While I don’t suppose that David Beckham reads much Wilkie Collins, he has leaned heavily on the ploy that the Victorian novelist used in his plot lines: Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait.

So we’ve been waiting, have we ever. When Beckham signed for the Los Angeles Galaxy back in January, he was on the outs with his club, Real Madrid, and the story was that he would head for America at once. Then, no — Beckham was suddenly back in favor at Real, so he wasn’t available until the end of the season in May. When that point was reached, Beckham had got himself injured. When he duly arrived in America two weeks ago, he wasn’t fit, and it did not look like he would make his debut, as had been announced, in an exhibition game against Chelsea, played Saturday night.

Then again, maybe he would make a cameo appearance. When the super-over-hyped game began, Beckham was on the bench. ESPN made sure we knew that by quickly setting a formidable world record for boring cutaways: Beckham smiling nicely, Beckham looking handsome, Beckham fiddling endlessly with his very newlooking (and sponsored) shoes.

The grinning and the fiddling went on into the second half of a game that by then seemed utterly irrelevant. The make-em-wait routine was wearing a bit thin when Beckham stood up — yes, he stood up! — and so did a good many of the 27,000 fans in the sold-out Home Depot Stadium. One slender figure wearing a Beckham shirt started to move about languidly on the sideline, while in the stands thousands of slender and not-so-slender bodies began to jump and yell energetically. Most of them were wearing Beckham shirts, too.

The ghost of Wilkie Collins twitched again and suddenly St. David — Beckham, I mean — was seen jogging quickly off the field, back toward the locker room. No, you could not have heard a pin drop in the stadium, but maybe you could have detected whatever noise it is that patience makes when it’s reaching a breaking point.

But all was well. Beckham soon returned and at about 7:15 p.m. on a sunny California evening, Beckham’s highly expensive feet stepped on the playing field, the waiting was over, and the muchtouted Beckham Era of American Soccer was launched.

His new team was already a goal down to Chelsea, and Beckham could do nothing to alter the score. He strolled around for some 16 minutes, accomplishing very little. A low-key historic occasion, and the special Beckham-Cam, employed to track the player’s every move, recorded nothing of interest.

I have no wish to trivialize the occasion, for it was full of enormous potential for the sport. But ESPN did keep up a barrage of banality with shots of Beckham’s wife, Victoria, and her entourage sipping whatever they were sipping. Therefore, I feel justified in proffering a little soccer trivia: Whatever the 25-year-old forward Alan Gordon has yet to achieve on the soccer field, he will, for now, be remembered as the player who was subbed to make way for David Beckham and may be known as the new Carlos Scott. Trivia fans will know that Carlos was a New York Cosmos player, remembered today for only for one moment: Back in 1974 he willingly surrendered his no. 10 shirt so that it could be worn by the new arrival, Pelé.

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While the soccerati were at play in California, a more meaningful view of the sport was seen Sunday up in Canada where the under-20 world championship was won by Argentina, with a 2–1 win over the Czech Republic. It was a win that restored some Argentine pride after its recent loss to Brazil in the Copa America final, and one that underlines its remarkable record at this age level: Argentina has won five of the last seven under-20 world championships.

But the interest in this latest triumph focuses on the matter of size. When the tournament MVP awards were announced, the top two places went to Argentines: the 5-foot-7-inch Sergio Aguero, and the 5-foot-3-inch Maximiliano Moralez, the smallest player in the tournament.

This is welcome news in a sport that, particularly in Europe, has been showing a tendency to favor tall players. In the under-20 final, the average height of the 21-player Czech roster was 6 feet, while the Argentine average was 5 feet 9 inches. The situation was virtually identical in the playoff for third place, in which Chile (average height 5 feet 9 inches) defeated Austria (5 feet 11 inches) by a score of 1–0.

One of soccer’s chief attractions has always been that it rewards skill rather than sheer size, that the small guy can be as good as the tall guy. While the results in Canada would appear to confirm that, they might represent only a temporary diversion from an emphasis on size.

A truer picture of what coaches at the pro level look for in recruiting players may come from the current Asian championships. Alfred Riedl, the Austrian who coaches Vietnam, lamented last week that “we’re too short, and we know this, but how can you make our players bigger?”

A similar moan came from Helio Cesar dos Anjos, the Brazilian coach of Saudi Arabia, who believes his team “needs more muscle, more muscle to be competitive. You can talk about speed all you want, but power is really important in football.”

Even when an allowance is made for increased size among the world’s population, it is difficult to dismiss the thought that — certainly at the top level — soccer is becoming a sport for taller and heavier athletes. In such a sport, where the Czech under-20 team averages 6 feet, what chance of success is there for the Vietnam national team, with an average height of 5 feet 5 inches?

More poignantly, what future is there for Maxi Moralez, whose exuberant play and superb ball artistry was such an exhilarating feature of Argentina’s winning under-20 world cup team? Tiny soccer geniuses seem to be an Argentine specialty. Diego Maradona was 5 feet 5 inches and Lionel Messi is 5 feet 7 inches. Will Moralez, at 5 feet 3 inches and 119 lbs., flourish in the increasingly bulky world of pro soccer?

pgardner@nysun.com