Waiting for Bruce...

For the second night in a row, I'm in the TV studio at the Home Depot Center, waiting for the home coach to arrive and explain a loss. First it was Robin Fraser, visibly shell-shocked and terse after a late Chicago winner had stunned Chivas. This time it's Bruce Arena, who has just watched New York take the points from his LA Galaxy side, in the face of a strangely unfocused Galaxy attack.

As we wait for Arena to arrive, the assembled press pack are notably quieter than in the press box moments earlier, where the occasional wry comments had risen in frequency through the second half, to become a steady stream of would-be zingers, and finally a muttered rumble of disengaged fatalism as it became clear to the locals that yet another game had slipped through the Galaxy's fingers.

The fact that the journalists are quiet again now is partly a function of the space - the studio is a high-ceilinged room, surrounded by heavy black curtains, and with a raised stage with a draped desk on it at one end. The scale and feel of the room is like a modest chapel (though one that changes patron saints each night) and it has a subduing effect on those present, as if they're here to pay their respects. On a good night, it gives the victorious coach a platform to stare down on the assembled press corps, like a particularly imperious preacher informing the congregation of their sins. This is not a good night.

There were a lot of great nights last year though - an unbeaten Galaxy home record culminated in and on the night of the final, just a few short months ago, the platform I'm looking up at now seated a triumphant Arena flanked by Landon Donovan and David Beckham - the latter not above throwing the odd barbed comment as he savoured some schadenfreude at the expense of the writers who'd publicly doubted him during his time at the Galaxy.

This year has been a different story - the unbeaten home record was lost on the first day of the season. That defeat, plus a mortifying loss to New England (with three goals punched in from a position the Galaxy might have expected the injured Omar Gonzalez to be defending) and this particular evening's loss to New York, have meant that this season the Galaxy have lost more than they have won, at a stadium they were unbeaten at last season. A season that promised much (Beckham and Juninho signed on again, along with Edson Buddle and others - the consensus being that a stacked attacking line-up just got better) is in danger of drifting into disaster.

"We are perfectly fine with David Robert Joseph Beckham..."

David Beckham shirts still outnumber all others on the Home Depot center concourses. Photograph: Graham Parker/Guardian

Earlier that afternoon, I'm wandering around the sunny, open concourses of the Home Depot Center, prior to the game, watching the fans arrive. At the risk of stating the obvious, there are a lot of David Beckham jerseys. As a European writer who spends a fair amount of time convincing US fans that I actually do have a vague clue about MLS (in a nice inversion of the usual flow for the policing of gaucheness - an activity that the English soccer fan considers to be their birthright...), any time I cover the Galaxy there is always a certain element of "Don't think of an elephant" when it comes to Beckham. Seeing the ubiquity of his name on the backs of the family groups arriving at the game, I feel a little embarrassed that it has almost become a point of pride to try not to mention a player who is so obviously the face of the current Galaxy team, but who until last season at least, polarized opinion among certain sections of the support about his contribution on the pitch.

In fairness, at times there was a lot to doubt - the European loan moves; the injuries; the club versus country debate (that was never really debated); the very public breakdown in relationships with elements of the fanbase, that culminated in ugly scenes at a pre-season friendly between the Galaxy and AC Milan (when Beckham came close to a physical confrontation with a member of the LA Riot Squad supporters group). But to be equally fair, a trophy erases a lot of bad memories, and last season Beckham played through injury to have his best ever season for the club, as they swept to the Supporters Shield, then MLS Cup.

So let's stay with Beckham for a moment. He had arrived in LA with pundits promising that he would transform the game on this continent - and in a way he, or at least the period measured by his tenure, has transformed it, though perhaps not as expected, and certainly not only by his doing. Attendance figures were generally up when he played, with some notable spikes in interest early on, and TV figures were up too - though nowhere near the single-handed dramatic burst that the more optimistic commentators had envisaged. But the trickle-down idea of a superstar whose Midas touch creates cultural capital wealth-for-all, was never really a goer. The metaphorical comparisons with Pele's arrival in the States dried up pretty quickly - and for the better. What did happen were cultural changes - some of them caused by his arrival and some of them moments that had been long coming, but which Beckham's presence in the league inadvertently threw into focus.

One direct corollary of his arrival was the designated player rule of course - the symbolic easing of MLS's self-imposed austerity-budget salary cap that in part sought to protect the league from the boom and bust excesses of its predecessor, the NASL (even prior to this season Commissioner Don Garber was still referring to the "ghost" of the NASL "haunting the corridors of the MLS offices"). In order for LA to pay Beckham's wages, an exception had to be made - and it having been made, it had to be applied to each team in the league. Other stars began to arrive on other teams and the league began to feel more 'porous' to players in the later stages of their careers in top leagues - with the knock on effect that MLS began to feel more integrated within the system of the global game. That said, domestically, the Galaxy's MLS triumph last season was the first time a team had won MLS Cup with designated players.

Yet there have been other off the field, key moments in the Beckham era too. Ugly as it was, the confrontation with the Riot Squad was one of those moments that made a particular supporters' culture that had been bubbling under for several years at that point, visible to a wider, if initially bemused, worldwide audience. As the home-made "23:repent" and the "Here Before, Here After, Here Despite 23" banners were flashed round the world, the reaction was telling. If MLS fans were shown or discussed before that time outside the US and Canada, it tended to be in the spirit of extreme condescension ("Oh look, they're trying to do chants..."), something not helped by the lack of soccer specific stadia and the small numbers looking lost in large NFL arenas. But as the images of the Riot Squad baiting Beckham were shown, that condescension began to be tempered with at least some puzzlement as to what these fans were so angry about - didn't they understand the natural order of things? Of course Beckham would want to be in Milan - why weren't they pathetically grateful for the times he walks amongst them?

From my own experience discussing it with fellow fans, it was a surprisingly entrenched view, even among supporters of less fashionable European teams who should have had more empathy for fans of a side apparently being disrespected by the big boys. In a way, certain aspects of early MLS culture hadn't helped matters - the shootouts, the franchise system, the family-friendly marketing of the game etc, had reinforced a sense of isolation that continually seemed to keep MLS apart from global supporters' culture, in a way that its detractors perhaps felt excused them from engaging with its followers as fans like themselves. But fans they were - and in LA, with a star player speaking publicly of his desire to be elsewhere, they found a voice.

At the pre-game tailgate party, I talk to LA Riot Squad member, Chris Tucker (aka Zero Cool, who is an occasional Galaxy match previewer for the Guardian) and ask him about LARS finding an identity at that moment. He agrees:

There was a lot of unity that came from that...there was a unity and a voice and LARS came together in a big way... The Galaxy certainly wanted to hear what we had to say after that. I don't know if they thought we were all good and we were all friendly and cool prior to that, but they certainly had to hear what we had to say after that. And MLS wanted to hear and Garber wanted to understand what we had to say...Because the day he [Beckham] signed we would have loved nothing more to love him - we'd have loved nothing more than to build a statue to the guy. It's just, in our eyes, you have to earn that kind of level.

Chris talks more about that time, and becomes pretty animated in doing so. I'll spare everyone's blushes for some of what is said, but he is also at pains to point out:

To 100% state - and I will conclude it with this - we are perfectly fine with David Robert Joseph Beckham... We are all good...and we won a cup - we can't really complain.

But in one of the more reflective moments he does make an interesting point about one of the structural tensions ushered in with Beckham's arrival:

When we look at a person who's shown up and changed the entire culture of our team, whether the perception in Europe or around the world was for the better, (in some ways) it was to the detriment of the Galaxy in terms of how got treated by our front office as supporters. We used to be treated like the cream of the crop, and then David showed up and there were no more player-fan meetings and you couldn't get to your players like you used to be able to.

It's an interesting paradox: the fans who forgive the star player who wanted to leave, because he has helped deliver the cup, but who are hurt by the loss of a connection they felt to the team of a more modest era. Certainly, the majority of MLS players still come from, and remain throughout their careers in, similar economic backgrounds to the fans - putting one in mind of the Twitter-age equivalents of 1950s English players traveling to the game on the bus with the supporters. Beckham's arrival altered the social conventions that had largely held sway before that. Not his fault of course, but one of the unintended consequences of his arrival around the decade mark of MLS, is that it marked the end of the beginning of a certain fan culture that now exists in parallel, sometimes uneasily, to the fortunes of a team.

A final note on his impact: if Beckham signed today, it's hard to imagine the equivalent of the TV special that breathlessly celebrated his arrival in the US ("that bullshit Chelsea friendly - when he was injured" as one fan succinctly put it to me). The game has grown in confidence to the point where the big leaps forward fans are seeking tend to be structural, rather than personality driven. For being the measure of a distance traveled to that point, Beckham deserves due credit. And he's still here...

"We're just trying to be an organic group"

Angel City Brigade fans tailgating prior to their game with New York. Photograph: Graham Parker/Guardian

Prior to entering the stadium for the game it had been a case of deja vu, as I joined the supporter groups' tailgate parties on the grass by Lot 13 of the Home Depot Center. At one point I realize that on the previous evening I'd stood on the exact same spot, with Julio Ramos (the "Chivas Mayor") at the Union Ultras tailgate, where I now find myself talking to Brian Lynch, another regular Guardian previewer and communications director for the Angel City Brigade (by numbers, currently the "largest supporter group in California").

Lynch is an affable host - manning the grill when I show up, introducing me to other ACB members and generally holding court. The Angel City Brigade stand in a general admission section of the Home Depot Center and their identity and membership policy reflects a fairly laissez-faire attitude to support in general:

We pride ourselves in our diversity...we're almost demographically identical to the city of Los Angeles...As a group, we're stealing a little bit from South America, Central America, a little bit from Europe, a little bit from Asia - we're just trying to be an organic group. If something comes in and we like how it's done, we're going to keep doing it...

Like many of the recent supporters' groups to have sprung up round the league, they're an interesting hybrid of styles - neither the unfairly disparaged enthusiasts who tend to be lumped under the heading of "AYSO soccer moms", nor the posturing bad boys styled after European style firms - but something that's assuredly eclectic and American:

There are groups around North America...a few...just really a small handful, that we're somewhat hostile towards - and that comes from experience. That comes from them trying to instigate things with us and there are definitely supporters groups round the country who are modelling themselves on hooligan groups... We're not trying to be hooligans. We're not trying to be a firm. We're trying to be a supporters group. Our thing is to support the team the best way we can.

The ACB had their origins in a 2007 post on a Big Soccer message board, inspiring a few hardy souls, including "Brownie", who I talk to in between enthusiastic heckles from his friends, to trek to "the randomness of a mall in Buena Park" with around 20 others. Now the group numbers a core 400 or so in season ticket holders alone - with at least twice that many swelling the number on most game days. Brownie calls it "fortunate" that the group is very accessible through being in a general admission section, though it does raise one of the ongoing tensions between supporters groups and front offices generally, of how sections like this are policed. The groups bring atmosphere, and attract new spectators, but they can also attract those with no vested interest in these delicate relationships between fans and management - and if they cause trouble, a group can be held accountable for the behavior of someone they have no jurisdiction over. So far, according to Brownie, it hasn't been a problem:

Policing ourselves has actually worked out. In the past couple of years security has gotten really, really good, to the point where they (the Galaxy front office) let us do whatever we want. I mean, if someone gets out of hand and someone throws a bottle, we have strict rules about that. Anyone sees someone throwing something, first thing we do is point them out, then if stadium security doesn't handle it, our guys will go over there and say get out of the section - we don't need you here.

We're interrupted by a blast of hip-hop from the other side of the hedge that separates us from the Riot Squad. Both groups are building up momentum before the match. It's time to head to the press box, to watch another Galaxy loss in this strange and underwhelming start to the season.

Broken records

Members of the defeated LA Galaxy team leave the field after their 1-0 loss to New York. Photograph: Victor Decolongon/Getty

As the game finishes, my unofficial media mentors for the day (and yet more regular contributors to the Guardian's Galaxy coverage), Women United's Kayla Knapp and Josie Becker (editor of the excellent LAG Confidential blog) race me through the concourses, round pitch side and up the tunnel to the TV room. A weary Galaxy side are trudging off, while the unfamiliar Red Bulls side (they come into the game missing six starters) are lingering to savor an unlikely victory. I catch the scorer of the only goal, Joel Lindpere, and he is delighted with the victory, though feels it a little anti-climactic that one of the biggest games in the MLS calendar will only happen once this season, and not in New York (due to the expansion-inspired scheduling). I tell him that if New York win the Supporters Shield and they and the Galaxy somehow make their way to the MLS Cup final, they can meet then. He laughs and shrugs - "Maybe I would like this...but..." He doesn't have to say much more. From such a dominant position last year, the Galaxy are, as one hack puts it, "stinking the league up". The idea of these two teams meeting in the final (the dream MLS marquee match up) seems remote right now.

Arena eventually arrives for his presser and runs through his full repertoire of mannerisms - his media style can be playful, dismissive, authoritative - sometimes all at once. He's always good value for quotes, but doesn't make much effort to hide the fact that speaking to the press is a necessary evil at worst, and at best a potential source for his own amusement. At practice the day before he had deflected a question about the absent Josh Saunder's stint in rehab, by turning it round on a veteran member of the local press pack, deflecting the focus as if executing a Judo throw.

Undeterred, the same journalist opens the questioning tonight. Arena is more subdued at first, calling the situation "a bit of a broken record" before rallying sufficiently to quell a line of questioning that references the number of games the Galaxy won 1-0 last season (they have not had a clean sheet this season):

Win by a goal - that's what you're supposed to do. All this horse shit of win by a goal or this or that - that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. New York would gladly take a 1-0 win tonight. Any time you win a game by a goal you should be thrilled.

There's a continuous refrain from Galaxy coaches and players to the effect that their opponents are playing defensively against them - a claim that is repeated vehemently to me by Robbie Keane at practice a couple of days later:

They (New York) certainly didn't come to win the game. They had a lot of injuries and came with everyone behind the ball to try and catch us on the counter-attack, and that's what they did. When they got the goal, they put everyone behind the ball...

But the fact remains that as Beckham points out after that same session, "In many of the games this season, people have got two or three good chances against us in the first five minutes, which shouldn't happen." The Galaxy are leaking goals - at time of writing only Toronto share the unwanted record of having conceded in every game. Too often this season the champions have had to try and come from behind.

Prior to the Red Bulls game, Beckham had jogged over to the waiting press pack after training, obligatory beanie cap wedged in place despite the hot California sun, and suggested that "We need to get back to winning games - simple as that." The same almost identical scenario is played out prior to their next game against Montreal (a 1-1 tie featuring a trademark Beckham free kick), when once again the in-demand Englishman jogs dutifully over to point out that, "Obviously we're at the point now where we need to start winning games."

But the tie with Montreal is followed by a loss to Chivas, ending the Galaxy's five year dominance in the SuperClasico. It's a strange time for the Galaxy. Donovan and Keane are about to depart for international commitments and Beckham is awaiting word on his possible Olympic squad selection. The Galaxy now need to find their form without their Galacticos - but with or without them, the record right now, is indeed a broken one.

Part one of this story - on Chivas USA - can be found here.

Graham Parker is a regular MLS correspondent for the Guardian.