One of the most poorly researched scandals ever

Occasionally, a story from a niche sport that nobody cares about makes it to the pages of every major mainstream sports media outlet. One of those stories has occured this past week, as espn.com, si.com, and all sorts of other outlets reacted to England Manager Steve McClaren dropping David Beckham from the England roster for a friendly against Greece on Wednesday.

Here's why this is a stupid story. From writers seemingly eager to prove that they have uncovered something earth-shattering.

The England-Greece international friendly was on Wednesday. On Saturday, Beckham was in Utah with his club team Real Madrid for a club friendly against MLS side Real Salt Lake. Assuming Becks flew back Sunday, then that means that he would be getting to England in the early morning hours on Monday, leaving him in poor shape to play with the National team on Wednesday evening.

On a related note, national teams do not have exclusive rights to their players. For a good deal of international friendlies, clubs must give permission for the national team to use their players (since the clubs are more heavily invested.) Italy put out a team of scrubs for their friendly against Croatia for this reason.

Real Madrid had signed a contract with Soccer United Marketing (SUM), the MLS-owned organizer of international matches in the United States that if Real were to come, they would bring their starters instead of some scrub team. This is the same reason why Beckham's Madrid teammate and Dutch international Ruud van Nistelroy missed Holland's friendly with Republic of Ireland on Wednesday. But then again, Ruud isn't man-pretty like Beckham, so I guess it's not a story when he gets left off the roster for a meaningless game.

And BAM! There it is. Story is over. Nothin' to see here.