AC Milan VP Calls Beckham Loan A "Done Deal"

In a very unsurprising development, AC Milan vice president Adriano Galliani declared that the club is "95 percent" finished on bringing back David Beckham to the club in January on loan. Galliani went as far as to call it a "done deal."

Unlike last year when there was a lot of alarm and acrimony when Beckham announced his intentions to play somewhere else during the break in the MLS season, this time there doesn't seem to be too much problem that he'll be away from the Los Angeles Galaxy for a period of time after the 2009 season wraps in November.

The circumstances are much different the second time of Beckham's loan.

For one, the Galaxy are actually a good team, having already clinched a playoff spot in the upcoming MLS playoffs and sitting in a three-way tie atop of the Western Conference. On top of that, Beckham, after a rocky start including being jeered at the Home Depot Center and called a "fraud" during a friendly with Milan early in the summer, the English midfielder has assumed a leadership role, ingraining himself into the fabric of the Galaxy, with two goals and three assists in his nine starts.

At this point, it seems few Galaxy fans would begrudge him for going to Italy, since he wants to retain the possibility of playing for England at next June's World Cup. England manager Fabio Capello has said that the 34-year-old midfielder has minimal shot at playing at his fourth World Cup if he's not playing at a high level. It doesn't help matters that the MLS season doesn't begin until April.

The winds have also changed toward Beckham in this regard. There seems like a realistic chance that he will fulfill his five-year contract with MLS and not stay with Milan beyond whatever the details of his latest loan end up specifying. (It would seem likely he'd return to the Galaxy in July, after the World Cup.)

In fact, the irony of this loan is that Milan is now the club that is struggling, sitting 12th in the Serie A table with only nine points from seven matches.

Oddly enough, the biggest news to come out of Galliani's mouth on Thursday is that Milan might explore its options toward getting some compensation from the U.S. Soccer Federation after defender Oguchi Onyewu tore his patellar tendon on national team duty Wednesday night vs. Costa Rica.