Rundown of the day

After the David Beckham presentation was over and all the confetti floated down to the ground, the throngs of media scattered. Some media members received yellow stickers on their credentials, some red and others blue. Apparently, yellow was for the international media, red for the national media and blue for us locals.

Each color got you into a different event suite, and the Galaxy were going to take David Beckham and others around. The blue sticker got us into Event Suite 5, which is behind Section 102/101.

In an attempt to get out of the sweltering sun, I darted up to the concourse and found Event Suite 5 right away. I walked in and I may have been the first media member in there. I saw a table and chairs and none were taken so I had my pick of the bunch.

Typically, when there have been similar events at HDC with similar setups, the subject (new player/coach/official/whatever) sits at one end of the table, and I figured that it would be cool to sit close to David Beckham. Why not, right? I mean, it's not every day you get to be in the same room as one of the most famous people in the world, so why not sit close to him?

There were probably six seats on either side of the table and room for two on either end. I grabbed a seat on the far right of the table so I had a 50/50 chance of sitting next to Beckham.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber walked in to the room first after about a 30-minute wait. He sat right next to me so unless something drastic happened Beckham was going to do the same. I got butterflies. Or maybe it was my breakfast still trying to settle. Or the bottles of water I guzzled down.

After Garber left, Beckham strolled inside and took his spot at the head of the table, right next to me. A ha! My plan worked!

A Galaxy official told him that we were the local media and he had us introduce ourselves to Becks. I started it off and stammered my name and publication and shook his hand, and we all took our turn doing the same. Andrea was further down the line and Becks reached out and tried to shake her hand but instead they kind of just grazed fingertips.

Once we'd all introduced ourselves, he sat down and we got the chance to chat with him. It must have been like 20 minutes or so that he was in there. Really, it was a bit surreal to have him sitting right there in front of me. I've covered soccer for a long time but this was probably the most famous person I've gotten the chance to sit next to and listen to for so long. It just was strange, really.

Anyway, here's audio of the first nine minutes or so of his chat with us. He hits on a lot of different topics, too many to list.