David Beckham is singing to a new tune as a Major League Soccer franchise owner

No way can we describe Becks as being daft.

David Beckham has a reputation for being, well, a bit thick. But I reckon his decision to choose Miami as the home of his new MLS franchise proves he’s nowhere near as daft as people believe.

Think about it a beautiful city, rich in culture, tourism and not exactly struggling for sun.

I bet any big-name player coming to the end of his career could think of far worse places to pick up a bumper pay packet for a couple of years.

And having made a similar sort of move himself when he signed for LA Galaxy all those years ago, there’s no-one better placed than Becks to sell the idea.

Almost single-handedly, Beckham lifted football in the United States from the gutter of minority-interest sports right up to the point it’s at now, where guys like Jermaine Defoe turn down moves to Premier League clubs in a World Cup year to earn £90,000-a-week in Toronto.

It’s bonkers but David deserves much credit for it. Still reckon he’s a dafty? OK, think about this.

The population in and around Miami is somewhere in the region of 5.5-million, which is impressive enough in itself.

But when you consider the sizeable Hispanic percentage of that population, the genius of choosing Miami as the home of a high-profile football club becomes even more apparent.

North Americans may have taken their time to recognise ‘soccer’ as the thrilling sport it is, but South Americans have had no such trouble.

In fact, they are responsible for much of what makes football great in the modern era. Give the Hispanic population of Miami a football team to call their own, and I bet they’d check it out at the very least.

Even better, if you hand-pick one or two big South American players from key countries and pay them what they like for a couple of years’ service, I bet people would fully embrace it.

That’s extremely shrewd yet some of you still won’t be convinced. So try this on for size. While everybody scoffed at his decision to swap Madrid for Los Angeles at the height of his powers, Beckham kept his head down.

He didn’t bite back at the criticism, he didn’t do anything silly on the park, and most importantly, he stuck with it. Instead, over five years in LA, through sheer hard work, he helped make football credible in the USA.

Think about that! An entire sport! A whole country! Having played there myself in the late 1970s, I know how tough that gig must have been.

So the next time you hear someone calling David Beckham daft, think about what he’s done with his life and ask yourself: ‘Could I have done that?’

If we’re honest with ourselves, I doubt many of us could.