David Beckham

The telephone rang Friday morning, and there was that unmistakable voice. David Beckham, the Galaxy's globe-trotting midfielder, was checking in from Italy to renew acquaintances before returning to Los Angeles on July 11 to finish out the Major League Soccer season. On Sunday, Beckham and AC Milan play the final game of the Italian soccer season, a match against Fiorentina in Florence that will determine whether Milan qualifies for the European Champions League next season.

It's all about saving face, now, for Major League Soccer. David Beckham is history. He has said he wants no more of MLS, no more of the Galaxy, no more of Los Angeles. The Beckham circus has moved on and Milan is its latest stop. Lawyers are negotiating just how the 33-year-old can wriggle out of the five-year contract he signed with MLS in 2007. They will succeed. A deal will be cut. That's the way of the business world. Then the spin doctors will step in.

David Beckham will return to the Galaxy in March unless AC Milan makes an offer for the English midfielder that is substantially higher than the one currently on the table. Showing a sudden ability to play hardball when needed, AEG, which owns the Galaxy, said Friday that the Italian club, a three-time world champion and seven-time European champion, had little time left to make up its mind.

David and Victoria Beckham touched down in Los Angeles two years ago like celebrity meteors, sparking showers of attention and speculation about which restaurants they would favor, which A-listers they would befriend and what Victoria would do with herself. After all, the whippet-thin fashion plate was already a pop culture force in her own right. In the 1990s, as Posh Spice, she was a member of one of the best-selling girl groups of all time, the Spice Girls.

England can win the World Cup in South Africa next year, Galaxy midfielder David Beckham said Wednesday. Of course, so can Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and possibly a dark horse or two, but confidence is riding particularly high on England's national soccer team. "You have to go into a competition believing that you can go all the way," Beckham said before the Galaxy's morning training session. "I believe that we've got a chance -- if we play like we've been playing and have that togetherness that we've shown all the way through the qualifiers.

1_Intent on becoming the fifth player in history to play 100 games for England, David Beckham on Tuesday sent an unequivocal message to England Coach Fabio Capello, his former mentor at Real Madrid. "I'm as fit as I can be," the Galaxy midfielder told the BBC after several weeks of training with Arsenal. "I'm fit and sharp and I'm ready to be selected. Hopefully I've worked hard enough this month to get myself picked in the squad." England plays Switzerland Feb.

Major League Soccer released its schedule for the 2008 season Thursday and it brought a sigh of relief from the Galaxy and David Beckham. Unlike last season when the Galaxy had to pack 19 MLS games, including 12 on the road, into 12 weeks in order to showcase its English midfield star after his mid-July arrival, this year will provide much smoother sailing on the Beckham Tour Part II. Beckham said earlier this week that he expects 2008 to be much less hectic.

It's been 213 days since David Beckham arrived in Los Angeles, and knowing how busy he was with those eight games they had him playing last season, I elected not to bother the guy. Now as you know, folks such as Kobe Bryant, Jeff Kent and Garret Anderson have the ability to play and talk on the same day, which just has to be dumbfounding to Beckham.

LONDON -- That paragon of jet-lag defiance David Beckham turned up Monday morning hatless in a dogged snowfall, beamed like all California, chatted with his teammates on the English national soccer team at a North London practice field and yanked his foot up to his butt to stretch.

The white sport utility vehicle moved down a tarred road in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, when a group of men and youths, about seven or eight in all, ran up alongside the vehicle and started slapping at the roof and windows, trying to attract attention. Inside, David Beckham smiled. Even here, in one of Africa's most benighted and impoverished countries, a land still reeling from a 10-year civil war that left 50,000 dead, the Galaxy and England soccer star could not go unrecognized.