckham looked like a player who didn’t want to be a part of the league.

All his talk about being serious about doing his part to make America a soccer nation, and not just being another paycheck, seemed to be for naught. Comparing and contrasting his play in L.A. to Milan made him look uninspired on the field in L.A., and now he was backing it up with his contract dispute.

Beckham didn’t want to be here.

Recently, Beckham has made headlines again, but this time as part of the subject of a book.

The Beckham Experiment is written by Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl, detailing Beckham’s arrival in the states and impact on the game here.

One of the interview subjects is Galaxy teammate Landon Donovan. Donovan rips into Beckham and the perception that he didn’t want to be here.

"He's not shown (he's a good team-mate). I can't think of another guy where I'd say he wasn't a good team-mate, he didn't give everything through all this, he didn't still care. But with (Beckham), I'd say no, he wasn't committed,” said Donovan.

"Let's say he does stay here for three more years. I'm not going to spend the next three years of my life doing it this way. This is [expletive] miserable. I don't want to have soccer be this way."

While Beckham countered that he’d never been called a bad teammate anywhere he’s played, it’s tough to believe he’s been completely committed to MLS and the Galaxy.
He was much more explosive on the field at AC Milan, like playing for them mattered more to him.

Between the stark difference in play and his push to stay at Milan and be away from L.A., the team he is under contract for, has left a sour taste in many people’s mouths. Now that he’s finally coming back, it’s tough to tell if anybody cares anymore.

There will be some attention on the Galaxy-Red Bull game, especially two days after Wahl’s book came out.

How will Beckham and Donovan’s playing relationship be?

Will Beckham even be fit enough to play?

How much media coverage will the game receive?

Most importantly, will Beckham, after all this controversy, still be enough of a draw to bring fans out to Giants Stadium to watch a miserable Red Bulls team?

Beckham better put on a show in New Jersey like he did in Italy, because we know he’s capable, and if he doesn’t, this “savior” will become a fallen angel, and may take the intrigue of the league down with him if he isn’t careful.