Auckland Regional Council is so keen to fill the 32,000-capacity Mount Smart Stadium for the L.A. Galaxy's game against the Oceania All-Stars this weekend that it's offering two tickets for the price of one, local radio reported. So far only 15,000 tickets have been sold.
Last year David Beckham and his team sold out the same stadium when they played Wellington Phoenix, but when the team landed this year Beckham received "a rousing, though calmer, welcome than on his first visit a year ago," according to the AP. The player looked "travel weary, standing quietly among teammates as a group of indigenous Maori performed a traditional welcoming ceremony." Presumably the same glazed look that the Queen's husband, Prince Phillip, traditionally wears on official state visits when greeted by native rituals in the former colonies.
Jaded royalty aside, unless the two-for-one offer takes off then this time around the crowd looks like it won't be much bigger then the 15,000 who turned out last year just to watch a training session. On his first visit, "Beckham's every move and utterance was reported in detail by local media, or by fans in internet chat rooms." But as all young kids know, when the traveling fair comes back to town it can never quite recapture the magic of that first time on the whirligig.