From zero to hero and back again

Published on Saturday 26 June 2004 00:21

IT WAS hardly the stuff of 1998, when effigies of David Beckham were hanged as fans blamed his sending-off following a petulant kick for England’s World Cup defeat to Argentina. Yet six years after a boyish, 23-year-old Beckham was vilified by the media, the knives were out again.

"You daft sod, Becks," screamed one newspaper after his second crucial penalty miss of the tournament led to England’s exit from Euro 2004.

He was still a chummy "Becks", not the "stupid boy" compared to the other ten "heroic lions" of 1998. And the play on the word "sod" had a clear implication: the sandy, rutted pitch had played its part in the sky-high penalty. It wasn’t just Beckham’s fault.

However, questions remain about Beckham’s temperament - the two missed kicks were pivotal moments in a tournament that had promised so much for arguably the best England team of recent memory.

And how much impact did a tumultuous year - on and off the pitch - have on Beckham, who looked more journeyman than talisman throughout the competition?

Will he continue taking penalties after three straight misses - and will he remain as captain? Beckham answered the second question unequivocally, but lost his cool at a press conference when asked if he could still inspire the team as he once had.

Taking the question as an insult, he demanded the reporter respond to his own question: "Do you think I can inspire the team as I did in the past?" He went on: "I am England captain. I will not be resigning my position. I am proud to be England captain. I love to be playing football and I am England captain. I won’t be resigning unless someone wants me to, and that will be the manager. I believe this team can go far."

England manager Sven Goran Eriksson backed Beckham, saying he was an automatic selection: "He carries on as captain; of course he does."

However, Eriksson appeared to share the view that Rooney, not Beckham, was England’s key player. "I hope before two years we will have more Rooneys," he said.

The manager himself took some of the flak for the defeat for persisting with an overly defensive approach, using substitutes in an effort to hold a fragile lead and defending too deep.

The Swiss referee, Urs Meier, was another scapegoat for disallowing Sol Campbell’s last-minute "goal"; his website was deluged with hatemail from England fans (and praise from Scots), and emails quickly circulated showing Meier discussing his controversial decision with a guide dog in tow.

Yet the majority of the jokey emails (which follow all major sporting dramas) yesterday centred on Beckham. One had astronauts finding a spacewalk interrupted by the football Beckham blazed over the bar; another showed a gofer popping up from its burrow just beneath the penalty spot as he was about to strike - a reference to Beckham’s complaints that the turf moved as he planted his standing leg.

In another email doing the rounds yesterday, England rugby star Jonny Wilkinson tells Beckham (in a spoof of an Adidas advert they did together) "and to win it I just kicked the ball over the bar". In a speech bubble, Beckham mumbles in response: "ball ... bar ... over ... win ...".

Adidas, Beckham’s longest-running sponsor, was clearly irked by the spoof, but said it was standing by him. After a statement of the rather obvious - "David is the England captain and an outstanding footballer" - the company said: "We are proud to be his longest-running sponsor and will continue to support him. He is one of our global symbols and will certainly be involved in a variety of our campaigns for many years to come."

But neither Adidas nor anyone else could possibly predict what comes next for Beckham. After a promising start at Real Madrid, things went badly wrong on the pitch as detailed reports of alleged affairs with former personal assistant Rebecca Loos and another woman surfaced in the newspapers. This led to speculation about his marriage to Victoria, the former Spice Girl and mother of Brooklyn and Romeo.

The affairs have been denied, but there has been no legal action, and the possibility of further kiss-and-tell revelations - which may have been held back until after Euro 2004 - are being suggested as a possible explanation for Beckham’s unexpectedly low-key performance.

So, is it the beginning of the end for brand Beckham? Gordon MacMillan, the editor of marketing magazine Brand Republic, thinks not. "We saw after all the stories of his affairs broke earlier in the year that, if anything, it helped his appeal," he said. "It put him on more front pages. This is obviously slightly different but I don’t think it’s going to end Beckham’s appeal as a global icon. Yes, he’s had a bad time and missed two penalties, but he still had reasonably good moments and was on the front pages of newspapers around the world."

Fans of Beckham would simply see his troubles as part of his adventure, a defeat that their hero would strive to overcome, Mr MacMillan said. "It does add to the drama of the Beckham story. He started out this year as this clean, unimpeached icon and this year we’ve seen him go through some blips and the audience has gone through them with him, marriage problems and football problems.

"But there’s a kind of belief he will come out of that, and the brands think that as well - Adidas and Vodafone are not going to desert him over a couple of penalty misses."

Publicist and England fan Max Clifford, who represented Rebecca Loos, summed up the feelings of many Beckham critics: "For the last few years, he’s been the golden boy of English football. Certainly the golden boy image has gone. Everybody is talking about Wayne Rooney. David Beckham came across at best as very average."

Mr Clifford suggested Beckham’s problems off the field may have been part of the problem: "He’s had a pretty bad few months, he’s not been very successful for Real Madrid, and what with the Rebecca Loos situation it’s bound to have had an effect. He has got worries. I do think it’s added to his pressures."

But former Hearts and Scotland striker John Robertson, now manager of Inverness Caledonian Thistle, and a prolific penalty taker, said any criticism was premature. "There is pressure on players but I don’t think David Beckham will lose too much sleep," he said. "The media did it with Gascoigne and Beckham, and they were pillorying Michael Owen. How long before they start giving Wayne Rooney stick?"

Beckham insisted yesterday that he was tough enough to take the pressure. "I’ve handled a lot more emotional things than this," he said. "I’m a strong person, so every time someone hits criticism at me, I’ll come back fighting. And that’s me."

• AS ENGLAND’S highly paid footballers came home to face further scrutiny over their failure in yet another major tournament, police south of the Border were counting the cost of another night of rioting.

The most serious disturbances were in the unlikely setting of St Helier, in Jersey, where riot police used CS gas as England fans went on a rampage, hurling bottles and missiles at hundreds of Portuguese migrants who work on the island during the summer months.

A Jersey Police spokeswoman confirmed that 14 people, including four Portuguese, had been arrested following riots in the early hours of yesterday. She said two arrests were for grave and criminal assault, one for assault on police and three for obstructing police.

The other eight offenders, including a woman, were arrested for breach of the peace. According to police estimates, up to 700 England and Portugal fans were involved in the incident near the island’s Portuguese Club, where hundreds of foreign seasonal workers watched the game.

At the height of the fracas, eight officers in riot gear, police dogs and some of the island’s 60-strong police force were deployed.

In Norfolk, at least ten people were arrested and several police were hurt in a disturbance outside a Portuguese-run pub in the town of Thetford. The area has a large number of Portuguese agricultural workers.

Police in Bristol made 14 football-related arrests, mostly for public order offences, and Thames Valley Police said they were investigating the death of a man in a pub in Banbury, Oxfordshire, after the match.

DAN MCDOUGALL