Elias Says...That They Suck

The Elias Sports Bureau are supposed to be knowledgeable on all things statistical. After all, they're the official statisticians for every major sports league in the USA, including Major League Soccer. So I couldn't help but notice on ESPN.com, the "facts" they had about David Beckham coming to MLS. In the past year they've started to provide some interesting MLS stats on their "Elias Says" daily column, which is cool. But apparently they're not taking the job too seriously. Check it out: Beckham has scored three World Cup goals. The only MLS players to score that many goals in World Cup play are Lothar Matthaus (6 for Germany), Hristo Stoitchkov (6 for Bulgaria) and Luis Hernandez (4 for Mexico). Brian McBride has scored 3 goals in the World Cup. He's also one of the most famous and successful American players of all time. He will be the first MLS player who also appeared for the English national team. Apparently Stephen Guppy, Steve Howey and Chris Woods never played in MLS. Who knew? The first two only got a cup of coffee, but Woods was capped 43 times and made two World Cup rosters. Apparently, they're referring only to actual games played in a World Cup. If that's their intention, they certainly didn't make it clear. We've seen dumb stat keeping in MLS' past, so it's hard to be confident about the official statistics in MLS when the people in charge get it wrong.