David Beckham ... sparked sales of more than 250,000 LA Galaxy shirts. - File

MIAMI (Reuters):

DAVID BECKHAM'S move to LA Galaxy has already set the cash tills ringing at the Major League Soccer (MLS) club with a quarter of a million replica team shirts ordered before they were even unveiled.

Beckham was due to arrive in Los Angeles yesterday and will be officially presented by the Galaxy today.

"We're already well over a quarter of a million units that were ordered ... without knowledge of what they were going to look like," Galaxy president Alexi Lalas told the club's website http://la.galaxy.mlsnet.com.

"We will look to do significant numbers and historic numbers not just with an MLS context, but with an international jersey context," he added.

Change of colour

Galaxy have changed from a yellow and green outfit to an all-white home kit very similar to the one Beckham wore with Spanish club Real Madrid.

During his first six months in Madrid the club sold more than a million Beckham shirts.

After he left Spain on a high midway through last month, with Real celebrating their first Primera Liga title success for four years, the club's director of marketing José Angel Sanchez said Beckham had been worth in excess of US$600 million in marketing revenue. As well as the shirt-buying frenzy, Beckham has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, a rare honour for a soccer player, and will star in a new TV documentary shortly.

He is due to make his debut for LA in a friendly against Chelsea on July 21.