MLS fines Galaxy for essentially lying about injuries

i-63a0bb19a27b8da58238ab78ed7516bd-torched.jpg Burned over Beckham: The Galaxy’s penchant for not fully disclosing injuries finally caught up with them and David Beckham, seen here holding the Olympic torch earlier this month with Lord Sebastian Coe, ahead of the 2012 London Olympics (AP Photo).

Specifically, David Beckham’s unreported back spasms that kept him out of last weekend’s game against the Colorado Rapids.

From the MLS press release:

MLS requires its clubs to submit an injury report twice a week during the regular season and those reports must be as accurate as possible. The League determined that the Galaxy deliberately omitted David Beckham’s name from their injury report despite knowing that he would miss the game because of back spasms.

MLS fined the club owned by billionaire Phil Anschutz $5,000.

That’ll teach ’em.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time this year the Galaxy has employed this little tactic either (Landon Donovan was the player in question) and they have done it in past years, too.

When asked about it, club officials shrug and mumble some crap about their being no specific MLS guidelines about reporting injuries and blah blah blah.

At least in this case the Galaxy got (rightly) nailed.

MLS officials probably were embarrassed by this column that appeared in sister paper The Denver Post after the game.

Or at least they should have been.

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