By the time David Beckham makes his competitive bow for the Los Angeles Galaxy in August, his new club will be more than halfway through the Major League Soccer (MLS) season. Due to a bizarre competition format that ensures eight of the 13 teams involved qualify for the play-offs each year, the Galaxy and its biggest star are obviously banking on him not being needed to make a difference until then.
Apart from allowing Beckham a post-Madrid breather, the lengthy lead-in time should also allow the Hollywood hype machine and the merchandising operation to crank into top gear.
In a country where two major television networks run an hour of celebrity news in prime time each evening and have correspondents who take Victoria very seriously, the arrival of the Beckhams will be built up relentlessly and the Galaxy are obviously hoping the publicity will translate into dollars.
It helps that a lot of people already have some idea of who he is (the guy from the milk advertisements in sports magazines?), even though most could not tell you exactly what he does (did he have a movie or something?). For those ignorant up to now of his existence, the size of his five-year, $250 million contract alone will catch the eye.
Notwithstanding the image rights and marketing considerations of the deal, his gargantuan, annual €39 million wages will dwarf the sums given to the best-paid players in the NBA, the NFL and Major League Baseball. AEG, the Galaxy owners, may believe this is the man to change the ho-hum public perception of professional soccer, but, after a predictably breathless start to his American sojourn, it is difficult to see him consistently wresting media coverage from the likes of the Minnesota Timberwolves' Kevin Garnett ($21m), the Atlanta Falcons' Michael Vick ($23m) and the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez ($25m).
With eight million children between six and 16 playing soccer on a regular basis in America, AEG must have wider ambitions for him than just landing an MLS title or selling out their stadium.
If the standard of play is better than most English fans would think - witness how quickly MLS players adapt to life in the Premiership these days - and the age profile much younger than the quasi-retirement home that was Pele's NASL of the 1970s, the pace of play will suit Beckham, who will be 32 in May.
His dead-ball skills will be easy fodder for the producers of the highlight reels on ESPN, and at least once over the next while somebody somewhere will prompt a rash of headlines speculating about an NFL team wanting him to try out as a place-kicker.
Despite all the goodwill towards Beckham in a nation where his peculiar amalgam of sporting prowess and nauseating celebrity is far more acceptable than in Britain, the former Manchester United player will not be able to coast once he crosses the white line. Should the former England captain replace their longest-serving player, Cobi Jones, once of Coventry City, on the right side of midfield, Galaxy fans will expect him to deliver something more akin to his Old Trafford rather than his Bernabeu persona.
Given the size of the financial investment, how he plays off the field will be as important as the calibre of his performances on it. As capital of the entertainment industry, Los Angeles will provide plenty of talk-show and television opportunities. He may learn quickly, however, that the Americans expect their elite athletes to bring a bit more to the camera than the bland-speak and easy red-carpet glamour he has traded in for the past decade or so.
Whatever Galaxy coach and former Ipswich Town defender Frank Yallop can possibly do to improve his technical game at this late stage of his career, his media coaches may have their work cut out to make him sound a tad more interesting than he is.
