David’s no goliath

Go, in the name of God, go. If I have to read one more newspaper story about how many overpriced replica shirts David Beckham could flog in the Asian market for Real Madrid, if I have to peruse one more breathless news item about how he and the wife were spotted sightseeing in the Spanish capital, if I have to gaze upon one more picture of him doing his shopping, I will go over to Manchester myself and personally frog-march the bastard onto an Iberian Airlines flight, at gunpoint.

When I did a search for Beckham on the Guardian website late last week, only six of the first 20 results that came up were football items (i.e. match reports or comment pieces). The others... well, you can guess. One of them was even headlined “He is more than the biggest celebrity”.

They were all either articles about his alleged househunting expedition in Madrid, or mindless features-page drivel about his dress sense, his facility with fatherhood, his appeal to the gay/black communities...

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Sorry, nodded off onto the keyboard for a second there.

A lot of United fans, myself included, gave up on Beckham for good when he spent about a week walking around, photographers in tow, with his hair conspicuously pinned back by an alice band to reveal his scarred brow, in the wake of the 2-0 FA Cup defeat by Arsenal in February.

He wants to be the star, all the time, every time, but he doesn’t make the difference in enough games for this to be anything other than a laughable proposition. When it emerged he’d been dropped for the Real Madrid second leg, you just knew that unless United won, and won in style, Beckham’s apologists would be dominating the following day’s discourse.

At a time when the tie (though not the game) was essentially over, he stuck away a free-kick, which is his trademark, and then stabbed in a ball that was already practically over the line. On this evidence, we were led to believe, he would have made a difference had he been on from the start.

Horseshit. Ferguson picked the man in form (OIe Gunnar Solskjaer) ahead of the man who hadn’t done anything meaningful for four or five games, to say nothing of being humiliated by Roberto Carlos in the first leg.

I suspect we will be waiting a very long time for the English press to face up to the clear and undeniable fact that Solskjær is a better footballer, has always been a better footballer, and will always be a better footballer, than Beckham.

Most of the hacks are so far up Beckham’s arse that no search party could ever bring them back. The press’s blind spot for Beckham is the same one that causes John O’Shea to be overlooked for Young Player of the Year in favour of Jermaine Jenas, a manifestly inferior player. Namely, nationality. Beckham is the football equivalent of Jonny Wilkinson, albeit with the salient difference that Wilkinson is about three times more likely to produce the goods on the day. He’s the England captain. Mr England. Unchallengeable. Unslaggable.

His public status has been inflated out of all proportion to his importance on the pitch. Nearly all of United’s best wins this season, and all of their best performances, were carried off without him in the side.

He is a reasonably handy player to have around, but he is not essential to the side, not by a long chalk, and has not been for quite some time. Probably not since the Treble season of 1998/1999, in fact. He appears to attract attention in an inversely proportional ratio to the calibre of his performances on the pitch.

Nicky Butt – Nicky goddamn Butt, for jaysus’ sake! – has probably given more to the United cause since 1999. And that says more about Beckham than about the wonderfully spirited but essentially limited number 8.

It’s a lot of fuss to be making over a player with only one trick and a consistency level somewhere between hazy and mediocre. But then, as the man said, that’s showbiz.

And, speaking as a United fan, thank god Paul Scholes wasn’t born with flowing locks and razor-sharp cheekbones.