England has no spot for Beckham
David Beckham’s dream of playing 100 games for England was dented but not shattered Thursday when England’s new coach, Fabio Capello, left the Galaxy midfielder off his roster for Wednesday’s game against Switzerland in London.
Had Beckham played in that match at sold-out Wembley Stadium, he would have become only the fifth player in history to earn 100 caps for England. He currently has 99 international appearances.
Instead, Beckham returned to Los Angeles and will begin training with the Galaxy at the Home Depot Center on Monday for the Major League Soccer season, which begins March 29.
“The reason that David is not in the squad is because he has not had any real match practice since playing in November,” Capello said. “When I spoke with David on the phone yesterday, I advised him that he is still part of my plans and once he is playing regularly in America we will look closely at him again.”
Beckham had spent most of January training with the English club Arsenal to prove to Capello that he was fit, but side trips to Sierra Leone on behalf of UNICEF and to Brazil this week to open his third soccer academy probably did not help his cause.
Having failed to qualify for this summer’s European soccer championship, England is under pressure to reinvent its national team before the start of qualifying this fall for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Capello, a 61-year-old former Italian international, was hired to do just that, and the game against Switzerland is his first opportunity to show that he is willing to make significant changes to both the makeup and the mentality of the national team.
Beckham still will have the chance to join Billy Wright, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and Peter Shilton with at least 100 caps, but now the opportunity will probably come during the MLS season and could cause some problems for the Galaxy, which might be asked to release him for a friendly match at a time when Los Angeles has meaningful league games to play.
England’s schedule for 2008 still is being finalized, but already includes a match against France in Paris on March 26, three days before the start of the MLS season, and a couple of friendly games in May, and another friendly in August.
World Cup qualifying begins in September with road games against Andorra and Croatia, which two months ago knocked England out of Euro 2008 in Beckham’s 99th and most recent game for his country.
In October, just as MLS teams are making their playoff push, England will play World Cup qualifiers at home against Kazakhstan and away against Belarus.
Then, Nov. 19, four days before the MLS final at the Home Depot Center, England has a high-prestige friendly against Germany in Berlin.
If Beckham fights his way back onto the England team, complications await the Galaxy, but for the moment the 32-year-old midfielder has been left to wonder if and when that 100th cap will ever come.
Meanwhile, Chivas USA goalkeeper Brad Guzan on Thursday was denied a work permit by the British government and so will return to Chivas for the 2008 MLS season.
Guzan, 23, did not meet the requirement of having played 75% of U.S. national team games over the last two years but had hoped to gain the work permit on appeal so that he could make a move to Aston Villa of the English Premier League, which had made a $4-million offer for the player.
Instead, Guzan will rejoin the U.S. national team this weekend as it prepares for Wednesday night’s game against Mexico in Houston, after which he will return to Chivas.
Guzan was the top MLS draft pick in 2005 and was the league’s goalkeeper of the year in 2007, when he had 13 shutouts. He has played five times for the U.S. national team and earned his first international shutout against Sweden in Carson last month.
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