It’s been almost a year to the day that Becks landed on American soil. How’s he done? The supremely talented Ty Duffy of The Odds and Sods recaps Beckham’s last year in the States.

David Beckham’s arrival made easy copy. He was the Hollywood marvel and the golden-balled adonis. He played a foreign game and he had a foxy wife. An unavailing has-been, he would be an over-promoted phenomenon, crushed, in due time, by the great gridiron. Festooned with a lofty artifice, he was doomed to fail.

This primed narrative arc cast the created Beckham. With the prophecy self-fulfilled, why research? Why analyze? It was soccer after all. Had the media bothered to watch before spouting, they would have seen a different side of the ordained foreign flop. A side that is decidedly, American.

Beckham resembles Hollywood stars in his lifestyle, but on the field he evokes their iconic characters.

Like Malamud-made Roy Hobbs with Wonderboy, Beckham is the natural. “Oh, yes, he can bend it,” you say with a sarcastic sneer. But, the underwhelming verb hardly credits the feat. Imagine a pitch, that simultaneously bites like a Randy Johnson slider and drops like a Josh Beckett curveball, arriving at fastball speed. He can also hit a moving stop sign at 40 yards and does so often.

Beckham, on the field, has a gritty determination-and not in the David Eckstein way. He sports the armband with authority, a natural leader of men. He can be a bit surly, no stranger to the hard tackle or getting in someone’s face. He’s not blessed of build, but, through dedicated will, made himself into a great athlete.

He is flawed. Beckham has endured tragic moments that would have cuckolded lesser men. But, when moments called for greatness, it was him who stepped forward.

Beckham was a champion both in heart and in practice, winning seven domestic titles and a Champions League in 12 seasons in England and Spain. Far from being “washed up” when he left Europe, he was a pivotal figure in Real Madrid’s 2006-7 title run and, despite playing in MLS, remains a candidate to make Fabio Capello’s England squad in 2010. Even on the downswing, the most astute judge of talent in the world, Arsene Wenger, still liked the cut of Beckham’s jib.

Critics accuse him of turning MLS into a Mickey Mouse league, but, on the field, Beckham has brought a level of class and professionalism unseen before in MLS. He may drive a much nicer car than you, wear women’s clothes and be packing some fabricated heat in this ad, but Beckham the player eschews his media persona. It is that personality that Americans can respect. And it is why England fans, and many ladies, still chant “There’s Only One David Beckham.”