Earlier this month, the story was that Landon Donovan might look for a move to Europe at the end of the year, when his current four-year, $10 million deal with the L.A. Galaxy ran out.

It didn’t sound quite right.

Landon is 31, which is about the time that Europe’s top leagues look to part ways with attacking players.

(Landon told me, back in 2009, after having been on a winter loan to Bayern Munich, that Franz Beckenbauer informed him that his club was looking for “younger forwards”. Landon had just turned 27.)

And I had trouble envisioning him playing in a second-tier European league. Say, Belgium or Austria or Switzerland.

Or, for that matter, playing even for the higher pay in the Gulf, the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, for example, leagues which prize South American talent so and know next to nothing about American football, other than they seem to appear in the World Cup a lot.

Now we can deduce that the stories that appeared, here and there, were the method that Landon (or, far more likely, his agent, Richard Motzkin) chose to remind the Galaxy that perhaps it was time to come up with a new deal for the best player in the history of American soccer.

Done and done.

The Galaxy today confirmed Landon has agreed to a new deal, and this Los Angeles Times story suggests three years at nearly $5 million a year — a nice raise on what he had been making, which had been an MLS record for an American, and nearly as much as Clint Dempsey apparently will get from the Seattle Sounders, on his return from England.

What this means is that Landon could end his career with the Galaxy, which would be fitting. He has been with the club since 2005, and that makes him almost as much a Galaxy fixture as was Cobi Jones.

To be sure, Landon might well be able to play beyond his 34th birthday. He is the sort of quick, compact player who is likely to retain his speed, and he knows more about soccer every day. He could drop back into a playmaker role, as did the aging David Beckham (who played in Los Angeles till he was 37), or move over to a wide midfield spot.

Or he could wander off on a lark with some foreign club, though I doubt he would want to. Not even the Gulf clubs have interest in a 34-year-old forward, unless it’s Luca Toni, maybe. (Besides, Landon visited Dubai while with Bayern, early in 2009, and his one-word description? “Plasticky.”)

The Galaxy did this right … with a press conference in which club officials said nice things about him.

Dan Beckerman, the chief executive, said: “With Landon Donovan, we have the greatest American soccer player to ever play the game.”

And from Bruce Arena, the coach: “He is the best player in the history of the game in our country.”

Landon is, of course, the leading scorer in U.S. soccer history, with 56 goals, and he is only three away from matching the Major League Soccer record of 143. And we have the not-insignificant stat … of his five MLS championships, something no other player has managed. Three of them with the Galaxy, including the past two years.

The best part of this is that Landon and the Galaxy now know where they are with each other — contractually bound until, apparently, 2016.

Landon can think about the apres football part of his life as this new deal runs out.

I have some ideas about that. For another day.