Forget the Pele versus Maradona debate. David Beckham may not have been the world’s most talented footballer, but he certainly created a place all his own
The moment is etched clearly in the mind. Argentina versus England in the World Cup, Sapporo, Japan, June 7, 2002. An unremarkable first half was winding down when Michael Owen was fouled in the penalty area. Instantly, you knew this was no normal penalty. At stake was not merely England’s fortunes in the tournament — they desperately needed a win — but the career of their captain, their creative force and unarguably their biggest star; possibly, at that moment, the game’s biggest star. Other men might have quailed at the task.
Not David Beckham. Up he stepped, placed the ball on the spot, did his customary shuffle and knocked the ball past Pablo Cavallero. Then he turned to his left and had his moment of catharsis: Clenched fists, primal scream. All around, in the press box, grown men — self included — whose job demanded neutrality and objectivity, did the same; Japanese, Koreans, even the ever-correct English. Amid all the emotion, one thought was clear: This could only happen with Beckham.
Few sportsmen have so polarised opinion among fans and journalists alike, few have enjoyed as much professional success on such limited skills, fewer still have lived as many superlatives by age 35. He’s had songs and poems — one by Britain’s Poet Laureate — written about him, lent his name to a film, been the ambassador for a successful Olympics campaign, is now vice president of a World Cup bid, has inspired not one but two pop-culture phrases, secured an unprecedented spot in England’s 2010 World Cup squad as neither coach nor player. Rather like the Queen, as The Times put it, except even more famous.
It’s hard to say which has played a greater part in his success: his radar-like right foot or his chiselled face. The former has been hailed by fans, and by team-mates unerringly picked out from 30 yards or more, and its devastating effects spawned an eponymous cult film.
Critics have carped at the circus that surrounds him and drowns out the football; an effete, preening shirt-salesman who can’t run and can’t dribble. Without doubt, Beckham has been a product of the TV-celebrity-wannabe age. His career began only a couple of years after the Premier League was born; the league needed a star, he craved the stardom. Over the next decade, he pushed the league’s boundaries far beyond the British Isles, his face and brand taking it to Asia, Africa, North America. When the World Cup went to East Asia in 2002, football wasn’t the number one sport and many locals had problems identifying players; not so with Beckham, the sight of whom prompted squeals and cries and another session with the hair stylist.
It’s easy now to think of Beckham as a walking mannequin, but a decade ago he was a more than decent footballer. He had just one skill — that right foot — but several other characteristics that compensated. For one, he had stamina, the product of cross-country and 1,500-metre races as a young boy. He couldn’t run fast but he could run all day; at his peak he was measured at running 14 km in a game.
He had a phenomenal work ethic, and the humility to absorb and imbibe from those around him — a priceless virtue given that the Manchester United locker room included some of the best footballers of the day. And in Alex Ferguson he had a manager who was a father-figure — not for nothing were Beckham, Giggs, Scholes et al christened Fergie’s Fledglings — and who ensured his wards were groomed in skills other than football as well. At their peak, between 1996 and 2001, they were unstoppable, winning five league titles in six years, and Beckham, a fixture on the right wing, supplied many of the crosses as assists or converted free-kicks.
He was a star, but it took the worst moment of his career to turn him into a superstar. Against Argentina in the ’98 World Cup, Beckham responded to a foul by kicking his opponent. He was sent off, and a match that was going England’s way went to penalties, which they lost.
The press slaughtered him, England fans ranted; one even hung his effigy. The worst was yet to come. Two months later, when the new season started, opposing fans abandoned all sense and decency. They had attacked his girlfriend, Victoria; now they turned on his baby son. “I hope your kid dies of cancer” was just one chant he had to put up with. Few could know what he went through, but he did it with the dignity and poise that he has displayed throughout his rollercoaster life.
That season was United’s best ever; they won an unprecedented triple: Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup. Beckham, protected by Ferguson and the fans, displayed the flinty character few had credited him with, but which surfaced every time he was in trouble. Later that year he was runner-up in FIFA’s World Player of the Year award.
In consonance with 21st Century sport, money made off the field didn’t always equal success on it. Real’s star was on the wane. They had won three Champions League titles in the five years before Beckham; they won one Spanish league title in the four years with him. It wasn’t all Beckham’s fault, of course — key players were aging, coaches were chopped and changed, the team had simply run its cycle of success — but his relative lack of footballing skills, and his advancing years, made him the first choice for the substitutes’ bench. It didn’t help that, for the first time, scandal – in the shape of Rebecca Loos, his personal assistant - broke through his carefully guarded private life. When Fabio Capello, then the Real coach, benched him in early 2007, his response was to dig yet again into those famous reserves of character; weeks later Capello was forced to call on him and he repaid him with a couple of crucial goals as Real went on to win the league title.Beckham had already plotted course for his next adventure: Los Angeles.
(This story appears in the 10 September, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)