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from Simon Barnes in The Times
March 28, 2008
David Beckham is a poser, self-publicist and first-rate prat. So why do we still love him?
How come we don't hate David Beckham? Why is it that our national love of David Beckham is not even a matter for debate? How come you hardly ever meet a dissenter? It's not as though there aren't grounds.
I was in the pub the other night, discussing, since you ask, wildlife conservation in northern Paraguay. But at the bar, it was all football. What did I think about England's match tomorrow? I mean, 100 caps, he deserves it, doesn't he? All he's done. That penalty against Argentina. Above all, that free kick against Greece. Great man.
And off we went, a review of favourite Beckham moments, and the conversation continued long after I was back at my table talking about hyacinth macaws and jaguars. Not a dissenting voice: Beckham is great, and 100 caps is the least he deserves.
That's not the sort of thing you hear in the press-box. True, most laptop-carrying cynics moderate their tone in print, but not my old friend James Lawton from The Independent. Lawton, not a man known for his reticence, has pursued Beckham with extraordinary vigour throughout his career: if Beckham wins a knighthood, it could only be for his services to the art of self-promotion, while his crowning achievement of Wednesday night is “a Mickey Mouse milestone”.
Lawton's harrying of Beckham is based on sporting logic, as he sees it. It also involves a soul-deep opposition of temperament. Beckham stands for a million things Lawton despises. But Lawton is not one of many. He's a lone voice. Why is there not a substantial following of these views? Why aren't they the views of the majority?
Why don't we all think Beckham is a prat? It's certainly not because he isn't one. He is a lot of other things as well, but, normally, any public figure with the slightest tendency to pratishness is subjected to merciless vituperation. Count that double if you are a footballer.
Take haircuts. It has been suggested that a true measure of Beckham's contribution to the England team is not 100 caps, but 100 haircuts. Normally, any sporting figure who adopts an out-of-the-way haircut will get taunted for it till the end of time.
David Seaman's ponytail was an instant national joke, but Beckham's taste for a coiffeur of infinite variety is accepted everywhere as an essential part of the man.
Then there is all the prattish self-exposure. How can we not hate a guy who flashes his crotch at us from every bus in his capacity as knickers-salesman? Beckham looks more concentrated on the tackle in these posters than he ever does on the pitch: but it doesn't worry us. Everybody still thinks he's great.
Then there is that absurd wife, Relatively Posh, as Brian Glanville has called her, more than once I believe. She has achieved the status of national joke, without any question: but somehow Beckham rises above it all. You'd have thought that a man so flagrantly uxorious, so blatantly pussy-whipped, would become a laughing-stock in turn: but this has not happened.
Then there is the gay icon stuff. The societies of both football players and hardcore football supporters are notoriously homocentric and homophobic. Yet Beckham, posing frequently in an ostentatiously homoerotic manner, has somehow failed to alienate either of these demanding societies.
There is plenty of ammunition for Beckham-hating even if we turn to pure football. Some blame him for England's defeat by Brazil in the World Cup quarter-finals of 2002, when he jumped out of a tackle in the move that led to Rivaldo's equalising goal.
His penalty-taking has been a disaster. He missed two in the European Championship of 2004, one of them when England were on the verge of a famous victory against France. He had earlier missed one in a crucial qualifier for the same tournament, in Turkey, and yet another when England went out of Euro 2004, against Portugal.
Beckham has consistently been a disappointment at the highest level. He never fulfilled his stated ambition of becoming the greatest footballer in the world. He was never able to take control of an international match against top opposition, never able to make the jump from very good to great. He was nowhere near as good as the other 100-cap-wearers, Billy Wright, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Peter Shilton.
If we are going to pursue a course of strict sporting logic, we have to say that David Beckham is a footballer who has failed. He is a prat of the first water, a self-publicist who does things calculated to alienate his core audience, a leader who loved the title of leader more than the practice of leadership, and, at base, a man who was unable to take England beyond a certain level because of a sense of vertigo: because, when it really counted, he consistently suffered from a failure of nerve, a failure summed up for ever by that penalty kick in Portugal, where, as the great leader taking the first kick in the shoot-out, he sent the ball spiralling high into the Portuguese night and English hopes down to the bowels of the earth.
But we are not logical. There are other, equally real parts of Beckham: and it is to those that most people respond. Ah yes, that game against Greece! Wonderful entirely, but for God's sake, it was seven years ago.
But so what? Beckham has his place in national affections and it is not to be shifted. The allure of Beckham's story stays with us. It begins with the tale of his sending-off in the 1998 World Cup finals, his status as national villain, hanged in effigy in his sarong. But then comes his redemption: how he stayed in England, faced the booing and the hating, took Manchester United to their glorious treble the next year, and then came the return match against Argentina, in the World Cup of 2002, in which Beckham scored the only goal, and it seemed, for a moment, that all the harms and unkindnesses and injustices of the world had been healed with one strike of that famous right foot.
In Beckham's fall and his rising again, we all see something of ourselves, for we all know hardship and all would love to rise above it with such courage, in such triumph: we, too, would have run at the photographers, arms extended, to tell the world: you can't bloody well destroy me.
And along with the mesmeric qualities of the tale, there is the nature of Beckham himself. He's a nice chap. You can't get away from that. There is a decency, a loyalty, an honesty about him. He's not nasty, he does his best, he tries constantly to do the right thing. There is a transparency about him, a complete absence of deviousness.
People feel comfortable with these homely virtues. They are not exceptional, he is not a saint; but perhaps that's the point. He has made himself an exotic figure, with his exotic photographs and his exotic wife and his exotic talents: but behind all this is the most extraordinary ordinariness.
Beckham has given the world all kinds of reason to despise him and they simply haven't worked. Cynicism, prejudice and even logic have had no chance. The beauty of Beckham's story and the decency of his nature have been too much. ""
SO WHY
March 28, 2008
David Beckham is a poser, self-publicist and first-rate prat. So why do we still love him?
How come we don't hate David Beckham? Why is it that our national love of David Beckham is not even a matter for debate? How come you hardly ever meet a dissenter? It's not as though there aren't grounds.
I was in the pub the other night, discussing, since you ask, wildlife conservation in northern Paraguay. But at the bar, it was all football. What did I think about England's match tomorrow? I mean, 100 caps, he deserves it, doesn't he? All he's done. That penalty against Argentina. Above all, that free kick against Greece. Great man.
And off we went, a review of favourite Beckham moments, and the conversation continued long after I was back at my table talking about hyacinth macaws and jaguars. Not a dissenting voice: Beckham is great, and 100 caps is the least he deserves.
That's not the sort of thing you hear in the press-box. True, most laptop-carrying cynics moderate their tone in print, but not my old friend James Lawton from The Independent. Lawton, not a man known for his reticence, has pursued Beckham with extraordinary vigour throughout his career: if Beckham wins a knighthood, it could only be for his services to the art of self-promotion, while his crowning achievement of Wednesday night is “a Mickey Mouse milestone”.
Lawton's harrying of Beckham is based on sporting logic, as he sees it. It also involves a soul-deep opposition of temperament. Beckham stands for a million things Lawton despises. But Lawton is not one of many. He's a lone voice. Why is there not a substantial following of these views? Why aren't they the views of the majority?
Why don't we all think Beckham is a prat? It's certainly not because he isn't one. He is a lot of other things as well, but, normally, any public figure with the slightest tendency to pratishness is subjected to merciless vituperation. Count that double if you are a footballer.
Take haircuts. It has been suggested that a true measure of Beckham's contribution to the England team is not 100 caps, but 100 haircuts. Normally, any sporting figure who adopts an out-of-the-way haircut will get taunted for it till the end of time.
David Seaman's ponytail was an instant national joke, but Beckham's taste for a coiffeur of infinite variety is accepted everywhere as an essential part of the man.
Then there is all the prattish self-exposure. How can we not hate a guy who flashes his crotch at us from every bus in his capacity as knickers-salesman? Beckham looks more concentrated on the tackle in these posters than he ever does on the pitch: but it doesn't worry us. Everybody still thinks he's great.
Then there is that absurd wife, Relatively Posh, as Brian Glanville has called her, more than once I believe. She has achieved the status of national joke, without any question: but somehow Beckham rises above it all. You'd have thought that a man so flagrantly uxorious, so blatantly pussy-whipped, would become a laughing-stock in turn: but this has not happened.
Then there is the gay icon stuff. The societies of both football players and hardcore football supporters are notoriously homocentric and homophobic. Yet Beckham, posing frequently in an ostentatiously homoerotic manner, has somehow failed to alienate either of these demanding societies.
There is plenty of ammunition for Beckham-hating even if we turn to pure football. Some blame him for England's defeat by Brazil in the World Cup quarter-finals of 2002, when he jumped out of a tackle in the move that led to Rivaldo's equalising goal.
His penalty-taking has been a disaster. He missed two in the European Championship of 2004, one of them when England were on the verge of a famous victory against France. He had earlier missed one in a crucial qualifier for the same tournament, in Turkey, and yet another when England went out of Euro 2004, against Portugal.
Beckham has consistently been a disappointment at the highest level. He never fulfilled his stated ambition of becoming the greatest footballer in the world. He was never able to take control of an international match against top opposition, never able to make the jump from very good to great. He was nowhere near as good as the other 100-cap-wearers, Billy Wright, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Peter Shilton.
If we are going to pursue a course of strict sporting logic, we have to say that David Beckham is a footballer who has failed. He is a prat of the first water, a self-publicist who does things calculated to alienate his core audience, a leader who loved the title of leader more than the practice of leadership, and, at base, a man who was unable to take England beyond a certain level because of a sense of vertigo: because, when it really counted, he consistently suffered from a failure of nerve, a failure summed up for ever by that penalty kick in Portugal, where, as the great leader taking the first kick in the shoot-out, he sent the ball spiralling high into the Portuguese night and English hopes down to the bowels of the earth.
But we are not logical. There are other, equally real parts of Beckham: and it is to those that most people respond. Ah yes, that game against Greece! Wonderful entirely, but for God's sake, it was seven years ago.
But so what? Beckham has his place in national affections and it is not to be shifted. The allure of Beckham's story stays with us. It begins with the tale of his sending-off in the 1998 World Cup finals, his status as national villain, hanged in effigy in his sarong. But then comes his redemption: how he stayed in England, faced the booing and the hating, took Manchester United to their glorious treble the next year, and then came the return match against Argentina, in the World Cup of 2002, in which Beckham scored the only goal, and it seemed, for a moment, that all the harms and unkindnesses and injustices of the world had been healed with one strike of that famous right foot.
In Beckham's fall and his rising again, we all see something of ourselves, for we all know hardship and all would love to rise above it with such courage, in such triumph: we, too, would have run at the photographers, arms extended, to tell the world: you can't bloody well destroy me.
And along with the mesmeric qualities of the tale, there is the nature of Beckham himself. He's a nice chap. You can't get away from that. There is a decency, a loyalty, an honesty about him. He's not nasty, he does his best, he tries constantly to do the right thing. There is a transparency about him, a complete absence of deviousness.
People feel comfortable with these homely virtues. They are not exceptional, he is not a saint; but perhaps that's the point. He has made himself an exotic figure, with his exotic photographs and his exotic wife and his exotic talents: but behind all this is the most extraordinary ordinariness.
Beckham has given the world all kinds of reason to despise him and they simply haven't worked. Cynicism, prejudice and even logic have had no chance. The beauty of Beckham's story and the decency of his nature have been too much. ""
SO WHY
