David Beckham: world star, LA deadbeat

To mark the handover of Olympic responsibility to London at the grand finale of the Beijing Games this Sunday, David Beckham, along with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and pop star Leona Lewis, will enter the Bird's Nest stadium on top of a double-decker London bus, kick a football around with hand-picked children, and generally bask in the warm glow of adoration to which he is accustomed.

His top Olympic billing shows that he remains one of the most recognisable sports figures in the world. But in Los Angeles, where he's midway through his second season with the LA Galaxy football team, 'Goldenballs' Beckham is in serious danger of falling into sporting oblivion.

His first season with the Galaxy was close to disastrous, as a persistent injury stopped him from playing in more than a handful of games. This season, he has at

least managed to get fit – but the Galaxy is in even worse trouble. The most expensive team in the American Major League Soccer has not won a game in over two months and has easily the worst defensive record in the league, conceding 40 goals in 19 games. The team runs the risk of not reaching the important end-of-season play-offs for the third year in a row. This ignominious run led to the exit last week of the Galaxy's controversial coach Ruud Gullit, the former Dutch international, after just nine months, and to the firing of general manager Alexi Lalas. It was, says Nick Green, who writes about football for the LA Daily News, "an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions".

Gullit's tenure was marked by vicious in-fighting, with furious dressing-room showdowns between the abrasive Dutchman and his players. "The players play but don't agree with what Gullit does," said Abel Xavier, a defender whom Gullit traded. "Most of the players don't believe in the coach." Gullit is the second coach to lose his job since Beckham's arrival: Frank Yallop left at the end of last season. According to Green