RUUD AWAKENING A FAMOUS MANAGER HAS COME TO LOS ANGELES, TRYING TO REVIVE THE FRANCHISE'S HOPES. JOE TORRE? TRY GALAXY'S GULLIT.

Byline: PAUL OBERJUERGE

One Los Angeles sports franchise believes it hired a hugely famous manager.

Another actually did.

And his name isn't Joe Torre. It's Ruud Gullit.

Torre might be the toast of the national pastime.

Gullit, however, is an icon of the world's game. One of the top 20 or so players in soccer history.

"Everywhere we go, people know Ruud Gullit," Galaxy forward Landon Donovan said. "Maybe not as much as David (Beckham), but it's close. Very close."

Gullit is so globally famous that even the Dodgers' new manager has heard of him.

"The name sounds familiar," Torre told reporter Tony Jackson last week. "I met David Beckham in Toronto. He came into the clubhouse just to chat a little bit. We started talking about a lot of things and that's how the (Gullit) name came up."

Gullit, however, doesn't know Torre. Which may come as a surprise to fans of a guy who has managed four World Series champions.

Asked, after a recent practice, if he knew the name "Joe Torre," Gullit said, "No. No idea."

Told that Torre was the "famous" manager of the Dodgers, Gullit seemed a little abashed. As if he ought to recognize the best-known manager in baseball ... but couldn't really feel all that badly that he didn't.

"The thing is, we don't see so much baseball in Europe, in Holland," Gullit said in his Dutch-accented English. "American football, they show the Super Bowl, of course. But you don't see much ... you see basketball a lot, but you don't see so much baseball."

Gullit also hasn't been in L.A. all that long. The Galaxy hired him just before Christmas, and he still is trying to figure out the freeway grid. Presumably, the names of other sports coaches and managers will come soon after.

Gullit needs no introduction to the planet's billions of soccer fans.

Unusually big (6-1, 185) for a soccer superstar, the Amsterdam native brought strength, speed and exquisite skill to stints with European clubs such as PSV Eindhoven, AC Milan and Chelsea.

He led the Netherlands to the 1988 European championship and was world player of the year in 1987 and 1989.

Donovan was in elementary school in Redlands when Gullit was in his prime, but he knew about the Dutch star.

"I didn't watch any soccer growing up because we didn't have cable TV," Donovan said. "All I knew was, every Christmas my mom would get some sort of tapes, 'A Thousand Goals from Europe,' or whatever, and I remember watching and going, 'Holy crap, that guy's good.'

"So even from someone who wasn't, like, the biggest soccer nut growing up and didn't watch it, I knew who he was."

Imagine Gullit's visibility among lifelong soccer fans.

Gullit, 45, moved into coaching when his playing career ended.

Leading Chelsea to the 1997 FA Cup championship is the most prominent success on his resume. He also managed Newcastle and Feyenoord, with modest success, then spent two seasons as a television analyst.

The Galaxy hired him to bring international coaching panache to a club that already had English icon Beckham -- and aspirations to be a world brand. Even now, the Galaxy is in Korea for a preseason match, then heads to Shanghai and Hong Kong as part of its "Asian tour."

The Galaxy also wanted a coach who doesn't seem dwarfed by his players, as former coach Frank Yallop was.

AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke, on the day Gullit was introduced as coach, said, "We saw an opportunity to find a world-class coach. I don't think it's any secret that we're trying to build the Galaxy into a world-class brand ... Certainly we are on the world stage and we understand the pressure and the attention that this team is going to get.

"It was an opportunity to find a coach who can handle this pressure, who actually loves this pressure and, in particular, is the most important person in the locker room.

"Sometimes when you have a star like a David Beckham or a Landon Donovan coaches probably are intimidated by that. I don't think we will have that problem with Ruud. I think we found a guy who will be the most important guy in the room."

Gullit the coach brings European exactitude to practices and preparation; he is involved in players' diets and certainly knows talent when he sees it.

He is known to be an advocate of what he calls "sexy football" -- a high-skill, high-pressure style meant to entertain. And also an outgrowth of the "total football" the Dutch popularized in the 1970s.

Gullit (pronounced WHO-lit) said he finds some aspects of American sports tastes puzzling.

"The difference is between European sports and here is that here it's all about statistics," he said. "(Americans) love them.

"With (soccer), that's very difficult because it's not so much important how many times you touch it ... but when you touch it you do something very decent with it."

The club hopes his global coaching connections might turn up a nugget of a player who will fit under the club's groaning salary cap.

Gullit conceded he hasn't had to disguise himself when driving around Los Angeles. In a country where even Beckham enjoys a modicum of "who's he?" privacy.

"People from Europe, and of course the Spanish (Latinos), they know you," Gullit said. "I don't mind too much. I've been there, I've done it. To be a little bit anonymous is good."

The idea, of course, is for Gullit to achieve as much fame as an American soccer coach can achieve. That will entail getting Beckham, Donovan & Co. knocked into shape and winning something.

Eventually, Gullit and Torre will be on equal footing: How many games their teams win will determine if perceived fame turns into palpable results.

[e-mail]

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) New Galaxy coach Ruud Gullit, left, won't be shy about giving out instruction to high-profile players like David Beckham.

Robert Laberge/Getty Image

(2 -- color) As a player, Ruud Gullit led the Netherlands to the 1988 European championship.

David Cannon/Getty Images

(3 -- color) Dodgers manager Joe Torre