Aidan Smith: Not sure about the football, but I am Becks-obsessed

Published on Friday 13 August 2010 21:51

Last week's survey of the behavioural habits of the Scottish football fan amazed me. Published the morning after "Swedes 3, Neeps 0", it asked us to believe that we devote six and a half hours a week to obsessing about the game - an hour longer than we spend looking after our children. Total chunk of our lifetimes in thrall to fitba? Three years.

I didn't believe this. My first instinct was to say: "That's too much." The findings, by BT Vision, just didn't seem to fit with the Kirk Broadfoot age. I could have believed the survey if it had appeared in, say, 1976 - midway between the two World Cups when Scotland qualified and England didn't - and the Scottish Office, concerned at an upsurge in alcoholism, tried to pull us back from the abyss with a truly shocking public information message showing a sozzled supporter flogging his match ticket for the price of one more pint and nip. But I couldn't believe it in the here and now of Scotland trying to be hard-to-beat and ending up sair-tae-bare, of the thud and blunder of the SPL, of our clubs mustering for the new season minus some big names, and fans being invited to mourn a talent drain, or stank, headed by Kris Boyd.

But, thinking about the survey some more, three years out of a long-ish lifetime, provided the cirrhosis is kept in check and you get, as they say, a fair kick at the ball, doesn't seem that much at all. I showed the survey to my wife and she agreed. "Hopefully you've got a bit more time left," she said, which was considerate of her, "but I reckon you've given three to football already."

"But you've only known me for six and a half years - how can you say that?" I countered.

"Trust me, I'm relaxed about my share of a more-or-less 50:50 split and I'm just glad I didn't know you in 1976. I don't know who this Kirk Broadfoot chap is but I would say it's been three years concerned with Hibs alone and I haven't even mentioned David Beckham."

Ah, Becks. I cannot lie, I'm obsessed. Obsessed with the whole world's obsession with him. Obsessed with every Englishman's obsession with the metatarsal injury in the build-up to the 2002 World Cup. Obsessed with the Japanese girls at that tournament who queued up to lick his toilet bowl. Obsessed with the 2004 story of the mild-mannered law-lecturer, on a mission from Northampton, who jumped the barrier at Madame Tussaud's and smashed up the Nativity scene featuring Posh and Becks as Mary and Joseph ("He ripped Victoria's head off," a court was told later).

Not obsessed with his football talent as such, but still obsessed, only I thought after he missed South Africa that it was all over for The Painted Fool, but here I am still writing about him and this time, for the first time, with some sympathy.

Fabio Capello has announced that Beckham is now too old to play for England.It would have been nice, the decent thing, if he'd bothered to pick up the phone and inform Beckham of his decision, but as with the last-minute plea to Paul Scholes, the call was made by his deputy Franco Baldini. Capello is having a PR nightmare, which will always be worse when the subject is David Beckham. Love him or spend a large part of your life counting his tattoos, you've got to admit the man is a genius at PR.

For Capello, the issue has partly been about the Becks-England balance. This is similar to the work-life balance in that you never want the former to swamp the latter, which happened during Sven-Goran Eriksson's reign. To be fair to Beckham, since 2006 he'd allowed the team to take priority. He's the story again, only this time it's not of his making. And of course he's since gone into overdrive, snubbing Capello's offer of a farewell friendly, and making us think that he's begun artistic-directing the show to end all shows. Since his Beckingham Palace wedding was out-blinged by the nuptials of Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney and Simon Cowell among other, you'd expect nothing less.

I want nothing less and will be sad when the circus leaves town for good. Some things, you see, are more important than football.