IT LOOKED like a soccer match, but it didn't sound like one or feel like one. There was a crowd at the soccer, but not a soccer crowd. There were no banners, no cheer squad, no chants, mostly no noise at all except when one player went near the ball. This was not a celebration of soccer, but a celebration of celebrity culture. Nearly 35,000 flocked, not in anticipation of sporting virtuosity, but because flocking is in.

Australian soccer will never come of age until it stops going weak at the knees on concocted nights like this. It wants to be one of the game's big boys, but acts like star-struck teenager. This night, the country's biggest club was prepared to disrupt further an already troubled season to accommodate a circus troupe on holiday. Momentarily, it amused, but in the long run, it was cheap, lumping Melbourne in with the waystations that are grateful for the chance to touch the hem even of faded glory. It is not Melbourne's usual style. It was Australian soccer prostituting itself.

Victory was a skeleton team in the first half, a gelatin team in the second, featuring only one player certain to start in its next game on Saturday. Yet only then was Galaxy able to make meaningful headway. So-called Galaxy; it was not nearly as galactic as, say, Sunderland or Wigan.