Red Cards and a Black Eye
Here’s an update on England’s highly amusing David Beckham debate:
He scored a majestic goal against Ecuador on Sunday, lending steam to the Beckham defenders, who last week had grown muffled, outnumbered and even mocked for their startlingly low intelligence quotients.
That goal in a 1-0 victory put the Beckham banishers a bit on the defensive smack-dab at the end of their banner week that followed Beckham’s performance against Sweden, during which he played the whole game but may not even appear in game films.
As the most famous footballer in the world -- the husband of Posh (former Spice Girl Victoria Adams), the 31-year-old England captain, the former Manchester United midfielder, the current Real Madrid midfielder, the man who held a humongous pre-World Cup party at his so-dubbed Beckingham Palace that later appeared on TV -- Beckham, he who swims comfortably in publicity, stirs both noise and its fraternal twin, confusion. He might epitomize England’s noted capacity to ridicule its celebrities while simultaneously adoring them.
But how good is he at soccer?
Now, why’d you go ask a thing like that?
He’s a leader, a figurehead. He’s not really a leader. He’s the best in the world at set pieces, free kicks. Should you really reserve a spot on the pitch for somebody just because he’s the best in the world at set pieces? Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson placates him. Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson treats him like everybody else.
He’s certainly not as good as his ubiquitous image would suggest.
No, he’s better than the image suggested by people who say he’s not as good as his image.
In this World Cup, as England has slogged to three unconvincing victories and one unconvincing draw, Beckham has looked feeble. No, wait, he has set up or scored three of England’s five goals with his uncanny passes!
When the ball goes to him, the whole offense grinds down and disintegrates. What an exquisite goal Sunday that flung England into the quarterfinals!
His game against Sweden on Tuesday enabled those who brand him as a good-looking, decrepit hood ornament to note that he resembled a good-looking, decrepit hood ornament.
Sir Geoff Hurst, whose three goals against West Germany in the 1966 final helped put the “Sir” in his name, opined that Eriksson absolutely should bench Beckham, observing him as “slow and predictable.”
Wrote James Lawton in the Independent: “Eriksson insists that he is not married, not even engaged, to Beckham, in which case this is surely a shocking case of a coach living in football sin.”
Wrote Brian Reade in the Mirror: “Throughout the 90 minutes, he made no tackles, had no shots, no dribbles and made two crosses. That’s without mentioning his inability to pick up a man at corners and his complete lack of leadership.”
The Guardian, without suggesting the bench, did use the eloquent “excruciatingly superfluous in open play.”
Just then, in the 60th minute of one of the dullest sporting events on record, Beckham upheld the image that flung his name into the 2003 movie title “Bend It Like Beckham.” Standing over a ball with his favorite ball status -- dead -- he bent it from 25 yards. It curled over four Ecuadorean defenders, hurried toward the left edge of the goal and squirted past goalkeeper Cristian Mora.
Yet with that, he did so much else.
He pushed into the final eight an England side that has proved only that it could’ve finished third in South American qualifying. He made sure England’s connoisseurs of soccer must watch this team again, perhaps a mixed blessing.
He freed his supporters, who claimed that critics’ “contention was laid bare in all its absurdity” (Daily Mail) or that critics’ opinions were “stupid” (Eriksson).
And he secured another five days of national wrangling about a semi-comatose squad and a captain who’s a hood ornament unless the ball stops.
To which a foreign resident drinking up the spectacle can say, only: Thanks, man.
