David Beckham, along with former Real Madrid teammate Zinedine Zidane, spent part of Saturday night in Carson, watching the Galaxy defeat Chivas USA, 1-0.
Beckham was there because he pretty much had to be after living the good life in Milan, Italy, for the last six months or so. He had flown to Los Angeles on Friday.
Zidane, a World Cup winner and three-time FIFA world player of the year, was there out of friendship and curiosity. Not that Beckham could tell him much about the Galaxy.
Things have changed quite a bit since Beckham left on his Italian sojourn. In fact, seven of the 11 players who started for the Galaxy on Saturday night were not with the team when the English midfielder left on loan to AC Milan.
Beckham was mildly interested in all seven, but especially interested in one of the players who was with the Galaxy in December, the one in the No. 10 jersey, the one named Landon Donovan.
The two have a bit of a feud going, nothing more than a verbal spat, but a bit more interesting than Saturday's dull game.
Earlier on Saturday, Beckham and Zidane had taken part in a promotional event in El Segundo, where Beckham took the opportunity to answer criticisms aimed at him by Donovan in a book to be released Tuesday.
"It's unprofessional, in my eyes," Beckham said of disparaging remarks made about him in "The Beckham Experiment," written by Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl. Among those remarks, Donovan questioned Beckham's commitment to the Galaxy, accusing him of "switching off" on the MLS team.
"In every football player's eyes throughout the world it would be unprofessional to speak out about a teammate, especially in the press and not to your face," Beckham told reporters.
Donovan had told The Times last week that he regretted making the comments he did to Wahl rather than directly to Beckham, who said Saturday he would try to patch the rift between them.
"In 17 years, I have played with the biggest teams in the world and the biggest players and not once have I been criticized for my professionalism," he said. "It's important to get this cleared up, and I will be speaking to Landon either this evening or over the next couple of days.
"Me and Landon will talk, but that will be a private conversation."
That's too bad, because the league could really use a bit more spice, a bit more zest.
There was little enough of it in front of a less-than-sellout announced throng of 23,409 Saturday night. The drums were beating but the pulses were not.
