Some time around half past eight tonight, local time, David Beckham will
perform his last warm-up routines on the pitch at the Santiago Bernabeu
stadium. Familiar rituals, such as the exchange of long passes across the
width of the field with Roberto Carlos, balls arrowed repeatedly from the
Englishman’s right foot to the Brazilian’s left. As the two men look up,
they will see epitaph banners dedicated to each, a glossy tribute to Roberto
Carlos, a painted, lovingly prepared caricature of Beckham as Saint George.
There will be warmth for both, Roberto Carlos a serial winner in his first
six years with Madrid, Beckham an admired second- or fourth-place finisher
in his four. The warmth may be withdrawn if the night goes badly.
Certainly, there will be noise. Madrid should win the Spanish league tonight;
beating Real Mallorca in the last fixture guarantees it. That’s 90 minutes
to end a four-year hoodoo without any trophies at all, 90 minutes to bring
the curtain down on the Beckham era with a jackpot. Shortly before kick-off,
Beckham will give his left ankle a little test. He has had to bear the
injury to be available.
And just before the players take their starting positions, he will slap his
palms gently against those of goalkeeper Iker Casillas, and they will touch
cheeks, Spanish style, to wish one another good luck.
Before we fast-forward the rest of an evening spent with an ear on the games
being played elsewhere, with not one but two other clubs, Barcelona and
Sevilla, able to seize the championship should Madrid falter, an evening
likely to end after sunrise after the traditional celebrations at the
Cibeles fountain, let’s rewind four years to the run-in of Madrid’s last
league title.
Then, as now, it was tight. Then, as now, the story of the title race had a
Beckham component, although then he was a poltergeist in the tale, a star
arriving, not leaving. In 2003 Madrid were on the verge of completing his
recruitment from Manchester United and on June 13 Casillas told reporters:
“It’s annoying there’s so much talk of Beckham, when we’re competing for the
league. Besides,” he added, “I can’t really imagine him here. He’s more
about marketing than football.”
Casillas was the youngest member of the team and no motormouth. He was stating
a widely shared opinion.
THE marriage between Madrid and Beckham, ostentatiously blessed by then club
president, Florentino Perez, would always be about the marketing and the
football. Beckham’s most consistent concern since has been to establish the
primacy of the footballer in his Real Madrid career. “People talk about
selling shirts, but I’m here to play football,” he insisted more often than
he cared to. The marketing mannequin, the glamour icon, would be celebrated
loudly by Madrid’s executives for the next 2½ years. Happily, it took barely
two months for his playing colleagues to dismiss the idea that his fame
counted for more than the game.
Last Friday, Casillas talked of his “sadness” at Beckham’s departure. The
goalkeeper has got to know his teammate’s principal skill intimately. Not
long into his first season, the Englishman was keeping Casillas behind after
work. The two would linger after practice sessions while the keeper shouted:
“Hey, don’t you have a home to go to?” at the blond aiming free kick after
free kick at his goal in practice, from 25 metres, then 30, and then
further.
On the competitive field, Beckham started superbly. He scored his first Madrid
goal during his Bernabeu debut, another within three minutes of his first
league match. The ending tonight may be as gratifying. The in-between has
been stuttering, chaotic and empty of the concrete souvenirs that sportsmen
want.
How good was the football in Beckham’s four years at Madrid? Judge it against
his standards at Manchester United, where he won a European Cup and six
Premiership titles, and the Madrid years suffer dreadfully by comparison.
After what he remembers as an exhilarating first six months, part of a
fluent, expansive team, every spring brought failures on various fronts. The
galactico who brought in the wealthiest commercial endorsements became the
only galactico without a trophy endorsement: Luis Figo, signed in 2000,
helped deliver La Liga in 2001; Zinedine Zidane, who joined the next summer,
scored the goal that won the European Cup in 2002; Ronaldo, the next
summer’s transfer blitz, scored 23 goals towards the 2003 championship.
Enter Beckham. Zidane and Ronaldo loved his passes, but the combination won
no medals.
In none of his four seasons will Beckham be judged as Madrid’s player of the
season. In a team recording its driest sequence for half a century, that man
was usually Casillas. This year it is Ruud van Nistelrooy. The statistics
still give you Beckham as a dominant performer: in 58 competitive matches
for Madrid, he scored or set up a goal once every three games.
In 2005-6 Beckham was their outfield player of the season, he was La Liga’s
King of Assists. It was a feather in his cap. What it did not do was make
him a fixture in the XI the next August. He was on the bench more often
under Fabio Capello, the present head coach, than in the starting lineup,
and that’s even before Capello marginalised him once he had committed
himself to Los Angeles Galaxy with six months left on his Madrid contract.
The estrangement lasted a month, and tonight will be only Beckham’s 13th
start of the league season. But without him, Madrid would probably not be
top. Should they win La Liga, he will be hailed as decisive in a remarkable
recovery.
“The three men who have the greatest impact in the title race are, in this
order: Van Nistelrooy, Sergio Ramos and then Beckham,” says Jorge Valdano,
the club’s former head coach and the director of sport who signed Beckham in
June 2003. “He is finishing at Madrid in the best way, playing his proper
position and with a freedom.” Valdano admired Beckham when they worked
together at Madrid, partly because he saw how rapidly he persuaded his
fellow players that the marketing icon and the footballer would not
interfere with each other. “In the dressing room, he would keep everything
else detached from his concentration on the game,” says Valdano. “He will
leave a healthy memory of the man he is, a footballer of great honesty, and
hugely effective from the wing. He will be remembered as a senor, a
gentleman. The fans also had a good relationship with him.”
That affection will be reflected in banners draped over the upper tiers of the
Bernabeu, a stadium that can make even stout members of an underachieving
team feel bullied. Ask the hounded Walter Samuel, the Argentinian defender
who joined Madrid for not much less of a fee than Beckham in 2004; ask
Emerson, a former captain of Brazil, whistled and cowed by audiences at home
matches. Beckham has always clapped the faithful in victory and defeat, and
knows how highly a discarded No 23 shirt is valued among the group of fans
who sit behind the south goal, but this evening he will not be throwing his
jersey to the ultras. “I still have my first shirt, and I will be keeping my
last one,” he says.
Within the penas, supporters’ clubs, most madridistas wish
that Real were keeping Beckham. “A shame he’s going,” says Antonio Reina,
president of the Peña de Esplugas, a valiant lot because they are based in
enemy territory, suburban Barcelona. “He will leave a big gap, and even in
the disappointing times, when we’ve lacked a strong team unit, we have
always looked at him in a positive light. He always faces up to challenges,
doesn’t hide. When he was left out of the team, he’d be in the stadium with
his family watching. Compare that with Ronaldinho not turning up to watch
Barcelona when he was suspended.”
The title will be Beckham’s best commemoration. “He’ll be fondly remembered,”
says Steve McManaman, a popular Englishman from a previous, successful
Madrid era, “and fans want him to stay, but everything here is about
success. They want to remember players who left on a high, who won the
trophies.”
Asked for his best memory of his Madrid time, Beckham responded
diplomatically: the day he signed. He said he hoped the denouement would be
his new “best memory”. He would treasure certain moments, such as “perhaps
the best goal I’ve been involved in”, a searching, whipped diagonal pass
almost half the length of the field that Zidane met with a left-foot volley
for a goal against Valladolid. There have been historic cameos. His first gran
clasico against Barcelona coincided with Madrid’s first league win at
the Nou Camp for two decades. His uncanny sense of theatre marked his last
comeback, when, recalled by Capello, he scored in his first game. It sparked
a feelgood factor. Since the new year, in the matches Beckham has played in,
Madrid have gained an average of 2.4 points per contest; in the fixtures
without him, it’s about 1.5. But the stop-start nature of his season has not
only been about Capello leaving him out. Even before the LA Galaxy contract,
Capello had not found his form for Madrid so compelling that he had to pick
him every game.
The 32-year-old has also suffered absences with injury in previous Madrid
campaigns. The suspensions mounted up, too, a hefty 13 yellow cards in his
final season, and if the impression is of a player with, as he says, “three
more years” of high-level football in him, Beckham also acknowledges that
the breaks have left him feeling “fresher” this May and June.
Valdano thinks he has watched a “liberated” Beckham. “Since he said he was
going [to America] he has played like a free man,” says his former boss.
“And a free man tends to play better football.” So is it time to go? “No,”
says Valdano. “He was up to another year and probably more. He could have
played a mature role in the side. I think he’s been put under pressure to go
and play in America. Both parties have made a mistake. And now it’s too late
for either of them.”
Seasons in the sun: how David Beckham fared in Spain
Season 2003-04
Liga: 32 games, 32 starts, 3 goals
Champions League: 7 games, 2 goals
Copa del Rey: 5 games, 2 goals
Liga: Real Madrid fourth, seven points behind champions Valencia
Champions League: knocked out in the quarterfinals by Monaco
- El Becks makes a brilliant start, with a goal in the Super Cup - ie the
Community Shield - and on his league debut. Madrid say a late-August adios
to Claude Makelele and Steve McManaman. They are all panache until the
spring, when they run out of gas, slump out of Europe, lose a cup final and
slide down the table, out of title contention.
- Epitomises Madrid’s frustration by being sent off in a late-season
game – it happens to Figo and Zidane, too, within a month – but at the same
time encourages sceptics about his improving Spanish. The red card is for
calling a linesman ‘hijo de puta’.
Tabloid tales
Rebecca Loos wins her place in tabloid history and reality TV shows in
perpetuity
Season 2004-05
Liga: 30 games, 29 starts, 4 goals
Champions League: 8 games, 0 goals
Copa del Rey: 0, 0
Liga: Madrid second, four points behind champions Barcelona
Champions League: knocked out by Juventus, aet, last 16 stage
- Caramba! What a start. Beckham gets dropped for the first time ever on the
first away trip of the league season. The man who drops him, new coach Jose
Antonio Camacho, then gives up the job hours later. Michael Owen comes,
scores and then goes, Jonathan Woodgate arrives and soon disappears,
injured.
-The sight of Beckham on the bench becomes a cause celebre. Madrid lose that
match, and he takes orders from three different coaches and two different
directors of football before June. Becks plays the odd vintage game but
Madrid have fallen into chaos
Tabloid tales
‘Cruz the Daddy’: Victoria gives birth to a third son Cruz (which means
‘cross’ in Spanish), in Madrid on February 20, 2005, weighing 7lb 2oz.
Although he is eligible to play for Spain, Cruz is quoted at 100/1 to play
for England one day
Season 2005-06
Liga: 31 games, 30 starts, 3 goals
Champions League: 7 games, 1 goal
Copa del Rey: 6 games, 1 goal
Liga: Madrid finished second, 12 points behind champions Barcelona
Champions League: knocked out by Arsenal, last 16 stage
- More chaos. The president resigns after failure to reach the last eight in
Europe, describes players as spoilt and lacking comprehension of what their
job entails. A fifth new coach of the Beckham era takes charge. Madrid are a
long way off the Liga pace, but Beckham is probably their best outfield
player in this, a World Cup year.
- The end of the galacticos. This is the pre-season Figo gets the push and
Beckham gets his best right-wing position back. Bingo! He’s Spain’s most
creative player, more assists than anyone, including Ronaldinho, Riquelme
and Zidane
Tabloid tales
After the World Cup finals in Germany, Beckham announces he is to step down as
captain after six years
Season 2006-07
La Liga: 22 games, 13 starts, 3 goals
Champions League: 6 games, 0 goals
Copa del Rey: 1 game, 0 goal
Liga: Top, joint on points, ahead on head-to-head with Barcelona going
into last day
Champions League: knocked out by Bayern Munich, last 16 stage
- ‘The hardest season of my life,’ says Beckham. Dropped by England, dropped
by Madrid, signs in January for a US club on a free transfer as of July.
Madrid are erratic all season, dull to watch, and sloppy. Ronaldo is sold in
January. Beckham, castigated for the US deal, is recalled, thrives and
Madrid go into last day in pole position for his first trophy.
- Beckham wins all the popularity contests after he’s mocked – ‘he’s half an
actor now’, says new president Ramon Calderon – and excluded by coach
Capello. Returns in style, on the verge of a farewell trophy
Tabloid tales
‘Posh and Bucks’ scream the red tops as Beckham, out of favour with manager
Fabio Capello, announces that he has signed a deal worth a reported £125m to
play for the Los Angeles Galaxy in Major League Soccer in America
The Real deal: Beckham’s effect
- Real’s director of marketing, Jose Angel Sanchez, says Beckham, who cost the
club £25m, has been worth more than £300m in marketing revenue to the club n
More than 1m Beckham shirts were sold during his first six months at the
club, and Real recouped his transfer fee in shirt sales during his first
season. Revenue from club merchandise jumped 67% that year n In the two
years after Beckham joined, Madrid’s annual sponsorship and advertising
income soared 137% to £30m as it improved contracts with the likes of
Siemens and adidas. Sales of jerseys and other merchandising jumped 61.5% to
£36m
Real money: how it breaks down
Commercial income from merchandise and sponsorship is worth almost £80m a
year, which equates to 42% of income. In 2000 this fi gure was lower than
10%. Other major revenue streams include match-day income (mainly tickets)
of £48m; television income of £44m; and £16m from friendlies and tours n
Europe’s Deloitte Football Money League was headed by Manchester United for
eight years from its inception in 1997 until dislodged by Real Madrid in
2004-05. Real were top last season with £202m. Barcelona were second
(£179.1m) and Juventus third (£173.7m)
