Funny. I’ve been exposed to so much soccer in the past three years, I might actually go to Galaxy games as a fan, now. Though I would rather get paid to cover them, of course.

Anyway, the club recently has been making news pretty much all over the spectrum involving some names well-known in the U.S. soccer community — Beckham, Hejduk, Berhalter, Cobi, Buddle.

To wit:

–We will start with Becks because it’s the law.  We have to consider the Golden Guy first. Same deal in England. All else is secondary, even if we can no longer remember why.

The Galaxy did the right thing (so far) by not allowing Beckham, 35, to go on loan to Tottenham of the Premier League. Remember what happened the last time Becks went on loan, to AC Milan? Right, a snapped Achilles, out most of the MLS season. The club is paying him $6.5 million a year in actual money, and it would be nice if he could play a full season with the club in the final year of that five-year contract. He has played in 48 league games, total, in his first four Galaxy seasons. How about going out with 30 … in one year? Best way to do that is to stay out of game action over the winter. Is he a Galaxy player or just a part-time Galaxy player?

–The Galaxy signed Frankie Hejduk, and I am on record as being a big fan of Frankie. A great dude to have around, and one of those “chemistry” guys. Sure,  he’s 36, but he’s Frankie!

–The Galaxy re-signed Gregg Berhalter, 37, as a “player/coach.” OK, it looks as if the Galaxy may have the oldest backline on the planet since Italy’s World Cup team (Fabio Cannavaro, anyone?), but I like Berhalter, and so does Bruce Arena.

–The end of the good news came when Cobi Jones said he would be leaving the Galaxy after 15 years and joining the new New York Cosmos, which hopes to join MLS someday, as the “associate director of soccer” and “ambassador.” This is bad news. Cobi was and is Mr. Galaxy. The original galactic presence, the first player to join the club, back in 1996, and then an interim coach and assistant. The Galaxy without him is just plain weird.

–The worse news? The club allowed Edson Buddle to get away to FC Ingolstadt of Germany. Buddle just scored 19 goals for the Galaxy. He was paid a bit less than $190,000 in 2010, which isn’t much money in global soccer. Maybe even Ingolstadt, a second-tier club at risk of deeper relegation, can beat that. A club just shouldn’t allow a scorer of Buddle’s magnitude to escape the way he did. Sure, maybe he wanted to test the waters in Europe, at age 29, and there were rumors of tryouts for English club teams. But a free transfer like that? That’s just taking your second-best player off your roster and getting nothing in return.

Be interesting to see how this works out. Does Arena push Landon Donovan back toward the top and ask him to score rather than create? Does the club find another striker?

Lots of news from Carson. Lots of it. Weird, that I probably care more now than I did when I lived 15 minutes from the Home Depot Center.