Ac Milan

VS. AC MILAN Time: 7 p.m. On the air: TV: FS West; Radio: 570, 1330 (Spanish). What: International friendly. Where: Home Depot Center. Major honors won: Galaxy -- One CONCACAF Champions Cup, two MLS championships, two U.S. Open Cups. AC Milan -- Four world championships, seven European championships, 17 Italian championships. Update: The Galaxy has played 75 friendly international matches since the club was founded in 1996. Its all-time record in these games is 34-19-22.

Lionel Messi converted a pair of penalty kicks in the first half to lead defending champion Barcelona over AC Milan, 3-1, Tuesday night and into the Champions League semifinals for the fifth straight season. In Munich, host Bayern beat Marseille 2-0 on goals by Ivica Olic in the 13th and 37th minutes for a 4-0 aggregate win. Following a 0-0 tie last week in the first leg of the total-goals series, Messi opened the scoring in the 11th minute after Luca Antonini slid into him from behind.

Oguchi Onyewu, who this month became the first American-born player to sign a contract with AC Milan, made his debut for the team to begin the second half Wednesday in Atlanta in the World Football Challenge. While he was on the losing side in Club America's 2-1 exhibition victory, the defender was looking at the positive side. "We have a long time before the season starts," Onyewu said. "This preparation will only help me and the team get better."

Four years later, the Galaxy is at it again. Friday afternoon, the team introduced Irish striker Robbie Keane as the third high-profile and expensive talent to set foot in Carson. Perhaps appropriately, Keane sat next to Landon Donovan and David Beckham at his first news conference. "I certainly had a good feeling about this move," Keane said. "I played in the Premiership for a long, long time and scored a lot of goals there. I just felt it was time for a new challenge. … For me, it was an easy decision.

It has taken a while, but Victoria Beckham finally has been heard from in the ongoing drama that is David Beckham's quest to move to Milan, Italy. Asked if there were a strong possibility of her husband remaining with AC Milan instead of coming back to the Galaxy, Victoria Beckham told the Milan newspaper Il Giornale this week: "There is, but it's a very big decision to make. "I have many friends who live in Milan and David always tells me that his side is phenomenal.

As far as weeks go, the one just past was a good one for the Galaxy, both individually and collectively. Coach Bruce Arena was able to return to New Jersey and show the New York Red Bulls how badly mistaken they were in dismissing him as coach in 2008. David Beckham and Landon Donovan got to patch up their unseemly quarrel over which one of them is more professional.

David Beckham is assured of spending the winter and spring playing in Italy after the Galaxy and AC Milan on Monday finalized an agreement that will send him on loan again to the Serie A club. Beckham, 34, spent the first five months of this year with Milan and wanted to repeat the experience to earn a place on England's roster for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. "I need to give myself the best chance possible to make the World Cup squad, and playing for Milan on loan will help me do that," Beckham said in a statement.

Andriy Shevchenko scored the go-ahead goal on a free kick in the 87th minute, and Italian League champion AC Milan rallied to beat Chelsea of the English Premier League, 3-2, in an exhibition game Monday night at Philadelphia. Eidur Gudjohnsen put Chelsea ahead in the 19th minute when he redirected a free kick, but Cafu tied the score in the 26th minute when he beat goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini from outside the penalty area off a pass from Kaka.

Half of Milan celebrated deep into the night Tuesday while the other half mourned as AC Milan qualified for the European Champions League final at the expense of its Italian neighbor Inter Milan. Nothing could separate the teams in the two-game semifinal series, with the second game ending, 1-1, Tuesday after the first had ended all square at 0-0.

A dramatic upset once again highlighted the quarterfinals of the European Champions League on Wednesday, when defending champion and six-time winner AC Milan was knocked out of the tournament by Deportivo La Coruna. The Spanish club, trailing, 4-1, after the first leg in Italy, scored an improbable 4-0 victory in Spain to win the series, 5-4 on aggregate, and advance to the semifinals.

In a week that produced all sorts of news and nowhere near enough time to digest it, there is only one solution: a brief bite of news and an equally brief reaction, so here goes: News: Joseph "Sepp" Blatter, FIFA's president, traveled to Zimbabwe to press the flesh with that country's equally odious president, Robert Mugabe. Reaction: There's never a large and ravenous crocodile around when you need one, is there? News: Real Madrid, which embarks on a three-game U.S. tour this week, starting in Los Angeles, has selected France '98 World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane as its director of soccer.

With Arsenal and AS Roma having fallen by the wayside Tuesday, it was the turn of two more soccer powers to be ousted from the European Champions League on Wednesday. Seven-time champion AC Milan did everything it could to survive, but its 0-0 tie with Tottenham Hotspur in London was not enough to overturn a 1-0 first-leg loss in Italy and the Serie A leader was toppled. Similarly, Valencia ended its involvement in the tournament at the round-of-16 stage when it was beaten, 3-1, by Schalke '04 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, after the teams had tied, 1-1, in Spain.

The final whistle has sounded. The last goal has been scored. The game is over. And so, in the aftermath of a truly dizzying, 18-year roller-coaster ride of a career, one that soared to unimaginable heights and plunged to staggeringly bizarre depths, what are we to make of Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima? What will we remember now that his playing days are done? Surely it will not be every one of those more than 600 games, although some stand out like pages torn from the scrapbook of the soccer gods.

Raul Gonzalez showed class and Gennaro Gattuso showed none. That, in 10 words or less, was the story of Tuesday's two European Champions League round-of-16 soccer games played in Spain and Italy, respectively. Tottenham Hotspur, ignoring as best it could the outrageous and disgraceful behavior of AC Milan and Italian national team midfielder Gattuso, defeated the seven-time European champions, 1-0, in Milan on a sublime fastbreak goal set up by winger Aaron Lennon and scored by striker Peter Crouch.

Saturday afternoon in Wolfsburg, Germany, home of VfL Wolfsburg, the 2009 Bundesliga champion. The winter break is over and Bayern Munich is in town, ready to launch the second half of its 2010-2011 season. Coach Louis van Gaal and the 22-time German champions are intent on closing ground on league leader Borussia Dortmund, which holds a 17-point lead over fifth-place Bayern. But there is a second story line at work, one every bit as compelling as the Munich team's improbable quest.

On the day that its former coach, Juergen Klinsmann, was named technical advisor to Major League Soccer's Toronto FC, Bayern Munich on Wednesday powered its way into the last 16 of the European Champions League. The German club, a four-time European champion and runner-up behind Inter Milan in last season's tournament, brushed aside CFR Cluj, 4-0, in Romania and is the first team to reach the knockout stage. Joining it in the final 16 a little later Wednesday night was Chelsea, the runner-up to Manchester United in 2008.

By every measurable indication, the David Beckham era in Los Angeles has come to an end. On Wednesday, taking advantage of a quick swing through Scotland, the Galaxy midfielder said quite plainly what he had been hinting at for weeks -- that he wants out -- and that he wants to stay with AC Milan. "I have expressed my desire now to stay in Milan and hopefully the clubs can come to some agreement," Beckham said after the Italian team's 2-2 tie in a friendly match with Rangers in Glasgow.

Galaxy midfielder David Beckham says a deal for another loan to AC Milan is "95% done." Beckham was loaned to AC Milan from last January through the end of the Serie A season, then returned to Major League Soccer in July. He wants to play in Europe again to ensure he'll stay sharp and earn a place on England's World Cup roster for the fourth time. "It's close," Beckham said. "I've always said I want to go back there if they want me. AC Milan have said they wanted me back since I left to go back to the United States and they're saying the same now. "It's 95% done so I don't know why it wouldn't happen now. It will be sorted out in the next month, and I will probably be going there at the end of December.

Jose Mourinho, never at a loss for words no matter which club he is coaching or what country he is in, had a few of them for one of his former players, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, earlier this week. "A side that contains a player like Ibrahimovic is a special one," Mourinho said. "Every player who has played for me is always in my heart, and Ibra was a fundamental part of my team. " That was last season, however, when Ibrahimovic helped Mourinho's Inter Milan win the European Champions League.

The Heisman Trophy for 2005 will not go to Vince Young — or anyone else. Rather than replace Reggie Bush , who returned his trophy after a scandal erupted, the officials who administer the award decided it would remain vacant for that year. There was some initial talk that the trophy might go to former Texas quarterback Young, who finished a distant second to Bush in the voting. However, Heisman Trust President William Dockery told the Associated Press Wednesday that the eight trustees never decided to take the trophy away from Bush nor did they receive any advance notice of Bush's decision.