Why it was mad not bold of Beckham to trek to final frontier

Jason Cowley
31 Jul 2009

The States is the final frontier in terms of soccer.

Those were the words of Simon Fuller, when his client David Beckham signed for LA Galaxy, on a five-year contract worth a reported $250 million, excluding all the usual extras from image rights to sponsorship.

The expectation was that the handsome and famous Beckham would help Americans fall in love with "soccer". But if that was the intention, Beckham was the wrong player to buy.

He may be more famous than any other footballer in the world, but he's not exciting to watch; he passes well but is slow and one-paced, does not run or dribble with ball, beating players for fun as Messi or Ronaldo can.

Nor does he score enough goals, certainly from open play. Nowadays, he is a midfield plodder, with good stamina and a decent cross.

In truth, the States is a frontier too far for the former England captain, who is desperate to return to Europe and is at war with those of his own fans who are disgusted by how little he has achieved in his two seasons at the club.

Are we now so familiar with Beckham, the footballer as well as the model whose image is endlessly replicated around the world, that we can no longer see just how strange he has become?

For a long while, I've not been able to look at a picture of him without thinking he's trying to sell me something - few sportsmen have allowed themselves to be bought by so many different brands for so long, from Brylcream to Pepsi.

However, just recently, as I watched him clashing with fans during a mundane Galaxy match, I was startled by something quite knew: the freakishness of his appearance.

Beckham was in his short-sleeve white Galaxy shirt, beneath which, on a warm night, he seemed to be wearing what looked like a long-sleeved sweatshirt.

Then the camera panned in tightly on him and you saw that he wasn't wearing a sweatshirt at all; it was just that his arms were completely covered by thick, dark sleeves of tattoos, like some fairground grotesque.

Beckham has long been a narcissist: he presents his immaculate hairless body as a shrine to be worshipped by all, not least himself.

He no doubt considers his multiple tattoos - on his neck and across his shoulders, on his arms, buttocks and legs - to be a form a body art, yet if he keeps on tattooing himself at this present rate it won't be long before he begins to resemble a kind of footballing Michael Jackson: a once beautiful man who desecrated his own body as if in an act simultaneously of self-love and self-loathing.

Is Beckham being driven mad by fame, as Jackson was? With his increasingly erratic behaviour and bizarre appearance, he has certainly become a fugitive from normality.

He is, like Jackson or indeed Britney Spears, looking more and more like a prisoner of his own absurd celebrity.

He isn't even free to play for the club of his own choosing - which seems to be AC Milan at present.

In retrospect, once he'd married a Spice Girl and escaped from Alex Ferguson's benign autocracy at Old Trafford, it seems Beckham was always destined to end up living in Beverly Hills, with its gaudy glamour, limitless sunshine, celebrity worship, body fascism and obsession with stylised effects.

But now the boy from Leyton seems increasingly lost in La-La Land: fractious, unhappy, bewildered. Someone should get him out of there before it is too late.

Crouch much more than just a freak show

So the wheel has turned full circle and Peter Crouch, after short spells at five different clubs (not including those for which he has played on loan), is back where it all began - at Tottenham.

"He's a good boy, is Crouchie, a real good boy," says Harry Redknapp each time he signs the tallest man ever to play for England.

I like Crouchie. I like his slightly anxious candour in interviews, his honesty on the pitch, his high nervous voice and his guilelessness.

I like the way he has become an unlikely Lothario, with various WAGS prepared to fight for and over him (surely it's more than his money they seek!).

Above all, I like his resilience, the way, after multiple early rejections, he has endured to become one of the best players in England - and, improbably, when you start to add up his various multi-million pound transfer deals, one of the most expensive.

Early in his career, when he scored for Southampton in a 1-1 draw against Arsenal, an irritated Arsene Wenger dismissed Crouch as "that basketball player up front".

In March 2007, after Crouch had scored a "perfect" hat-trick (left foot, right foot, and header) against Arsenal in a 4-1 win for Liverpool, Wenger had changed his opinion.

Crouch was, he said, a "player of superb technique. He has the size of a basketball player but the skill of a real footballer."

It's been said that Crouch is one of the most underrated players in England.

He certainly isn't that; if he was, he wouldn't have been signed by so many managers, including Redknapp, Rafa Benitez and Graham Taylor. He may turn out to be just what Spurs need.

• First we had Lance Armstrong, at the age of 37, coming out of retirement to ride again - and so well - in the Tour de France (and what a great Tour it was this year, with Bradley Wiggins so impressive).

And now, another sporting veteran, Michael Schumacher, is getting back into a Ferrari to compete in Formula One.

There is even talk of Patrick Vieira returning on a one-year contract to Arsenal. Surely that would be one return too many? Gooners can only hope and dream, for now.