The New York Times’ Jack Bell interviews Grant Wahl, whose controversial book, “The Beckham Experiment: How the World’s Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America,” hits bookstores two days before David Beckham returns to the Los Angeles Galaxy lineup to play the New York Red Bulls on Thursday. In the interview, Wahl talks about how the book came about, how he got insider access to Beckham and his camp, AEG, and the state of MLS.

Wahl, who had previously written about Beckham for Sports Illustrated, on dealing with the control exerted by Beckham’s handlers: “They are used to so much control, but this was actual journalism being done. There was never a situation where they asked to see what I was writing before publication of the book. They did issue a list of demands to SI before that story that included seeing copy before publication, and SI did not accede to those demands. All along the Beckham camp has viewed this an unauthorized book, because they were not getting any money. And yet, there was a lot of information coming from Beckham’s side, just not by name, except for Beckham himself.”

Wahl on the Anschutz Entertainment Group’s (AEG) involvement with the MLS and the Beckham saga: “Obviously, Phil Anschutz is the guy at the top. But really, it’s [Tim] Leiweke who is the guy who gets things done. He’s hard to criticize in many ways. Here’s a guy who has big dreams for U.S. soccer and MLS; wants the U.S. to win the World Cup; wants more stars in the league, which is what fans want, and he’s willing to put up the money to do that. In those terms he’s hard to criticize. Then again, you look at the specifics of what AEG and Leiweke did with Beckham and there are a lot of things they screwed up.

“Leiweke never accepted that the rules of MLS, with its hard salary cap, meant you can’t build a European-style powerhouse in MLS. It’s really next to impossible. Instead, he created this dysfunctional management structure. When Frank Yallop gets pushed out by the Galaxy instead of [President & GM Alexi] Lalas, it’s Beckham’s personal manager who gets hired as a paid consultant, without anything being revealed, and he conducts a coaching search and hires Ruud Gullit. Lalas doesn’t resign or get fired, even though it’s his role to hire the coach. Lalas stays on at odds with Beckham/Gullit and there’s this power struggle that had players on the team wondering who’s in charge. Lalas ended up in charge of the business side, not the soccer side. He was totally kneecapped.”