Made the trip to the Home Depot Center today and waited two hours until Landon Donovan was done with the training staff. Or the training staff was done with him, anyway. He didn’t practice on this, his second full day back from the Confederations Cup, in South Africa.

And even before he finally came out of the locker room, Galaxy staff had made clear to me that no one associated with the club was going to talk about David Beckham, least of all Landon. “Tomorrow, after training,” I was told. Bruce Arena, Galaxy coach and general manager, would address the topic as well. “To get all the questions answered at one time,” they said.

This is all about Donovan’s fairly blunt criticisms of Beckham’s role with the Galaxy during the 2008 season, criticism excerpted here, at sportsillustratedcnn.com — or further boiled down on my previous entry on this blog.

It took a few days for this story to get any traction, but it finally did once newspapers over in Britain picked up on it today and espn.com rewrote one of those stories. At this writing, the espn.com version of the story has generated almost 1,500 comments. Which seems like a lot.

As agreed upon, Landon didn’t talk specifically about Beckham. The closest we got to it was my asking him about addressing “the big topic” tomorrow.

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Uh-oh. This could be awkward.

David Beckham is due back with the Los Angeles Galaxy inside of two weeks. Just in time for soccer fans in Los Angeles to have picked up a book (by Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl) in which it seems clear that Galaxy players don’t believe Beckham is emotionally invested in the franchise.

And front and center among the critics? Galaxy veteran Landon Donovan, quoted by Wahl as questioning Beckham’s commitment to the team — as well as his suitability to wear the captain’s armband that had been Donovan’s, before Beckham and “his people” pressured the Galaxy to push Donovan into handing it over to the newcomer from England.

Here is a link to excerpts from the upcoming book, “The Beckham Experiment” — a recounting of Beckham’s experience with the Galaxy and Major League Soccer, an experience Wahl describes as a “soccer fiasco.”

Some of the highlights:

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How done is Vladimir Guerrero?

“Well done,” would appear to be the correct answer. “Thoroughly cooked through and through.”

The Angels keep putting him in the lineup, hoping for some last flashback to his younger days, perhaps hoping that whatever physical issues he has will somehow fade away … and he keeps doing a whole lot of nothing.

The Angels are patient. I know. That’s generally a good thing. But Vladimir Guerrero is not much helping them win, and they have people on their roster who would be quite a bit more adept at it, the way Big Daddy Vladdy is melting down.

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Here is a chance for the Dodgers to show that they stand for doing what’s right.

Instead, they are going to stand for doing what makes money.

What a disappointment. I thought this franchise was supposed to be better than this.

Apparently not. The Dodgers can hardly wait to have Druggie Ramirez out in left field. Which is the wrong message to send on so, so many levels.

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I am a Landon Donovan partisan. I’ve known him since he was 15, and he’s an extraordinarily decent guy, great with fans, polite to reporters, always ready to step up for club and country. To have spent any time with the U.S. midfielder/forward is to like him.

But, then, not everyone has spent any time with him. Particularly the bloggers who have never done anything but blog. Who have never stood in the mixed zone at a World Cup and seen Landon Donovan come out and talk honestly and thoughtfully, even after a defeat. The bloggers who ascribe a lack of any redeeming human qualities into anyone involved in a bad result.

I sometimes have been excoriated for defending Landon, when times have been tough. When he came back from Germany in 2005, for example, and the annoying Jen Chang of ESPN.com and I traded increasingly vitriolic e-mails on the topic of whether Any Self-Respecting Soccer Player could possibly succeed (or live with himself) without playing in Europe. (Jen says “no,” btw.)

And then there was the 2006 World Cup, a rough time for the U.S. that was, it seemed, about 99 percent to blame on Landon and Bruce Arena and probably both of them together. Landon was trashed by ESPN’s TV guys (Eric Wynalda, in particular), and his inability to escape the crosshairs of three team’s defenses was laid to some massive defect in character — or, to be charitable, to a lack of gumption.

So, three years later, the U.S. makes the championship match of the Confederations Cup … and lookie here: Landon is popular again!

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Confederations Cup final: Brazil 3, United States 2

The Americans led 2-0 in this. No. Really. Led 2-0 at the half, and deserved it. But Brazil scored in the first 40 seconds of the second half, and probably everyone watching who has seen even a bit of soccer in his/her lifetime had to realize that the Yanks were highly unlikely to keep Brazil from scoring. As often as it took to win.

But at the end of the day, at the end of the tournament, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience for the U.S. national team.

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Taking another shot at the live-blogging thing. Championship match of the Confederations Cup between the United States national team and Brazil, taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Lineups:

U.S.: Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Jay DeMerit, Oguchi Onyewu, Jonathan Spector, Landon Donovan,  Benny Feilhaber, Ricardo Clark, Clint Dempsey, Charlie Davies, Jozy Altidore.

Brazil: Julio Cesar, Maicon, Lucio, Felipe Melo, Santos, Luisao, Felipe Melo, Kaka, Ramires, Silva, Fabiano, Robinho.

The U.S. is playing without Michael Bradley, red-carded in the Spain match. Benny Feilhaber starts in his place.

A bit of a commemoration here for Marc-Vivien Foe, a midfielder from Cameroon who collapsed and died during the last Confederations Cup. That match was vs. the United States and was played in Lyons and I was there. It was a grim event, and I recall it fairly clearly. Foe went down … and he just didn’t move, and a hush fell over the stadium. It was a quite hot day, and it later was determined Foe had a congenital heart conditions. His son is reading a statement. Nice.

Here we go.

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The United States vs. Brazil in the Confederations Cup final on Sunday. Tough assignment, which not everyone may remember at the moment, given that lots of U.S. fans are all giddy over the Spain result and the Egypt demolition.

But I still make Brazil about a 4-to-1 favorite. It would be more, but soccer is a fluky game. More than in any other world sport, the lesser team can beat the greater team because scoring is so rare. And if the lesser team is at least in the same area code as the greater team (Yanks vs. Brazil, not New Zealand vs. Brazil), the odds for the lesser team get even better.

If we were betting on scoring chances, I’d have Brazil winning by about 20-to-1 odds, because Brazil will have the best of the ball. No question.

So, tough one. But it’s possible. Sure. And here is what the Yanks need to do to win.

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I have confessed to my weakness for bobblehead dolls. I will drive distances, see games I don’t care about and pay for tickets I can’t afford if there is a bobblehead involved. I plan to go to the Manny Ramirez bobblehead game on July 22, even though Manny is a fraud and a cheat.

So, yes, I am always on the lookout for bobblehead opportunities.

This one, however, is too much even for me.  Even if I could afford it, and I can’t.

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You’ve heard about the trade. Shaquille O’Neal from Phoenix to Cleveland for Ben Wallace and Sasha Pavlovic. And now the NBA is supposed to be quaking in fear of a LeBron-Shaq pairing.

Having trouble seeing that.

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