The Washington Post has a great story detailing the ins and outs of coordinating the massive pan-global public relations event that is Real Madrid visiting America. Tonight’s game between D.C. United and Real (in Seattle of all places) was put together so last minute that the event’s planners worried they would embarrass one of the game’s great global brands. In just 16 days, Adrian Hanauer of the Seattle Sounders and his event coordinators had to sell enough tickets at $60 a pop to fill a 67,000-seat NFL Stadium. The difficulty of achieving this was exacerbated by the fact that Real’s exhibition match involved an MLS team playing almost 3,000 miles from home. And why couldn’t the match be played in D.C.? Because Real Madrid didn’t want to play so close to fierce rival FC Barcelona, which would have been playing “up the road” later this week at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ. Talk about high-maintenance. Time pressure notwithstanding, the Seattle team managed to sell about 59,000 tickets for the exhibition as of yesterday; some Internet sites were selling them for close to $300 each. It helps that there’s a bigness associated with having an iconic team like Real Madrid come to your town. In fact, David Beckham alone proved to be a massive draw when he came to Seattle with Manchester United three years ago. For the folks in Salt Lake City, who host Madrid on Saturday in the clash of Reals, things went more smoothly. That game has been planned for months, and looks to be a sellout.