Beckham Ready to Foot the Bill
YOKOHAMA, Japan — The foot that adorned the front page of the English tabloid the Sun, which beseeched readers to use it as a prayer mat, has healed.
The figure that appears on the cover of the current British GQ, bare chest oiled, arms stretched out like a martyr’s in front of the Cross of St. George, now wears an England uniform again.
The soccer star who is treated like a deity in the Far East, where a Buddhist temple has erected a gold statue in his likeness, where his appearance at a shopping mall caused such hysteria the mall had to be closed, has arrived in Japan, given medical clearance to return to his stage.
BECKS IS BACK!
BECKS IS BACK!
Yes, he is, and in the history of international soccer, there has never been a comeback quite like the one David Beckham has just pulled off.
The broken foot? Oh, right, that was a bit of a nuisance for a while. Kept Beckham off the field for six weeks, kept all of England on pins and needles waiting for the next medical update as the World Cup opener approached, fearing that the captain and the world’s best free-kick specialist would be lost for the first round, making the second round a moot point.
But last weekend, Beckham was training with the England team again. In case you missed it, England’s tabloids didn’t. Monday’s Daily Mirror ran one full-page photo and three smaller ones of Beckham kicking a ball, along with a bold headline, to provide further reassurance: “The Foot kicks the ball.”
And the subhead: “Sight All England Fans Wanted To See.”
Thursday at a news conference in Higashiura, Beckham told a relieved nation that he was ready to play 90 minutes against Sweden Sunday if needed because “being in a World Cup, you’ve got to be sure you can last a game, and all the games.”
He said he felt “a lot better than I did four or five days ago” and reported that “my fitness is good” and that “I always had it in my mind to be back for the Sweden game, so hopefully it will be OK.”
But then, Beckham has dealt with worse. The broken foot was nothing compared to the damage done to Beckham, by Beckham, in the 1998 World Cup and the amazing recovery he devised in the four years that followed.
In the summer of ‘98, Beckham was the most hated man in England. His 47th-minute red card against Argentina--a petulant flick of the foot at the shins of the opponent who had just fouled him, Diego Simeone, committed right in front of the referee--was seen as about the highest crime a British athlete could commit: letting the side down at the crucial moment.
Beckham’s ill-timed retaliation, however slight, meant England would have to play the rest of its second-round match against the dreaded Argentines shorthanded. Only 10 men left to clean up the spill little-brat Beckham had created, playing on for 73 more minutes before the overtime whistle blew and England was eliminated on penalty kicks.
“Ten Heroic Lions And One Stupid Boy” spat the headline in the next day’s London Mirror.
The Daily Telegraph took the outrage several steps further, lashing out at everything Beckham, from his romance to Spice Girl Victoria (Posh Spice) Adams to his fey and flashy off-the-field lifestyle.
“Beckham’s silly little, smart little kick at his Argentinian opponent was what’s wrong with the national character,” the paper ranted. “This Gaultier-saronged, Posh Spiced, Cooled Brittannia, look-at-me, what-a-lad, loadsamoney, sex-and-shopping, fame-schooled, daytime-TV, over-coiffed twerp did not, of course, mean any harm. Like almost everything stupid that makes English life less fun than it could be and should be, it was only ‘messing about.’ As always, other people have to clear up the mess.”
That captured the national mood fairly well.
By the time Beckham had returned to England after the World Cup, he had been hung in effigy in the streets of London. He needed a police escort to join his Manchester United teammates at their preseason training camp. A church in Nottingham put up a sign that reminded all the sinners who passed by, “God Forgives Even David Beckham.”
Beckham was greeted by hostile, obscene chants at road games throughout the 1998-99 season, one that ended in Beckham leading United to three championships--the European Champions League and English Premier League and F.A. Cup titles. The fans were still after him, taunting him so crudely after a loss to Portugal at the 2000 European Championship, that Beckham responded, famously and controversially, by flipping off the hecklers.
It took a foreigner, a Swede named Sven-Goran Eriksson, to provide some perspective and give Beckham the break he needed to salvage his reputation. In so doing, Eriksson gave himself a needed break as well.
Hired in late 2000 to coach the England national team, the first non-Englishman to carry the title, Eriksson was an unpopular choice. What was a Scandinavian doing in charge of England, the country that invented soccer, holding down the most important job in the land? Worse still, what was he doing entrusting the captaincy of England’s 2002 World Cup qualification campaign to Beckham, the scourge of the 1998 World Cup?
Perhaps because he wasn’t English, Eriksson could keep his field of vision trained on, and only on, this one essential: Beckham was not only the best player England had, not only the best English player since Paul Gascoigne, but also a young man--then 25--who had endured the wrath of the entire country, stood up to the adversity and continued to produce championships for Manchester United when he easily could have fled to Italy or Spain for sanctuary’s and sanity’s sake.
Eriksson saw leadership potential amid the expensive cars and pop-star marriage. England was last in its qualification group when Eriksson and Beckham began the overhaul in early 2001. By October, they had dragged England all the way to first place--Beckham clinching the trip to the World Cup with a spectacular, equalizing free kick in injury time against Greece.
Replays of that incredible goal, along with postgame scenes of a beaming Beckham celebrating with a red, white and blue England banner tucked inside his waistband, completed the makeover. Image isn’t everything, but in England’s ever-fickle pop culture, it comes awfully close. From pariah to messiah--Beckham had completed a holy, wholly unexpected transformation.
By the time of his next encounter with a hard Argentine tackle, the one that sent him to the disabled list in April, Beckham’s popularity in England had spilled over the top. Aldo Duscher, an Argentine defender who plays for Deportivo La Coruna, leveled Beckham with a two-footed challenge that broke a bone in Beckham’s left foot.
The initial medical prognosis: Beckham would be out six to eight weeks.
England’s World Cup prognosis: If Beckham’s out, God save the team.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and the queen both weighed in on the matter, offering their hope that Beckham would be healed in time for the World Cup. Fearing that might not quite do the job, the Sun put a photo of Beckham’s bare foot on its cover and told readers to use it as a prayer mat, rubbing it “at high noon on Sunday and pray.”
For Beckham, it has been a seven-week hurricane of insanity surrounding seclusion and boredom. While the country hyperventilated, Beckham was spending quiet nights inside an oxygen tent, a strategy intended to expedite the healing process. While a sporting goods company plastered Beckham’s face, 65 feet wide and 65 feet high, on a massive billboard in Birmingham, England, with the words, “Cometh The Hour,” Beckham was readying for that hour by jogging countless miles on a treadmill and kicking a soccer ball on a small trampoline.
“When I first did the injury, I did think I would miss out,” Beckham said. “My first question to the surgeon was whether I was going to be fit for the World Cup.
“But time has moved on and in the past seven weeks I have worked harder than I probably ever have.”
Time heals many different things, Beckham has found. If England has managed to finally forgive him for the red card of ‘98, he believes he can do the same with Duscher and his bone-breaking tackle.
“You’ve got to forgive,” he said. “I always forgive people, most of the time. It’s not a problem.”
Now, the most demanding task belongs to the security force assigned to Sunday’s England-Sweden match in Saitama. One week earlier, as England arrived in Kobe for a warmup match against Cameroon, police strained to control a crowd of almost 600 Japanese fans--many of them wearing Beckham jerseys, many of them women--who showed up at the airport to welcome the man they call, in reverent tones, “Bekuhamu.”
Bekuhamu is back. England doesn’t have to play shorthanded anymore.
