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:

–Wahl contends that Beckham and his inner circle, led by personal manager Terry Byrne, basically took over the Galaxy almost from the day he showed up as the beneficiary of what was called a five-year, $250 million contract … that did, in fact, guarantee $6.5 million in salary annually to Beckham in a league where many players were making a mere $12,900. The putsch started with the successful campaign to give the captaincy to Beckham and continued with the hiring of Dutchman Ruud Gullit as coach before the 2008 season. Gullit was a disaster.

–Wahl outlines a sort of running discussion among Galaxy players on whether Beckham was a good teammate as well as a good captain. Writes Wahl: “By July 2008 … the L.A. players had seen enough to realize that Beckham might be a good teammate, but he wasn’t much of a captain. It was one thing to take part in team events, the Galaxy players felt, but it was another thing to lead, to rally the players during tough times and defend the greater good of the team with the coach and the front office. Donovan noticed several things. For one, when Gullit gave the players an optional practice day, Beckham rarely showed up. (‘As the captain you should at least come in and show your face,’ Donovan said.)”

–Donovan felt Beckham let him hang out to dry during a tongue-lashing from Gullit — who never was a fan of Donovan, for no clear reason. Writes Wahl: “Donovan was upset that Beckham had not supported him in front of the team when Gullit had confronted him at halftime of the May 25 game against Kansas City. Donovan had not played deep enough in midfield in the first half, according to Gullit, who angrily challenged him in the locker room. ‘If I’m the captain and he goes after our best player that way, I would have said, ‘Hold on a second, that’s not right, this guy is doing everything he can,’ ‘ Donovan said. But Beckham had sat stone silent.”

–On Beckham’s leadership, Wahl writes, “The questions about Beckham’s leadership didn’t come just from Donovan, but also from other players who liked Beckham personally and had shared meals with him on road trips. Veteran defender Greg Vanney noticed that Beckham didn’t rally the players during rough stretches and never called team meetings during losing streaks. Vanney also wondered whether Beckham could empathize with a teammate making a five-figure salary and being whipsawed in and out of the lineup by Gullit with no explanation.”

–More Wahl: “The moment that sealed Beckham’s ‘good teammate, bad captain’ reputation might have come last October, when (midfielder Chris) Klein started questioning whether Beckham was well-suited for the armband. If you had polled teams on the best-liked player in MLS, Klein probably would have won the vote. ‘I really like David as a person, and I respect him as a man,’ Klein said, ‘but it’s a different type of leadership that has to go on with all this. Sometimes it’s the rah-rah American sports leader that needs to be like, ‘All right, guys, come on!’ and have a team meeting. It’s difficult for a foreign player to do that because [he doesn’t] know what the college kid had to go through, [he doesn’t] know what it’s like to make $12,000 a year.’ The more Beckham disengaged from the Galaxy players, the more some of them wondered if his five-year captaincy with England had been as ceremonial as the role of the British royal family.”

–Wahl has Donovan barely talking to Beckham by the end of the season, even though they had adjoining lockers in the Galaxy clubhouse. He notes that Donovan was surprised when Beckham didn’t bother to travel to a key road match late in the season, at Houston, because he was suspended. Donovan thought a team captain should have gone to show that the team mattered to him. Writes Wahl: “‘All that we care about at a minimum is that he committed himself to us,’ Donovan said. ‘As time has gone on, that has not proven to be the case in many ways — on the field, off the field. Does the fact that he earns that much money come into it? Yeah. If someone’s paying you more than anybody in the league, more than double anybody in the league, the least we expect is that you show up to every game, whether you’re suspended or not. Show up and train hard. Show up and play hard. Maybe he’s not a leader, maybe he’s not a captain. Fair enough. But at a minimum you should bust your ass every day. That hasn’t happened. And I don’t think that’s too much for us to expect. Especially when he’s brought all this on us.'”

–Wahl has Donovan linking Beckham giving up on the Galaxy … with the firing of Gullit, the Beckham camp’s hand-picked coach. Writes Wahl: “Donovan had wanted the Beckham Experiment to work, and there was no reason in his mind that it still couldn’t be successful in 2009. But not if Beckham continued acting the way he had during the last half of 2008. ‘When David first came, I believed he was committed to what he was doing,’ Donovan said. ‘He cared. He wanted to do well. He wanted the team and the league to do well. Somewhere along the way — and in my mind it coincides with Ruud being let go — he just flipped a switch and said, ‘Uh-uh, I’m not doing it anymore.’ ‘ By now, in fact, Donovan no longer agreed with the ‘good teammate, bad captain’ verdict that so many other Galaxy players had reached on Beckham. Donovan was convinced that Beckham wasn’t even a good teammate anymore: ‘He’s not. He’s not shown that. I can’t think of another guy where I’d say he wasn’t a good teammate, he didn’t give everything through all this, he didn’t still care. But with [Beckham] I’d say no, he wasn’t committed.'”

–Wahl has Donovan suggesting he will not put up with the situation that existed at the end of the 2008 season, with Beckham apparently cutting corners with the Galaxy. Writes Wahl: “Donovan didn’t know what would come next, but he did know that things would have to change if he and Beckham were teammates in 2009. ‘Let’s say he does stay here three more years,’ Donovan said. ‘I’m not going to spend the next three years of my life doing it this way. This is (deleted) miserable. I don’t want to have soccer be this way.’ What could he do? ‘That’s my issue too,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to confront it somehow. If that’s the way he’s going to be, fine, then hold him accountable. Bench him. Just say, ‘We’re not going to play you, we don’t think you’re committed.’ ”

Finally, Wahl has Donovan, who again is the Galaxy captain, promising to confront Beckham this month about his willingness to lead and to commit to the franchise, before he hands over the armband again to the Englishman.

Hmm. Well. Should make for an interesting reunion of the Galaxy’s best player and its most famous player, in 10 days or so.

Actually, the situation seems untenable. Because it seems likely that Beckham will be disappear from the Galaxy, entirely, after this three-month cameo, going back to AC Milan … well, why keep him around at all?

Because he sells tickets and sells merchandise and brings a cachet to the club and to the league. That’s why But apparently he is doing very little to make the Galaxy better, and we have Landon Donovan pretty much saying just that.

It’s going to be interesting, in Carson, and perhaps a very rough second half of the 2009 season.