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Autumn in Milan: Beckham's Italian swansong

Presumably, that was what David Beckham envisaged when he arrived at LA Galaxy in the summer of 2007. Four years after leaving Manchester for Madrid, his fairytale football career seemed close to completion.

At 32, if it wasn't exactly pipe-and-slippers time, running out at the Home Depot Center in Major League Soccer's Western Conference would, with the greatest deference to Colorado Rapids and Real Salt Lake, be rather less pressured than the battles fought in his playing pomp: the heat and history of clashes with Manchester and Merseyside neighbours, the cauldron of El Clasico; even the odd bruising midweek skirmish with Bolton Wanderers.