It was a pleasant surprise this evening to turn on the New England-Chicago playoff game on ESPN2 and be greeted by former Galaxy GM Alexi Lalas.

Lalas may have had issues as GM, but he’s always articulate and entertaining.

Lalas has kept a low profile since getting fired from the Galaxy and I believe the comments he made about the situation before the game were the first of any depth.

Here’s an excerpt of what he had to say about what new GM and Coach Bruce Arena needs to do:

“His first order of business is to find some leadership, to fill the void that exists in the Galaxy with leadership. He needs to go out there and find some real SOB’s; some guys who don’t care about saying the truth, don’t care about hurting people’s feelings and aren’t afraid they’re going to lose their job for doing so.

“He needs to make one of those guys captain, to be quite honest. This not a question of a Galaxy that doesn’t have talent, it’s a question of there was a leadership void. The fact is you need to send a message that nobody is bigger than the club whether you’re David Beckham or whether you’re Tristan Bowen, an 18-year-old coming into the club.

“Everybody has to understand it’s the team first.

“If I regret something it’s that I recognized that early on and probably didn’t do enough to correct that situation.”

I wonder how Beckham would react to having the captaincy taken away from him? And why does a team that has the experienced likes of Beckham, Landon Donovan and Pete Vagenas not have leaders anyway?

Still, Lalas’ prescription for improving the Galaxy sounds an awful lot like Arena’s, who has essentially said the same thing.

Incidentally, Beckham is joining a team in AC Milan that is top of the Italian league for the first time in four years.

BTW, Beckham is supposedly going to share taking free kicks with Ronaldinho.

And what could be – let’s emphasize the could – Beckham’s first game is the 11:30 a.m. Sunday Jan. 11 encounter against Roma. Fox Soccer Channel will televise that game live.