Very, very quietly in a rare failure for Golden Balls.

Regular readers first heard about the shuttering of the academy at Home Depot Center mentioned here a couple of days ago.

Curious that AEG made no public announcement of it in conjunction with the closure of the London academy back in December. But not surprising given the damage control/spinning AEG and 19 Entertainment representatives spent much of Friday engaged in as they tried to convince me this was not a story. When a Beckham rep calls you from home at about 12:30 a.m. Saturday London time, you know how sensitive his management team is to ANY suggestion of bad news.

(Updated: The Galaxy youth teams – the club’s academy teams, if you will – are now using the Beckham academy’s former FieldTurf pitch, as well as one of its trailers.)

BTW, unlike last January (when Becks scored and AC Milan beat Bologna 4-1), the two teams tied 0-0 today. Beckham came on as a 79th minute sub for AC Milan, who are now 10 points behind table-topping rivals Inter.

AC Milan haven’t won in their last four games.