Wizards spoil KC debut of Beckham

David Beckham walked into the room and plopped into a chair, nearly an hour after the game.
“Good evening, good afternoon — I’m not sure what it is at the moment,” he said.
After crossing nine time zones to reach four cities in three days, it’s easy to understand why Beckham was a little disoriented.
The Kansas City Wizards swarmed a tired Beckham, got goals from Josh Wolff and Davy Arnaud less than two minutes apart in the second half and extended Los Angeles’ winless streak to 12 games with a 2-0 win over the Galaxy on Saturday night.
Beckham, back after a week playing in World Cup qualifiers for England, was supposed to be the big draw.
The Wizards moved last year’s game to Arrowhead Stadium, figuring 10,385-seat CommunityAmerica Ballpark wasn’t going to be big enough for all the fans who wanted to see him. It turned out to be a good move; a franchise-record 32,867 showed up even with Beckham missing the game due to injury.
The Wizards again moved the game to Arrowhead and Beckham was actually there after playing two games for England in World Cup qualifiers. The crowd wasn’t the same, though, three days of rain and the threat of more causing more than a few of the 26,113 tickets sold to go unused.
The ones who were there got to see a tired Beckham, one who missed a 30-yard free kick badly — leading to boos from the crowd — and didn’t have much of an impact on the outcome.
“Obviously, it’s tough because I’m trying to get back into time zone and didn’t sleep well last night, which didn’t help,” said Beckham, who played the entire game. “It’s something that I’ve got used to. It’s tough at times, especially when I don’t have many games before I play again.”
Beckham played 10 minutes in England’s 4-1 win over Croatia on Wednesday, then flew back with the team to London. He made the trans-Atlantic flight from London to Los Angeles on Thursday, then took an early morning flight to Kansas City on Friday.
Tired? Just a bit.
The Wizards didn’t help, either.
Like most MLS teams, Kansas City focused on limited chances for Beckham and Landon Donovan, the league’s goals leader.
Beckham, who had a a 70-yard, empty-net goal in the teams’ last meeting, got his best chance early in the second half, when he just missed the left crossbar on a shot from about 25 yards out. Other than that, he wasn’t much of factor, limited by Arrowhead’s small field and Kansas City’s constant attention.
“If you give time and space to David Beckham, he’s going to eat you alive with balls over the top,” Wizards coach Curt Onalfo said. “I thought we did a good job of really limiting those.”
Beckham wasn’t the only tired player for Los Angeles. Donovan, Ante Jazic and Eddie Lewis didn’t play in the Galaxy’s last game because of national-team commitments, which had been a running theme for the team all season.
The result is the fourth-longest winless streak in MLS history — tying the 1999 MetroStars — a chance for Los Angeles to match Real Salt Lake’s 2006 record of 18 if it goes winless the final six games.
“Not having those players for a long period of time certainly doesn’t help with out continuity on the field as a team,” said Galaxy coach Bruce Arena, winless in four games since taking over in Los Angeles. “Certainly, a few of the players are fighting through fatigue with the games they’ve had and the travel.”
Kansas City hadn’t been playing much better, winning one of its last eight matches, including a 3-1 loss to Houston last Sunday. The Wizards also hadn’t beaten the Galaxy in six meetings (4-0-2) since a 2-1 victory on Oct. 16, 2004.
After a slow start, Kansas City came out more aggressive in the second half, leading to a 67th minute goal by Wolff.
Taking a feed from Herculez Gomez, who joined Kansas City on Wednesday in a trade with Colorado, Wolff flicked in a nifty backheel redirect past a diving Josh Wicks for his second goal.
“It was one of those that fails most of the time you try it, but we’ll take it,” Wolff said.
Arnaud made it 2-0 in the 69th minute with his third goal in three games, driving a 30-yard shot to the top-right corner of the goal.
Wizards goalie Kevin Hartman made two saves for his eighth shutout.
“I thought we showed some composure in the fact that we shut out what everybody says is the best attack in soccer,” Onalfo said. “It’s a huge boost of confidence as we go into our last six games of the season.”