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The
last time an Englishman announcing that he was about to go into
what Gary Lineker has termed “semi-retirement” made as
much news as this, it was when Tony Blair said he wouldn’t
be leader of the Labour Party at the next election.
Like Blair, David Beckham came to prominence in a blaze of exciting,
shiny newness in the late 1990s, charmed us all, seemed infallible
for a long time, then stumbled as we grew bored of him, the public
finally falling out of love with him following his misadventures
on a foreign field. For Blair, it was Iraq. For Beckham, it was
Portugal and that missed penalty.
Yet David Beckham is a man whose name dwarfs that of mere Prime
Ministers, who bestrides continents like a colossus. An all singing,
all dancing renaissance man who means all things to all people,
Beckham is the blank canvas upon whom the blank generation can scrawl
whatever meaning they want.
To some he’s a pretty boy clothes horse, an empty vessel perfect
for the celebrity century. Others see a post modern icon, laughing
knowingly at himself and the perception of him as slightly denser
than a vanload of short planks, a master of irony.
To another group, he’s an irritant, constantly on show, on
the screen, in the press, on the radio - these numbers have swelled
appreciably in the last few weeks. And to the rest of us, the ones
who are interested in football, he was a fine player with an extraordinary
right foot and an even more extraordinary rubber right leg capable
of helping bending the ball according to his whim.
He was also a remarkably level headed character who coped better
with the slings and arrows of outrageous tabloids than anyone -
the only other players to be in the same sort of goldfish bowl in
England have been George Best and Paul Gascoigne, not exactly exemplary
role models at fame school.
What he has become is a brand that spans the world. Just as kids
in the UK who have absolutely no interest in basketball know who
Michael Jordan is, so you can walk past the shopping centres of
Toronto or New York and be greeted by Beckham’s 200 watt smile
advertising all sorts of things, but chiefly himself.
In that sense, he is the perfect embodiment of our 21st century
world, a world where people are incredibly famous simply for being
famous. That’s not to denigrate his achievements as a footballer,
but if people in Montreal and Minnesota know who he is, that’s
fame achieved for anything but his football.
From a European perspective, Beckham is already becoming yesterday’s
man. Snide comments argue that the very fact that he’s going
to the States proves that he’s not the player he used to be.
That’s true. Age catches up with the greatest. But going to
play in Major League Soccer is not the easy option, not in a footballing
sense. There were plenty of clubs in Europe who could given him
the easy slide towards retirement had he wanted it. Though possibly
not on quite such a big pension as LA Galaxy have offered.
But it’s the size of that paycheque that applies the biggest
pressure to Beckham now, not least because it means there’ll
be no controlling the Lady Victoria in the clothing emporia of Beverly
Hills. Think Julia Roberts’ spending on Rodeo Drive in “Pretty
Woman”, multiply it by the largest number you can think of
- say 275 million times - and that’s the extent of the consumer
whirlwind that’s going to hit California.
When Becks said he wasn’t going to Los Angeles for the cash,
he was telling the truth. He’ll barely get chance to see a
penny of it as Posh demands a separate mansion just for her shoes.
It’s somehow appropriate that Posh and Becks have ended up
in the USA because they are the latter day John and Yoko, him beloved
by the nation, but went weird when he met this woman with a voice
like iron filings.
As Yoko took John away from The Beatles, so Posh took David away
from Old Trafford. As John grew his hair and spent days on end in
a bag, so Becks drew tattoos and spent his time with a WAG. Still,
at least it put an end to Victoria’s singing.
But where Lennon was his own boss, Beckham has paymasters to please.
If you sign up to a contract as fat as the one he has, your bosses
will want their pound of flesh. And while LA Galaxy may be putting
him on the field, it’s the MLS as a whole that is behind the
deal because Beckham is the figurehead that could turn a middling
sport into something that begins to compete with the big guns.
Comparisons are made with Pele when the NASL was in its infancy,
but they’re fallacious. Few Americans had much idea who Pele
was before he arrived at New York Cosmos in the late 1970s. Millions
upon millions know who David Beckham is already. They just don’t
know what it is that he does.
So Becks doesn’t simply have to deliver trophies to the Home
Depot. He is the midwife at the birth of a national sport. If he
can deliver it successfully, the success he’s achieved so far
will look like a mere warm up. If he fails, then like Yoko before
her, Posh had better take up singing again. And that’s just
too ghastly a fate for any of us to contemplate.
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