This was going to run in Saturday's paper, but the Lakers finally signed Lamar Odom just in time to foul up that plan. So here's a bonus column for the hardy few who find their way to the blog:

Tonight marks the conclusion of a remarkable two-week stretch for local followers of the world's great soccer teams -- and, as a bonus, throws in the latest chapter in a bit of sporting melodrama.
This intersection of soccer and soap opera will come at the Rose Bowl, when the L.A. Galaxy faces Barcelona in an 8 p.m. game, wrapping up a brief period that has seen half of last year's UEFA Champions League quarterfinalists play in the L.A. area -- with a Ventura County training stay and exhibition game by Premier League side Burnley thrown in for good meas
Barcelona's visit comes on the heels of the Galaxy's highly entertaining 2-2 draw with AC Milan at the Home Depot Center on July 19, and Chelsea's 2-0 win over Inter Milan in a World Football Challenge exhibition at the Rose Bowl two nights later.
That one -- which drew 81,224 fans, the largest Southern California soccer crowd since the 1999 Women's World Cup final, and the largest men's soccer crowd since the 1984 Olympics -- was not so entertaining, given a rather minimal effort by Inter. ("Too bad one team didn't show up" was a comment lament of those filing out of the Rose Bowl that night.)
As such, the Chelsea-Inter game illustrates the biggest problem with these sorts of visits by European sides. While all sports events are, from a ticket-buying perspective, buyer-beware events -- you never know how good a given game will be, or if the star you're paying to see will be sick or hurt or disinterested -- these games are certainly riskier than most. These are exhibition games, and early-season exhibitions at that, so there's no guarantee that the marquee names will play, or that they'll play particularly hard.
Chelsea, which has stated a clear interest in the U.S. market by visiting four times in the last four years, respected the fans -- and honored its effort to build its brand in this country -- by playing its stars: Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard scored the goals; captain John Terry went the distance, and Petr Cech started in goal. Inter, the reigning Serie A champion making its first U.S. visit in more than 40 years, didn't offer a comparable starting 11, or effort. But you pay your money and you take your chance; and the support for the game certainly won't hurt in bringing comparable attractions to L.A. in the future.
Questions of effort don't figure to be quite as evident tonight, mostly because the Galaxy clearly does have something to prove in these sorts of games. It's still an exhibition, certainly -- the latest chance for Galaxy owner AEG to withdraw some cash from the human ATM that is David Beckham - but given the way the Galaxy has been derided as little better than a pub side in the European press since Beckham's arrival, pride is clearly at stake.
That was pretty evident in the earlier game with AC Milan, when Beckham's dead-ball and long-pass skills helped the Galaxy earn its draw. But the soccer that night was almost overshadowed by the drama surrounding Beckham, who was playing his first game with the Galaxy after engineering a loan to none other than A.C. Milan, which caused him to miss the first half of the season for his MLS team. (Milan, incidentally, was more or less forced to come to L.A. for a game as part of the loan agreement.)
Hard-core Galaxy fans were not happy that Beckham had skipped out on the team he had signed for with such fanfare two years earlier, and let him know it from the outset, hanging out some rather pointed banners and booing him heavily at the outset. That faded somewhat as he played well, but Beckham certainly didn't help his case with the fans with the halftime incident in which he appeared to challenge one to come on the field. That fan obliged -- and was subdued, arrested and given a lifetime ban from Home Depot Center events. ("Lifetime bans" not being what they once were, the fan had his rescinded earlier this week.)
Beckham was also fined by MLS for his behavior -- an absurdly small $1,000, or 0.00015 percent of his $6.5 million salary, about the same as a $15 hit to someone making $100,000 -- and steadfastly has refused to admit he did anything wrong, or that the fans have any reason to be upset. (He was quoted upon his return as emphasizing his "commitment" to the Galaxy, while not quite explaining how skipping half a season to strengthen his position with England's national team illustrates a commitment to his club.)
Anyway, tonight's game will be his first at "home" since all that drama, which means it will be the first time we get a sense of whether the fans' desire to boo Beckham has staying power, whether it's been strengthened by his actions at halftime of the Milan game and his subsequent comments -- or he can play well enough to quell the unhappiness. Since America loves a soap opera, this may draw in some people, in person or on TV, who might not otherwise be interested in tonight's game, even if it does feature one of the world's great soccer clubs.
Whatever their motivation, the fact that more than 70,000 of them are going to be on hand is good news for those of us to hope to see more of these kind of touring European teams in the future.
Even if we'll never know what kind of game they're going to give us.
-- Contact columnist David Lassen at dlassen@VenturaCountyStar.com.