A tragedy? No, but we'll miss the old warrior in battle

Matthew Norman
15 Mar 2010

If this is to prove the end for David Beckham, as at 34 it surely must, at least it came with a bang as well as a whimper of pain.

Nobler by far for the old warrior to be carried from the battlefield mortally wounded, like the sulky Greek fella who gave his ruptured Achilles tendon its name, than to watch his career dribble miserably away in the irrelevant mediocrity of Major League Soccer in North America.

And what a career it was. Sporting punditry has known few travesties like the dismissal of Beckham as barely more than a free-kick specialist routinely selected both by his country and all three of the world's premier clubs for his ability to sell shirts and generate image rights rather than to play football.

The notion that Beckham was primarily a posing dilettante — designer clothes horse, poster boy for wacky haircuts, high priest of Eurotrash bling — with a silly, squeaky voice was always preposterous.

None of us will lightly forget the marital thrones on which he and Posh graciously received their nuptial courtiers, nor the alleged Spanish fling with a woman who parlayed the scandal into a television career that climaxed with her manually pleasuring a pig.

For all the nonsense, however, none but the most rigorously committed of sportsmen would have fought so tigerishly to reach a fourth World Cup finals when he had a Hollywood lifestyle to enjoy (I wouldn't wish the Tom Cruises on Himmler but each to his own) and untold tens of millions with which to fund it.

There will now be no more World Cups, nor barring a miracle to make Lazarus look like one of Paul Daniels's conjuring tricks any further appearances in the red and black of AC Milan.

That the last time he walked off a pitch unaided was at Old Trafford, home of his first and greatest footballing love and scene of his most memorable performances (for England, with that crucial last-second free-kick against Greece, as well as for Manchester United) may seem strangely fitting but will offer him no consolation.

Nothing, one suspects, will do that. The tears he wept as he was carried off the San Siro pitch last night were those of a spirit crushed by the realization that he has no role to play in what we choose to believe (but when do we not?) will be England's best chance to replicate 1966 for a generation.

Beckham's absence lengthens those odds a tiny bit. Whether his value to Fabio Capello lay primarily in his calming, hyper-experienced dressing room presence or his potential to help turn a tight game as a late substitute is debatable. But the Italian clearly thought him well worth taking to South Africa and Don Fabio doesn't do mistakes.

Beckham's three World Cups were mixed affairs that saw him plumb the depths in 1998 with that petulant flick at Diego Simeone and scale what pass in England for the heights with that avenging penalty winner against Argentina in 2002.

Yet even four years ago, in Germany, he was our best player (not the highest of hurdles, admittedly) because for all the fabled lack of pace that ungodly gift for delivering barely defendable crosses from the right, from open play as well as from set-pieces, single-handedly dragged us to the quarter-finals.

Written off after that tournament, as he had been after the Simeone red card, he showed the startling strength of character those bedazzled by his looks, wealth and global fame always overlooked.

He ridiculed the doubters once again with impressive cameos, first for Real Madrid and lately for AC Milan, and looked every inch the perfect shock substitute last Wednesday.

No one will view his loss as a national catastrophe, as we did when he broke a metatarsal before the 2002 finals when palpably our key player.

But it is an irritation for Capello, whose options have been limited, and a blow for all who have come to revere Beckham for his resilience, good nature, modesty and ego-free willingness to be used as a bit part player.

Paradoxically, for so zeitgeisty and trend-setting a character, he was always at root a very old fashioned type of Englishman.

For him, needless to say, it is far more than an inconvenience or a disappointment.

Any reference to personal tragedy in the context of a vastly rich man with three beautiful sons and an unusually long, gilded and medal-laden career behind him would nudge absurdity dangerously close to obscenity.

Yet it says everything about Beckham's refreshingly undimmed passion for playing football that this is precisely how it will strike him today.