IN HIS first season as a Real Madrid player, his team have been slated, allegations about his private life have been read the world over and, in one last indignity that amounts to yet another slap in the face, he is being blamed for England’s premature exit from the finals of the European Championship. For David Beckham, whose celebrity long ago reached royal proportions, it has to go down as the annus horribilis.
In his capacity as the England captain, he has spent the last three weeks speaking of his optimism, of his hopes that he could put things right by proving himself on the big stage. In Lisbon the other day, however, as the heat brought beads of sweat
to the brow, he was an embattled man yet again, defending himself against claims that he was no longer fit to inspire a side who had been bundled out of Euro 2004 by the host nation.
He tries to explain himself, but it isn’t easy. The layman remains to be convinced that a galactico with the planet’s most famous club, a dead-ball specialist whose salary is out of this world, should be excused for slipping when he steps up to take a spot kick. And it wasn’t even the first time. An e-mail doing the rounds carries a mock-up of Beckham clutching a book, the title of which is "Zinedine Zidane’s penalty-taking for dummies".
Worse still, he is accused of trading on his global brand name, of captaining a team he doesn’t even deserve to play in. Beckham hasn’t been at his best in these finals, as his coach is prepared to admit. Sven-Goran Eriksson says that, had there been any more substitutes at his disposal in Thursday’s quarter-final against Portugal, he would have removed his captain. He had been listless, short of stamina and unable to make his mark on the match, all of which is more troubling than his miss in the penalty shoot-out.
The morning after the night before, as he sat down to reflect on another broken dream, Beckham was all but laying bare his soul. "I’ve recently had to explain some things to my son about winning and losing. He has just started playing football and he wants to score in every match. I’ve been telling him that you can’t win everything. He even has to win arcade games. It is hard telling a child that you can’t win all the time. Maybe this time, after what happened against Portugal, he will have to explain it all back to me."
In a press conference earlier, Beckham had been riled by suggestions that he should relinquish his armband at the age of 29. The feeling is that there are younger, more inspirational players emerging, such as Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney, now more important to the England team than its captain. With a steely stare, he asked the journalist for his opinion. The former Manchester United player, vilified after his red card at France 98, didn’t go on to win 71 international caps without learning how to stand up for himself.
"I’ve overcome some hurdles in my career, and in my life, and I will continue to do that. This is a big disappointment, but I am man enough and strong enough to come through it. People are looking for me to do something, but I am just not prepared to give them what they want. I will take criticism, but I am the type who will fight back. People don’t always realise how strong I am as a person. If they want to write me off then I will keep coming back at them until I have won."
He has become used to fighting talk lately. Repeated newspaper allegations of an affair with his personal assistant shrouded in controversy his marriage to Victoria, and it is surely no coincidence that there has been a marked decline in his form since.
"It can be tough, but once I get on the pitch I try to black out all the off-the-field stuff. Of course, there are times when you do think about it on the pitch as well. It’s been hard on and off the pitch because of certain situations that have arisen this season, but I have to be strong because I am a father and a husband. It takes so much energy out of me. You even have to plan how to take a trip to the supermarket without being photographed."
The battle for privacy informs almost his every word. Life, it seems, is a struggle, much more demanding than his travails on the field. There, at least, he is public property, and he knows it. In his own time, he would like to be able to walk out on to the balcony of his hotel room without worrying that a camera on a distant hill has zoomed in on his underpants.
"In my life, three or four cars follow me all the time - even when I am taking my two children to play in the park. I want them to enjoy their lives, but sometimes during this last year it really has been intolerable. I have gone to a new environment, people don’t know me and they aren’t used to how I am. In Manchester, I could go to the Trafford Centre and walk around with my family with very few problems. That kind of thing just isn’t possible in Madrid. I can’t go out my front door without things going crazy."
Beckham, then, is not pretending to be happy with his life in Spain. His best days were with Manchester United, when they won the treble in 1999, and the family he was building with his pop star wife could do no wrong. His celebrity now is such that there would be peace for him nowhere, but in Madrid it is particularly disturbing, not just for him but for his children, Brooklyn and Romeo.
"We have finally got Brooklyn to a school in Spain. We didn’t send him last year because of something Zinedine Zidane told me. His children were in school there, and for the first few months there were people filming them in the playground. I have always maintained that I would never put my children in that kind of situation. If we go over there as a family, and that kind of thing happens, then I would have to take a long look at it again."
Neither is he satisfied with the football. Despite an encouraging start in the Spanish capital, Real Madrid slumped to fourth in La Liga, a finish unacceptable to their demanding fans. Beckham was even asked by Eriksson to do extra work in the build-up to Euro 2004 because he wasn’t fit enough. "I haven’t done as much conditioning work in Madrid as I used to do at United," he admits. "That’s just the way it is in Spain. I didn’t feel as fit in the second half of the season as I did in the first half. Maybe my fitness wasn’t what it should have been going into Euro 2004."
Beckham denies that the intolerable pressure on him is self-inflicted. He insists that many of the magazine covers on which he appears are done without his consent, and that he has never, ever done a photo shoot with his two boys.
"I never have and I never will," he says. "I have no regrets about my lifestyle. Some situations I have been pushed into, but others have been of my own choice. I feel I can live the life I want and also protect my children. It’s been difficult but this is my life and it is my wife’s life. You either lie back and let people batter you or you come out fighting. We’ve come out fighting."
