If David Beckham wants to play for England at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa he needs to leave Major League Soccer right now.
Not on loan, not for just a short training spell with AC Milan or any other European club that comes calling, but for good -- his own good and that of the Galaxy.
Ever since AEG sounded the trumpets in January 2007 and announced amid much boasting and fanfare that it had signed Beckham, the Galaxy has been nothing but a puppet in the hands of Beckham's management team.
Just how emasculated the club is when it comes to Beckham was again clearly in evidence Wednesday.
Stories were pouring out of Europe that AC Milan was close to signing the 33-year-old midfielder to a short-term loan deal during the MLS off-season.
"We are speaking with his agent, but we believe he will arrive for some months on a free loan," said Adriano Galliani, AC Milan's vice president. "Beckham has chosen Milan. Our squad is ultra-competitive and it will remain this way, but Beckham is something different and intriguing."
Media reports across the continent were feverishly speculating on whether this could turn into a full-fledged trade, with Beckham returning triumphant to take his place again among the game's elite players in Europe and abandon the experiment of trying to turn MLS from a soccer backwater into a soccer hotbed.
Big-name players and coaches were quoted. Pundits rushed to get their opinions onto the Internet, on the air and into print.
And the Galaxy?
The Galaxy had no idea what was happening. Beckham opted not to be available to reporters after the team's training session Wednesday in Carson, and no Galaxy official had the clout or the guts to make him face the media. The front office never even issued a news release.
Bruce Arena, who wears two hats as the Galaxy's coach and general manager, appeared bemused by it all.
"I've spent not a second of my day even thinking about it, to be honest," Arena said. "On the surface, it sounds like an odd proposition. I don't see where that benefits MLS or the Galaxy. I don't know if there's anything true in the rumor."
Arena says that as far as he understands soccer's rules, a player loan has to cover the entire period between two transfer windows, in this case from January to June, meaning that Beckham would miss the first three months of the 2009 MLS season.
