Tom English: 'Beckham: a good player who could have been great'

Published on Tuesday 16 March 2010 22:21

HAVE you shed tears for Becks? Have you lit a candle or said a prayer? You'd be forgiven for thinking that something tragic happened on Sunday evening because the world's media were all over the story of David Beckham's Achilles tendon. There were glum faces on television, guys paying solemn tribute, recalling the man as they remembered him.

• David Beckham

Short of Fiona Bruce beginning the News at Ten with "David Beckham has snapped his Achilles, he was 34" then the funereal mood could hardly have been more obvious.

Gordon Brown has the weight of Britain on his shoulders – an economy in the toilet and an election in the offing – yet he found time to salute Beckham during his difficult time.

That one comment from the Prime Minister shows what a phenomenally powerful individual Beckham has become over the years. Perhaps Brown was being wholly genuine and said his soothing words out of a sense of compassion rather than an appreciation of a PR opportunity, but he'll have known that attaching himself to the Beckham bandwagon won't have done any harm. The guy's beloved and cool. What politician wouldn't want a piece of his magic?

The great and the good have lined up to applaud the player. The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy has produced a piece of work that has as its inspiration, Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War, and Beckham, the darling of the Stretford End.

Myth's river – where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boy flowed on, his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesied, they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...

But when Odysseus came, with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,

And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball...

But then his heel, his heel, his heel...

Duffy's last poem was a lament for the soldiers who perished in the Great War and no doubt these boys are up in heaven looking down at us now and thinking they did not die in vain at the Somme and Passchendaele and Ypres, not now that Duffy has put Beckham alongside them in the pantheon of immortals. Good for them. Their struggle has been validated at last.

Rolling news on Beckham's well-being. He's gone down injured for Milan. He's crying 'It's broken, it's broken' as he's carried from the field. Posh is on her way to be at his bedside. He needs an operation. He might not make the World Cup. Call in the experts to comment on this tragedy. Is this the end? Say it ain't so. Say it often, we've got hours to kill.

Beckham is remarkable, that's true. He was once – before the management companies began to bend and twist his image – a very natural footballer, a terrific talent, as hungry as any of his contemporaries; Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville. Celebrity came into his life and blurred the focus. Giggs, Scholes and Neville have gone on to win championships, FA Cups and a Champions League. They're there still. Heavily influential and on the cusp of yet more trophies. Beckham has won one La Liga and little else, bar the adulation of the world's youth. As a fashion icon he is fulfilled. I'd argue that he doesn't feel the same way as a footballer.

By rights, he should have never put Sir Alex Ferguson in the position whereby the manager felt the need to usher him and his wife and his growing celebrity circus out of Old Trafford. That has to be a regret, whether Beckham likes to accept it or not. His years at Real Madrid were glamorous but, save for one honour, largely hollow. His departure to America was all about fame and wealth and little to do with football. He's not been a forceful player since he went there three years ago.

He's 34, has no pace and has never raised much of a gallop in any of the major championships he has played in for his country. He got sent off against Argentina in 1998 – but recovered brilliantly at United. He has character, that's for sure. He was there to ram home a vital penalty against the Argentines at the 2002 tournament, but destroyed the moment when he pulled out of a challenge from Brazil's Roberto Carlos that allowed Rivaldo to knock England out of the tournament. At Euro 2004, he was man enough to stand up and take a critical penalty against France, but missed. At the World Cup of 2006 he was a passenger.

There were, of course, some outstanding cameos along the way, but there was never sustained excellence, never the kind of ability that consistently turned matches and warranted the kind of publicity that came his way. And yet we have had pundits saying that he is a considerable loss to England's World Cup campaign. On a human level you have to feel sympathy for him. By all accounts, he's a decent bloke and he's a fine professional, courteous at all times. But he has done nothing in three years to suggest that he was anywhere near good enough to have an impact in South Africa.

There has always been a myopia as regards Beckham. He was, for instance, twice runner-up in the Fifa World Player of the Year awards, a personal accolade that is simply unfathomable. He has never, even in his best days, been at that level. But the aura around him in the past five years has swept him into places where players of similar ability would never get to go. It's not so much Beckham the footballer that has opened doors, it's Beckham the brand, it's the fact he's part of the world elite, an icon.

People want to be seen with him. Ultimately, that is his genius and has been for quite some time. His management team have done an extraordinary job in developing him, but greatness never befell Beckham the player. It might have done had he stayed at United. It has done for Giggs and Scholes, after all. It was easy to decipher a certain longing for Old Trafford on Beckham's part of late, certainly since his Milan were pitched together with his old team in the Champions League.

What might have been had he done a Giggs and Scholes and stayed there for the duration. At least there was a certain poetry about the end. His final game – if it is indeed the final game – on English soil was in the place that is closest to his heart. His footballing epitaph should read 'Beckham: good player who could have been great'. Instead, in the hands of his cheerleaders, it will be built up into something greater than it was. It was ever thus with 'Goldenballs'.

Tiger avoids the grilling

SO Tiger Woods is on his way back. Good luck to him. He will, of course, get criticised for choosing the protected environs of Augusta National to make his reappearance where difficult questions from inquisitive journalists will be frowned upon, to the point of expulsion.

It's possible that they're already drawing up a list of things that are off-limits in his first press conference, from affairs to boorish behaviour to experiences in rehab. That leaves, hmm, the fascinating grooves debate and, er, the riveting issue of the golf ball.

Nothing that we hear from Woods is going to inform our knowledge of him. It's what he does that's going to illuminate us.