Bending the World to Beckham’s Will

David Beckham is taking it easy, on holiday, kicking back.

Sprawled in a chair at the Galaxy’s new stadium in Carson, international soccer’s most engagingly complex personality and highest-paid player is unwinding. The stress of another dogfight of a season with Manchester United is ebbing away.

England’s captain is wearing white sneakers, a pair of baggy blue jeans -- the kind with all sorts of pockets and straps and doodads -- a white T-shirt and a giant silver watch that almost dwarfs his left wrist.

The topic is the United States, a country Beckham enjoys and, indeed, admires.

Four of the reasons why are seated alongside him, starry-eyed to varying degrees and very much hanging on to his every word. They are Joy Fawcett, Kristine Lilly, Shannon MacMillan and Aly Wagner, the past, present and future of the world champion U.S. women’s national team.

Beckham is warming to his theme.

“You’d never get 100,000 fans turning up for a women’s football game in England,” he says. “You’d never get that. It’s just amazing that that can happen in America. It doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.”

Because Beckham, 28, was only a teenager in 1991 when Fawcett and Lilly helped the U.S. win its first world championship, was he even aware of the China ’91 tournament?

Fawcett and Lilly cringe. “We’re old ladies,” they cry out, laughing.

“Yeah, of course,” says Beckham. “I’m a football fan. Whether it’s English football or European football or world football or women’s football, it doesn’t matter. I was aware of it going on, but obviously being in England you didn’t see much of it.”

And is he really a fan of the women’s game?

“Of course I support it, and not just because they’re sat here,” he answers, nodding his head in the direction of the U.S. players. “I’ve always said that I support women’s football.

“People have asked me what I’ll do when I finish playing. People always expect you to go into coaching or management. For me, I just want to have soccer schools, for boys and girls.

“Every time I’ve said that, people have always turned around to me and said, ‘Girls and women? Why?’ But I think it’s important that everyone enjoys the sport, not just men. They think it’s a macho sport. It’s not.

“Women’s football in England and in Europe will never get the support that it’s got in America. It’s going to be hard. It’s never going to be as big as it is over here. It could be. It could be. I’d love it to be.”

Lilly interrupts. “It’s taken us a long time too,” she says.

“Yes, but you’ve taken it to a level that hopefully we can get it to,” Beckham says. “It’s a level that women over in England would dream of. As I said, I’d love it to happen.”

“So who do you pick to win the Women’s World Cup?” Wagner asks.

“You,” Beckham replies, meaning the U.S. “You’re the strongest team.”

Wagner can’t resist taking it a step further.

“Is the San Diego Spirit your favorite WUSA team?” she asks.

“Of course it is,” Beckham answers with a grin. He is relaxed, at ease, enjoying himself.

In Europe, things are far, far different.

*

Beckham and his wife, former Spice Girl Victoria, and their two children, Brooklyn and Romeo, had no sooner left England and headed to the U.S. on vacation when the rumors began curving across the continent like Beckham free kicks.

First it was AC Milan, the new European champion owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, that allegedly was intent on luring the family to Italy’s fashion capital.

That was a couple of weeks ago, but the rumor was quickly scotched by Adriano Galliani, an AC Milan vice president, who said that the asking price was too high.

“To see him in Milan is impossible,” Galliani told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “It takes a lot of money, too much money.”

In any case, there is a conflict. Beckham has a sponsorship contract with one telephone company. AC Milan is sponsored by a rival. So much for Milan.

Then it was Barcelona’s turn. The Spanish club is in the midst of a presidential election set for June 15. One of the six candidates, Joan Laporta, has promised to bring Beckham to Nou Camp if elected.

He has talked to Manchester United and offered in the neighborhood of $50 million for Beckham. Never mind that Barcelona already is $269 million in debt.

“I view this as a great price for Beckham,” Laporta told England’s Sunday Express newspaper. “He is one of the few players in the world capable of earning the money back for you in commercial revenue alone.”

Radomir Antic, Barcelona’s coach, has ridiculed the rumors.

“So far they are rumors and nothing else,” he said.

But last week United’s chief executive, Peter Kenyon, who has called Beckham “the most recognized footballer in the world, perhaps the most recognized person,” admitted Manchester might be tempted by a $50-million offer.

And Beckham? What does he make of all this?

“These rumors have been going on for two months now,” he says. “About a month ago, it was Real Madrid and now it’s Barcelona. But I’m a Man United player. I’m contracted to Man United for another two or three years, I think. As long as they want me, then I’ll stay.

“But I’ve never said that I’d never move away from Manchester, and I’ve never said that I’d end my career there.”

One reason the British press, in particular, believes that Manchester will part with its highest-profile asset is the media’s conviction that United Coach Alex Ferguson and Beckham do not see eye to eye. Or boot to forehead, for that matter. The generation and lifestyle gaps yawn wide.

Beckham dismisses such notions.

“Despite what people say about me and Sir Alex Ferguson, he’s been a father figure for me,” he says. “I’ve been at Man United for like 12 years now and without him I wouldn’t be the player or the person that I am today, because he had the confidence when I was 18 years old to put me in the first team and a number of other young players in the first team.

“Of course you have your ups and downs with any boss in any job, but it’s just a little bit more highlighted with me and him.”

*

When he was in South Africa last month, Beckham met Nelson Mandela. It is difficult to tell who was more impressed by whom. The next day, Beckham broke his wrist during England’s a 2-1 victory over South Africa in Durban.

His right arm is in a cast from wrist to elbow.

“It’s a lot better,” he says. “I think I should get this off in a week. I had the operation so I could be back for the tour. So they just put a pin in it.”

Manchester United has a four-game tour of the U.S. set for next month. One stop is in Los Angeles, at the Coliseum on July 27, when United takes on Club America of Mexico.

Lilly isn’t interested in the cast or the tour. It’s the inside of Beckham’s left forearm that intrigues her, specifically the bold tattoo. She asks what it means.

“That’s ‘Victoria’ in Hindi,” Beckham replies. “And that’s ‘So that I may love and cherish.’

“Why in Hindi?” Lilly asks.

“I just like the writing,” Beckham says.

Wagner takes off in a different direction, in pursuit of the Mohawk, the shaven head, the braided cornrows, the ever-changing hairdo that is the fashion-conscious Beckham’s “look.”

“Do you pick your styles or does your stylist do it?” she asks.

“No, I do it,” says Beckham. “I don’t have a stylist. The only time I’ll have a hairdresser is when I’m doing a shoot or a magazine or something like that. But with the hairstyle it’s not something I plan. I’ll just sometimes wake up in the morning and think, ‘I’m bored with my hair.’ ”

The balding reporter can only nod and sigh.

*

Beckham is everywhere, the omnipresent icon of the electronic age. There is no escaping him. And no escape for him.

So what is it like being David Beckham?

“I enjoy it,” he says. “It’s more ups than downs. It’s been a roller-coaster ride the last 10 years. There’s so much happened for me in my career in the last 10 years. The World Cup in ’98 was a down point for me, but looking back on it now I’m glad it happened because it’s made me a stronger person and a stronger player.”

Ah, yes, ’98. That was when Beckham, only 23, lost his cool, retaliated to an intentional foul by Argentina’s Diego Simeone and got red-carded during England’s crucial World Cup second-round game, which it subsequently lost on penalty kicks.

The English media were all over Beckham after that, and the words used were not as flattering as they are these days.

But he survived and came back stronger than ever. The lesson was not lost on him.

“I think that sports stars in America are put on pedestals and kept there,” he says. “And people sort of worship them. In England, it’s slightly different because once you get there it’s good for the English people to knock you down. And if you come back from that they start respecting you a bit more.”

Still, being under the constant glare of the spotlight is tiresome.

“I deal with it just because I’m a strong family man and I’ve got two beautiful children, so I don’t take the stress of my work home with me,” Beckham says.

“Of course, as you said, we do live in a goldfish bowl. For our children’s sake we’ve got to live as normal a life as possible because we don’t want it to affect them. But we’ve come to terms with the way it is.

“We needed the media and we needed to be out there at the start of our careers. So now that we’re a little bit more well known than we were back then, we can’t turn around and say we don’t want that now. It’s always going to be there.

“I think there is a lot of untrue stuff said about me and my wife in the papers, but as I said, I’ve come to accept that as part and parcel of our lives.”

Sometimes, though, the news is more pleasant. France Football magazine, for instance, last month reported that Beckham is now the world’s highest-paid soccer player, earning an estimated $18 million a year, or $49,315 a day.

Beckham’s reaction?

“I was happy,” he says. “There are loads of these sort of statistics out there and people say these things all the time. Sometimes they’re true and sometimes they’re not true, but I enjoyed that one. That was a nice one to read.”

Nice, also, since it allows him his four Ferraris, an Aston Martin and a Bentley, and his mansion outside London that the English tabloids have dubbed “Beckingham Palace.” But then he does, after all, earn more than Queen Elizabeth.

Not bad for a youngster from London’s impoverished East End.

The conversation turns to the 2006 World Cup in Germany and whether it should have 36 teams or 32, to the complications caused by the short “transfer window” for player trades in Europe, and to similar topics.

Beckham becomes a little restless.

“I don’t really take any notice of them sort of things, to be honest,” he says. “I just like playing football and getting on with my thing and my team’s thing. Whatever goes on outside ... “ His voice trails off, leaving unsaid the “doesn’t matter.”

Brooklyn comes over and it is almost time to go. Adidas, one of Beckham’s many sponsors, has set up a coaching clinic for him with several dozen youngsters -- boys and girls -- on one of the Home Depot Center’s training fields.

It’s time for Beckham to look to the future. What happens at Old Trafford will happen whether he is there or not.

“There will always be changes at a team like Man United,” he says. “With all the big teams there’s always going to be changes ... because you look to strengthen the team whether you win three trophies or you win one.

“There’s always going to be changes.”

And with that Beckham is off. Perhaps he will return in July. Perhaps not.

Either way, it’s been unreal.