David Beckham will make he return to the England squad for the friendly against Brazil this Friday (on FSC at 3 p.m. ET) as a Real Madrid player. However, most of the speculation regarding his international future has centred on his next stop - the Los Angeles Galaxy.

On Sunday the BBC posted an audio interview with LA Galaxy President, Alexi Lalas. It was an interview that set off scores of articles relating to Beckham's availability to England for competitive international games - a theme covered in this blog on Saturday - and friendly matches.

During the interview Lalas expressed reservations (not surprisingly) about releasing Beckham for friendly matches. But the bottom line to the issue is that Lalas and the LA Galaxy have no say in the matter as long as the FA restricts call ups to dates reserved on the FIFA international calendar.

The calendar details dates reserved for competitive fixtures as well as friendlies although strangely it does fail to block time for next summer's European Championship.

So how many friendly internationals can the Galaxy expect to lose Beckham for? As it turns out the answer is not many. The only remaining date in 2007 reserved on the FIFA chart for international friendlies is August 22. That means that if McClaren decides to keep Beckham around for the fall qualifiers - assuming of course that McClaren is still around - then the Galaxy will be missing his services for the ESPN nationally televised derby game on August 23 against Chivas.

Looking further into the future dates are reserved for friendlies on February 6 and March 26 in 2008. The February date is unlikely to conflict with Galaxy commitments although March 26 might be a problem should LA qualify for the CONCACAF Champions League - albeit an unlikely prospect at this time.  

So once you get past the headlines you find out that there is very little substance to the rash of headlines relating to the release or non-release of Beckham for friendly internationals.

As it turns out David will not even have to miss the 2008 Oscars scheduled for February 24.