It is time for us to consider the moral lesson taught by the career of David Beckham and with it the managerial genius of Steve McClaren. Wednesday night was a triumph, nothing less. England played Estonia and won 3-0; won a theoretically tricky qualifying match with all the serenity of old, all the serenity that we associated with England under Sven-Göran Eriksson.

Eriksson’s England were brilliant at qualifiers but suffered from a failure of nerve at the sharp end of big tournaments. So off went Eriksson, after his and England’s third successive quarter-final defeat, and in came McClaren, vowing to make everything different. He succeeded all right: he abandoned serenity and insisted that England bring their nervous frailties into the qualifiers as well.

Here’s a lesson in life – always mistrust anyone who tells you that he is his own man, whether he says so in as many words or does so by actions intended to express the same sentiment. A person who really is his own man never needs to point it out.

And McClaren’s main aim on taking over as England head coach was to show that he was not Eriksson, that this was going to be his team, no connection with the previous management. So he got rid of his best player. Or one of the best, anyway.

So, after the briefest of honeymoons – a one-nighter, really – he was off into the drudgery of life in an unsuitable marriage, drawing at home to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, losing in Croatia, all notion of serene qualification reduced to a distant memory. And then, at the crucial moment, he brought back Beckham.

McClaren had got rid of Beckham not because he was his own man but because he knew it was the sure way to get a good press. He showed that he was Fleet Street’s own man, or desperately wanted to be.

Many commentators had grown disenchanted with Beckham, with Beckham’s obsession with his own leadership, with the partnership of Beckham and Eriksson. True, it had worked well in qualifiers; true, England were back playing qualifiers; but there was a widespread emotional need for change. Any change – even a change for the worse.

Beckham was that change. Beckham was the man rejected. And whether McClaren is a managerial genius – most of the evidence is to the contrary, it has to be said – there is no questioning the fact that Beckham has got previous when it comes to rejection.

The great tragedy of Beckham’s life is that he is only a multimillionaire. That was only ever the second of his professional ambitions. His first was to be the best footballer in the world and here he has fallen short. He got respectably close, but not close enough. Above all, he never led his country to glory, like Pelé, Beckenbauer, Maradona, Zidane. He was never in that class.

But Beckham is in the highest class when it comes to dealing with rejection, with disappointment, with vilification. It is not too much to say that rejection and disappointment have shaped his life. Certainly, they have brought out the best in him.

The first and greatest rejection came after the World Cup finals of 1998, when Beckham was sent off against Argentina and was blamed for England’s failure. It was a horrific thing to happen to anyone, in sporting terms. I thought that the only sane thing Beckham could do was to get a move abroad.

Instead, he won the treble. Beckham was a central part of that Manchester United team who, in the next season, won the Premiership, the FA Cup and the Champions League.

Far from hiding, Beckham was a man inspired. Being hated filled him with a desire to show the world how good he was and he was then, perhaps, as close as he came to being the world’s best.

This was a story that had its conclusion in Japan, when England were drawn against Argentina in the World Cup finals of 2002. England won 1-0, thanks to a wonderful team performance and a penalty – not the finest ever taken, admittedly – scored by Beckham. It was a modern parable in action – the parable of the Boy Who Messed Up. We have all messed up, we could all identify with the chance of redemption and the passionate eagerness with which Beckham seized it.

Other rejections have followed. Beckham fell out with Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, and proudly sported the wounds he had suffered as a result – a gash inflicted by the infamous flying boot. His response was to go to Real Madrid and at once find himself at home among the galácticos, playing well, thrilling to the challenge.

This was a qualified success because the club were in a state of turmoil remarkable even by their standards. And then this season, Beckham was rejected by Fabio Capello, the latest Real coach, and told that he would never play for the club again.

Almost inevitably, he ended up a vital part of the club’s drive to the top of La Liga and with luck, at last, a Spanish championship.

Perhaps the most touching and revealing guide to Beckham’s way of dealing with disappointment has been in the matter of penalties. He was never a convincing penalty-taker, but he saw it as a part of his job – his destiny – as England captain. It all went well enough for a while, but then he got into the habit of missing them.

He missed one in Turkey but got away with it because the goalless draw was enough. He missed one against France in the European Championship finals of 2004 that cost England a victory and an easier draw. He missed one in the penalty shoot-out against Portugal that ended England’s participation in the same tournament.

Any sane person would have given up, but Beckham’s response was: give me the ball, let me take another penalty. It was stupid, wrong, insane; it was also deeply touching, absurdly courageous and utterly revealing. It showed us the man within, the lunatic optimism of the athlete, the belief that the impossible is straightforward and miracles are merely a matter of negotiation. It was out of step with reality, but great sportsmen change reality.

Well, Beckham is in the class of the not-quite-great, but he was the man England and McClaren needed this week. Thus it was that McClaren had his job saved by the man he dropped. That’s because Beckham was reinspired and reinvigorated by rejection, as he always has been.

Where we go from here is anyone’s guess, as Beckham takes up life in LA Galaxy, which may become LA Black Hole.

So here’s some advice to McClaren: announce that now, Beckham really has completed his task for England and that, as he moves to the West Coast of the United States, he will play no further part in England’s plans. Then pick him. That way, McClaren may – perish the thought – end up looking like a bloody fool who doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’ll win a lot more football matches.