There surely couldn't be a more illuminating example of the way in which standards have have become distorted than seeing David Beckham pick up a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show!
The 'Great British Swindle' has pulled off yet another high-profile coup - or, to be more precise, his handpicked, blue-chip, management team have!
Hell, one of Beckham's closest 'advisors' - entertainment mogul Simon Fuller - almost (though not quite) helped David's heinously-voiced wife gain a number one hit single. With that in mind, is it any real surprise that viewer-hungry BBC executives have been duped into deeming the man branded as "Golden Balls" as a deserving recipient of such an award?
The 'Great British Swindle' has pulled off yet another high-profile coup - or, to be more precise, his handpicked, blue-chip, management team have!
Hell, one of Beckham's closest 'advisors' - entertainment mogul Simon Fuller - almost (though not quite) helped David's heinously-voiced wife gain a number one hit single. With that in mind, is it any real surprise that viewer-hungry BBC executives have been duped into deeming the man branded as "Golden Balls" as a deserving recipient of such an award?
'Team Beckham's' latest ruse is actually trying to convince 'middle Englanders' that the gas-fitter's son from Leytonstone - a man with a lower IQ than his shirt number - is actually some kind of serious 'political fixer'! By arming him with a hand-written speech or two, we are actually meant to believe that 'Becks' is apparently well-versed in the salient points of delivering successful Olympic Games and World Cups! Really?
We are also meant to believe that "the branded one" - a man who is fighting allegations of a seedy 'tryst' with a £10,000-a-night Bosnian prostitute as we speak - is a 'paragon of marital bliss', even though he has famously never chosen to sue two other women who have alleged infidelity against him - namely Malaysian-born escort Sarah Marbeck and his bisexual former PA Rebecca Loos!
So how has Beckham - a "poundland Glenn Hoddle" given his limited skill-set - allowed to become a global phenomenon? Well, it started from the very moment Rupert Murdoch transformed the Premier League into a cynically globalized 'cash harvester', held to account only by marketeers and corporate bureaucrats. Beckham - the archetypal 'right man at the right time' - had an intelligent career path laid out in front of him.
With his blond hair, popstar wife, Man Utd shirt on his back and - to be fair - handy right foot, Beckham was the icon the Premier League needed as it underwent its Sky TV-induced process of 'Americanisation' of "Super Sunday's", "Soccer AM's" etc. His exalted 'brand value' was augmented by the fact that he was a natural fit with the 'metrosexuality', 'modern man' culture sweeping the nation at the time.
The subsequent aura around him has swept him into places where players of similarly moderate 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 who people want to be seen with, whether its giddy teenage girls in South East Asia or fat-cat American executives!
When it is all said and done - behind all the bluster and bullshit - how good a footballer was David Beckham?
To paraphrase the late George Best, "He (Beckham) cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle, he is slow, and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right." Harsh maybe, but not as inaccurate as some people may think.
Yes, he enjoyed some outstanding moments in his trophy-laden Manchester United halcyon days but it's worth remembering that his side were already two-time defending Premier League champions by the time he had made his debut in the 1994-95 season, nor has there been any letting-up in their success since his departure either! Never did Beckham warrant the kind of publicity that came his way, as evidenced by the fact that never won a major Player of The Year trophy in England!
But it's at international level, where the Beckham myth really takes hold in its strongest form!
Most damning of all is the fact that in 115 appearances for his country, Beckham has scored FIVE goals from open play! I will say that again, in 115 caps, the man who jostles with Pele and Maradonna for the title of 'most famous footballer of all time' has scored a paltry, piddling, pathetic FIVE goals from open play! And this despite sycophantic managers like Erikkson and McClaren giving him a free roving commission against nations of the stature of Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan.
Yes there have been seven goals from free-kicks in that period but - to put that into perspective - when Beckham finally nailed his last minute 'nadir goal' in the 2-2 draw with Greece in 2001, it was famously his SEVENTH dead ball 'pot-shot' at goal that afternoon alone. If we assume each free-kick that day represents one of his seven successful free-kicks for his country, we have to assume that there have been an estimated 150 which didn't find their target - an utterly derisory return for someone afforded the luxury of using the easily 'bendable' modern lightweight footballs for the duration of his career!
There was also the famous tale (which was spelled out in Tony Adams' biography) of how Beckham was left humiliated by his childhood hero - the then England coach Glenn Hoddle - during a training ground, free-kick exercise. A frustrated Hoddle, eventually concluded that Beckham 'lacked the appropriate skill' to perform such technical move, even though the long-retired England coach was able to perfect the volleyed free-kick with ease himself!
We are also meant to believe that "the branded one" - a man who is fighting allegations of a seedy 'tryst' with a £10,000-a-night Bosnian prostitute as we speak - is a 'paragon of marital bliss', even though he has famously never chosen to sue two other women who have alleged infidelity against him - namely Malaysian-born escort Sarah Marbeck and his bisexual former PA Rebecca Loos!
So how has Beckham - a "poundland Glenn Hoddle" given his limited skill-set - allowed to become a global phenomenon? Well, it started from the very moment Rupert Murdoch transformed the Premier League into a cynically globalized 'cash harvester', held to account only by marketeers and corporate bureaucrats. Beckham - the archetypal 'right man at the right time' - had an intelligent career path laid out in front of him.
With his blond hair, popstar wife, Man Utd shirt on his back and - to be fair - handy right foot, Beckham was the icon the Premier League needed as it underwent its Sky TV-induced process of 'Americanisation' of "Super Sunday's", "Soccer AM's" etc. His exalted 'brand value' was augmented by the fact that he was a natural fit with the 'metrosexuality', 'modern man' culture sweeping the nation at the time.
The subsequent aura around him has swept him into places where players of similarly moderate 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 who people want to be seen with, whether its giddy teenage girls in South East Asia or fat-cat American executives!
When it is all said and done - behind all the bluster and bullshit - how good a footballer was David Beckham?
To paraphrase the late George Best, "He (Beckham) cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle, he is slow, and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right." Harsh maybe, but not as inaccurate as some people may think.
Yes, he enjoyed some outstanding moments in his trophy-laden Manchester United halcyon days but it's worth remembering that his side were already two-time defending Premier League champions by the time he had made his debut in the 1994-95 season, nor has there been any letting-up in their success since his departure either! Never did Beckham warrant the kind of publicity that came his way, as evidenced by the fact that never won a major Player of The Year trophy in England!
But it's at international level, where the Beckham myth really takes hold in its strongest form!
Most damning of all is the fact that in 115 appearances for his country, Beckham has scored FIVE goals from open play! I will say that again, in 115 caps, the man who jostles with Pele and Maradonna for the title of 'most famous footballer of all time' has scored a paltry, piddling, pathetic FIVE goals from open play! And this despite sycophantic managers like Erikkson and McClaren giving him a free roving commission against nations of the stature of Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Azerbaijan.
Yes there have been seven goals from free-kicks in that period but - to put that into perspective - when Beckham finally nailed his last minute 'nadir goal' in the 2-2 draw with Greece in 2001, it was famously his SEVENTH dead ball 'pot-shot' at goal that afternoon alone. If we assume each free-kick that day represents one of his seven successful free-kicks for his country, we have to assume that there have been an estimated 150 which didn't find their target - an utterly derisory return for someone afforded the luxury of using the easily 'bendable' modern lightweight footballs for the duration of his career!
There was also the famous tale (which was spelled out in Tony Adams' biography) of how Beckham was left humiliated by his childhood hero - the then England coach Glenn Hoddle - during a training ground, free-kick exercise. A frustrated Hoddle, eventually concluded that Beckham 'lacked the appropriate skill' to perform such technical move, even though the long-retired England coach was able to perfect the volleyed free-kick with ease himself!
Beckham's international goal tally is completed by five successful penalties, but it shouldn't be forgotten that he also missed three, including one in the failed Quarter-Final shoot-out with Portugal at the 2004 European Championships; (Oh how Chris Waddle, Stuart Pearce, Gareth Southgate et al must wish for a management team so adept at airbrushing such misses from the English consciousness). Lets not forget too that Beckham's most famous penalty - the one which helped his side beat Argentina in the 2002 World Cup - was nothing more than a glorified 'hit and hope' which was eminently 'saveable'!
Beckham's many critics can also point to the fact that he 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 and was largely peripheral in the forgettable 2000 'Euros'; His 2002 World Cup campaign was hindered by a metatarsal injury, while his noteworthy contribution at Euro 2004 basically amounted to two penalty misses (also against France). At the World Cup of 2006, he was a virtual passenger.
Beckham helped sell plenty of shirts in a few years at Real Madrid which were glamorous but largely hollow. He was a 'galactico' in name only as he played a bit-part role in a side dominated by the far superior talents in Zidane and Raul. Ironically, the only La Liga title Real won during Beckham's tenure came on the back of a dramatic final-day win over RDC Mallorca. With Real down 0–1, a subdued Beckham was replaced by former Arsenal man Jose Antonio Reyes who promptly fired two late goals to help his misfiring side to an unlikely victory!
Beckham was mentioned in the same breath as the words such as 'pioneer' and 'saviour' when cajoled into accepting a mult-million dollar contract with LA Galaxy and America soccer. However - even in a country were almost half of the nation is hoodwinked into believing the world is less than 6,000 years old - his actual ability has been called into question during a three-year sojourn which has been palpably underwhelming on the field, but has helped promote himself off it!
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| Beckham: A "poundland" Glenn Hoddle |
So, how will he be ultimately remembered on the field?
Laughably, he is a serious rival to both Pele and Maradonna in footballing's 'fame stakes', but that is where the comparison ends - it's akin to Peter Andre sharing a stage with The Beatles and Elvis.
Nor does Beckham belong anywhere near the 'pantheon of greatness' inhabited by 21st century stars such as Zidane, Ronaldo,Christiano Ronaldo, Messi, and Ronaldhino.
Lets not forget that Beckham is from the first generation of players to have had the whole of their career captured on celluloid - that is an awful lot of material for his army of marketeers to work with.
His footballing epitaph should read 'Beckham: good player, at times very good'.
Instead, in the hands of his cheerleaders, it will inevitably be built up into something greater than it was. It was ever thus with 'Goldenballs.
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