On Thursday, several hours before Manchester United and Juventus drew 79,005 fans to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Major League Soccer treated anyone who cared to indulge to a goat stew luncheon with midfielders Carlos Ruiz and Kyle Martino at a restaurant in Lynwood.
On Friday, while Manchester United was preparing for Sunday's sold-out match against Barcelona in Philadelphia, MLS had its stellar players signing autographs and playing foosball with a bunch of kids at a park in Long Beach.
Today, while Manchester United is adding up the profits from its hugely successful U.S. tour and deciding which world-class players to buy next, MLS will be parading something called Third Eye Blind during halftime of its All-Star game at the Home Depot Center in Carson.
The lesson to be learned here?
As much as MLS is doing correctly -- and the construction of new stadiums is at the forefront of the positives -- there still is far too much emphasis on selling the wrapping while overlooking the product.
Real fans, the sort who sit in the Galaxians or L.A. Riot Squad sections at Galaxy games, do not care in the slightest about the peripherals. They care about the sport itself, about the players and the coaches, about the tactics and techniques, about the on-field action, not the off-field frippery.
Third Eye Blind, alt-rockers extraordinaire if you believe the handouts, might be musically gifted and popular among those not up to, say, Beethoven or Dvorak, but they have nothing to do with soccer.
The money spent on glitz and glamour might be better spent on players -- either in acquiring new ones or paying the current ones a better salary. But you won't convince MLS of that. Once the corporate and marketing types get hold of a sport, the superficial all too often takes precedence.
Manchester United has demonstrated in no uncertain fashion in the last couple of weeks that American stadiums can be sold out from coast to coast if the team on the field plays the quality of soccer provided by Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Ryan Giggs and company.
Commissioner Don Garber and the rest of MLS will hopefully have been paying attention.
The league, to its credit, did at least edge closer to providing some semblance of soccer news Friday when Garber said he expects two teams to be added by 2005, one possibly as early as next season.
