My recollection is this: I called Landon Donovan the day before the 2001 MLS Cup final and talked to him for 10 or 15 minutes. Yes. The day before. Called him on his cell, and he picked up, and I wrote a story based on what we talked about on the eve of the game.

Those were simpler times for professional soccer in America. The quarterfinal 2002 World Cup run by the U.S. national team was still seven months off, MLS was still struggling, and the realization that Landon was going to be the best player in American soccer history had not yet been fully appreciated. It was no big deal to call up Landon, in 2001.

I remember this fairly clearly because I was in Salt Lake City for a USOC media event previewing the 2002 Winter Olympics. (Or was it for Olympic qualifying in the luge? Hmm.)

In my mind’s eye, I see a motel room (Little America?) and a desk under a window, and the door to my right, and night coming on, and I’m calling  …

I remember then that I fully expected Donovan and the San Jose Earthquakes to win the next day. It seemed both correct and historically inevitable.

And that is how I feel about Landon’s current team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, the day before the 2011 MLS Cup. He, and they, will win, and history will see to it.

I don’t often have strong feelings about how a game will turn out. I nearly always have a preferred winner. But who will finish on top? Like most writers, I can make a case for either side. Let’s play it and see what happens.

In 2001, though, I was convinced that Landon and the Earthquakes would win the next day, over the Galaxy. I think he felt the same way.

His career was really picking up speed, in 2001. He had signed with Bayer Leverkusen in 1999. He played in the 2000 Olympics at Sydney. That same year, he made his senior national team debut and scored the goal in a 1-0 victory over Mexico, planting the seeds for a generation of Mexicans to hate him.

He wangled a loan from Leverkusen to San Jose in 2001, and the kid made an immediate impact, playing in 22 matches, starting 17, scoring seven goals and racking up 10 assists.

He was going places. I could feel it. I had known him since he was 16, and we had spoken during his hard and lonely times in Germany, and now his career had traction. He was not going to lose.

He scored the first goal in an eventual 2-1 San Jose victory, and Landon had the first of his three MLS Cup championships.

I feel just as strongly about his chances tomorrow against the Houston Dynamo. And this time it isn’t about Landon … it’s about David Beckham. 

Becks is meant to conclude his five-year Galaxy contract with an MLS Cup championship. He is supposed to.

The Beckham Experiment, as Grant Wahl titled his book on Becks’ move to join the Galaxy, began in 2007 and was a fairly big deal. One of the world’s best-known players, arriving in Los Angeles, from Real Madrid, on a five-year contract … it was the biggest signing in MLS history.

But Beckham’s impact on the field was muted. He arrived as the man who was going to make soccer popular among the masses in the U.S., and it hasn’t quite worked out. The game has grown incrementally, but is it about Beckham? Probably not.

He also arrived hurt; I was there for his Home Depot debut, on July 21, in a friendly versus Chelsea, when his ankle was such a mess he should not have played at all.

He played only five MLS matches that season. In 2008, he played in 25 for a horrible Galaxy team, and he had trouble integrating with his teammates. Friction developed between Landon and Becks, friction that Wahl detailed in his book.

Beckham’s 2009 season was abbreviated by a six-month stint with AC Milan, and Galaxy fans rightfully questioned his priorities, when he finally came back to Carson, wondering if he would ever mean anything to the team more than a famous face, a guy with a celebrity wife and lots of endorsements.

He played in only 11 matches that year, including the 2009 MLS Cup, which the Galaxy lost to Real Salt Lake via a shootout.

In 2010, while again on loan to AC Milan, Beckham suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon and, though his return came sooner than expected, he appeared in only seven regular-season games.

Thus, four years into his $32.5 million, five-year contract, Beckham had done very little for the Galaxy. He had played in only 48 regular-season Galaxy games; during the same time frame, Landon played in far more than 100.

This season, Beckham, 36, has been fully integrated into the team. He hasn’t gone on loan to Europe. He hasn’t had a major injury. And he has been a valuable performer, and not just a lightning rod for attention.

Becks had 15 assists, leading the league, and became a key distributor of the ball as he moved into the middle of the park from his previous haunt on the flank. By all accounts, he finally became the “great teammate” previous clubs had insisted he was — a development I noted in this blog item a year ago.

Now, as his contract is set to expire, it seems as if the story arc of Beckham’s career demands an MLS Cup victory. It’s just supposed to happen that way. Nothing personal, Houston Dynamo; you’re just meant to be the supporting cast in this one.

If … make that when …Becks wins, so does Landon, for the first time since 2005, his first season with the Galaxy. It’s time for Landon, too … but I’m confident he is going to win today because history demands that Beckham win, first and foremost.

And even in Abu Dhabi, here in the UAE, we will know about it, because Beckham is still Beckham.