Beckham Alights On Planet Earth

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Every now and then the surreal David Beckham touches down on Planet Earth.

On Friday, he dropped in to a field in Harlem to give a soccer clinic for deprived youngsters. Next day, his presence filled Giants Stadium, where he managed his first full 90 minutes in Major League Soccer. Alas, poor David, his Los Angeles Galaxy team lost to the New York Red Bulls, 5-4.

No time to dwell on defeat; England beckons. Beckham is due to represent his country against Germany in London on Wednesday, and then to jet to California to lead the Galaxy against Chivas USA on Thursday.

Along the way, there will be team meetings, business meetings and photo opportunities. When time permits, physiotherapists might strap electrodes or ice packs onto his troublesome left ankle. He confided Saturday that the injury swells up when he plays on the plastic turf like that at Giants Stadium.

Journeying the equivalent of a full day and night between Europe and America cannot help. Beckham, 32, risks a swift and sorry burnout, unless he truly is Superman - in which case, why does he need to fly in pressurized airplanes?

In some respects, the Beckham odyssey is an exaggerated form of sport overloading its performers.

Thousands of players are torn between demands from clubs that pay their fortunes, and nations that demand their loyalty. This week is typical of the chaos thrust upon them. Half of Europe's leagues have begun the new season, and the players are already up and running for their daily bread. Spain and Italy start their leagues next weekend, so their preparations, physical and mental, are interrupted by players' jetting off on national team duties.

The midweek internationals are important to countries that have this one opportunity to use friendly games as rehearsals for make-or-break qualifying encounters in major competitions.

The clubs are under orders to release players. FIFA, the world governing body, stipulates that all men fit in mind and body must represent their homeland on designated days in its international calendar. This calendar doesn't work, in part because FIFA itself increasingly adds profit-making tournaments to the workload. The players will be stretched even if time itself is not elastic.

Meantime, arguably the most significant result Saturday was the recast Bayern Munich team's 4-0 victory at Werder Bremen.

"I said beforehand that if we won in Bremen, it would send out an unmistakable signal," said Bayern's captain, Oliver Kahn. "It was a real pleasure watching Ribéry in our attack."

Franck Ribéry is among the newcomers bedding down in the Bundesliga. His fluent running, alongside Luca Toni's power, eventually unraveled Bremen's defense after a testing half-hour.

And what is good for Munich may be good for France when Ribéry joins up with his national squad for its game Wednesday in Slovakia. At 24, Ribéry is a work in progress, a relatively young man looking for a place to settle and to display the full gamut of his skills after a nomadic journey through youth.

The midweek flight should not take too much out of him, because it is, after all, on the same continent, in the same time zone.

Beckham, on the other hand, is attempting something that not even Pelé or Franz Beckenbauer, true greats of the game, took on.

They played out their final years in New York with the Cosmos 30 years ago. Their fame filled Giants Stadium, but when the flame flickered and even those wonderful players aged too much, the Cosmos and the whole North American Soccer League left no legacy to build upon.

Major League Soccer is going down the celebrity road again. Beckham was never a mover like Beckenbauer or a multiple World Cup match winner like Pelé. He is famous for being famous.

His jet-setting between England and Madrid up to June left its mark. He arrived in America lame from damaged ligaments in his left ankle that his contractual agreements afford neither time nor respite enough for nature to heal.

America, however, had started such a juggernaut of prepublicity that clubs from coast to coast sold tickets on the possibility that their fans might be the ones to see the first coming of the phenomenon.

New Yorkers, ever up for an event, won the lottery. The bandaged Beckham made his full debut at Giants Stadium, and the Red Bulls' regular crowd of 11,500 multiplied sixfold. The old place rocked to their cheering, more so for soccer than at any time since Ireland beat Italy there at the 1994 World Cup.

I still remember that night, when 75,338 of us were in the arena and when Ray Houghton, faced by three defenders including the redoubtable Paolo Maldini and the princely Franco Baresi, scored the only goal from outside the area with his left foot.

An ocean away this time, I relied on e-mail from men and women who were there, and the league's video of the extraordinary match.

The score line fluctuated throughout. The defenses and the goalkeeping weren't the best. Beckham, in central midfield, was caught in possession a few times by the likes of Clint Mathis, an experienced former U.S. team stalwart.

But, hey, he set up three goals, didn't he? Two of them from corner kicks, one from a free kick, all headed into the net. Carlos Pavón, a newcomer to the Galaxy from Honduras, scored his first two goals from Beckham's accurate right-foot service.

The Galaxy lost because two of the Red Bulls, two significant names, also scored a brace. Juan Pablo Ángel, the seasoned Colombian, hit a couple, and Jozy Altidore, a 17-year-old New Yorker of Haitian parentage, scored two joyous goals, one of them a peach of a solo dribble-and-shot that confirm his rising stature as a future U.S. star.

Ángel and Altidore were supporting cast Friday when Beckham gave his Harlem clinic. They were winners Saturday.

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