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If someone is to be cast as the saviour of professional soccer in North America, it might as well be him.

David Beckham, whose signing was announced Thursday by the Los Angeles Galaxy, comes to Major League Soccer straight from central casting, an international brand whose fame carries far beyond the devoted soccer crowd.

In fact, if anything, the cognoscenti will play the skeptics in this piece, aware of the midfielder's fast fade on the pitch over the past couple of years. They'll point out that Beckham couldn't crack the starting lineup at Real Madrid this season and saw his international career end in humiliating fashion as the English squad he captained fell short at the World Cup in Germany last summer.

And they'll surely note that even at his best, Becks wasn't a complete player, a world-class playmaker or a scorer, but more a set-piece specialist who was also brilliant at crossing the ball.

When he joins the Galaxy next summer for the second half of the MLS season, no one should expect the spectacular. This isn't Pele playing out the string with the New York Cosmos, or even George Best during his late-career stint in the United States.

Fine. Snipe away at the glamour boy, allude to the fact that he and his pop star missus are surely more interested in the marketing opportunities the United States might offer than anything to do with soccer or deride the MLS as a minor league with pretensions.

But all of that misses the point. For the MLS, this is a necessary next step in its evolution, and for the millions of casual soccer fans in North America — those who might tune in at World Cup time and not bother in between — this will be their first reason to give it a serious look.

A legacy of the World Cup in the United States in 1994, the MLS was designed to be a completely different animal from its doomed predecessor, the North American Soccer League. It was modest by definition, designed to build an audience from among the grassroots, participatory soccer crowd and from those who had become interested through the U.S. national team or the domestic college game.

Star power wasn't originally part of the mix, aside from a few recognizable homebrews such as Alexei Lalas and a smattering of flashy Central and South Americans such as Carlos Valderrama. The teams were collectively owned and a hard salary cap was in place so there would be no competing for big-name internationals. The most important development during the league's first decade had nothing to do with any single player — it was the construction of a number of intimate, soccer-first stadiums in which the game would look better, and feel better, for the kind of mid-range crowds that everyone understood would be the norm.

That formula worked — to a point. The league has been stable, it receives regular exposure on network television in the United States and both the level of play and the entertainment value have been more than acceptable. That's the product the folks at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment were buying when they purchased the expansion franchise that will play as Toronto FC next season.

But it was also true that things had grown a bit stale for the MLS. The highly publicized debut of Freddie Adu was pretty much a flop, the calibre of foreign talent seemed to drop and, as the U.S. national team enjoyed more success on the big stage, the best U.S. players were more often plying their trade overseas.

So in comes Beckham (the reported five-year, $250-million U.S. salary must factor in a huge amount of marketing money that the Galaxy isn't paying) at the age of 31, not a complete has-been, no doubt soon to be followed by more of his ilk. For a start, Ronaldo has long been rumoured to be destined for the New York Red Bulls.

But with each team limited to two salary-cap exceptions, don't expect the character of the league to change entirely, and don't expect wild bidding wars. History paints a clear picture of where that road leads.

It will be interesting to see whom Toronto FC might wind up with one of these days. In the meantime, Beckham's first visit to Toronto — his first visit to every MLS town — is going to be a bit of an event. (The schedule hasn't been released yet.)

And that's what matters right now.