Free pint awaits Beckham at Best's old US pub

LOS ANGELES, Jan 13 (Reuters) If 250 million dollars wasn't enough enticement for David Beckham to come to America, the owner of a California pub once run by another Manchester United soccer great, George Best, is offering him a free beer.

Steve Delk, owner of the Underground Pub&Grill in Hermosa Beach, just south of Los Angeles, said many of his regulars are avid soccer fans and that he already caters to some of Beckham's soon-to-be teammates on the Los Angeles Galaxy.

The former England captain's decision to leave Spain's Real Madrid to join L A's Major League Soccer club has been the talk of the Underground since Thursday when news of the 250 million dollar deal first surfaced, Delk said.

''Everybody was excited,'' Delk told Reuters on Friday. ''The amount of money that he's going to get -- that was the No. 1 topic... But after that, everybody I talked to thinks it's an awesome idea.'' Delk expects Beckham's arrival will be good for his business, where fans gather every Saturday and Sunday morning to watch English Premier League football. Both Beckham and Best played for Manchester United in the No. 7 jersey.

''We're a Manchester United fan pub here. We've got the 2005 team picture up. We've got a whole wall of George Best memorabilia up there as well,'' Delk said. ''Now we'll get people in here watching the Galaxy games.'' The pub now owned by Delk, an American, was first opened under the name Bestie's in the 1970s by Best, whose dazzling career as one of soccer's greatest players was cut short by a painful descent into alcoholism. He died at age 59 in 2005.

Best had come to California to play for the now-defunct Los Angeles Aztecs in the 1970s, one of several big-name imports, including Brazil's Pele, who tried but failed to transform soccer into a major US sport.

Beckham has said his motivation for coming to the United States is to help take the sport to ''another level'' in a country that has stubbornly refused to fully embrace the world's most popular game.

Delk, whose pub has sponsored Galaxy events in the past, said he has put in calls to people he knows at the team's stadium and its front office, ''and I'm going to try to do everything I can to get (Beckham) over here and have a beer.'' ''And we even have Boddingtons on tap if he wants to stick with an English brew ... a free pint of Boddingtons over here,'' he said, referring to the English pale ale popular with his customers.

REUTERS YA RAI1000