Those who believe that a certain footballer dominates too much of the news agenda had better avert their eyes. Indeed, the nay-sayers, doubters, haters and sceptics would be best advised to turn off the mobile phone, pack a suitcase and check into a cave for the next three days.

This is, officially, David Beckham Week. Resistance is futile. Flint- hearted Italians may snort in derision at the sentimentality, cynics may roll their eyes and curse the modern obsession with celebrity, but it is an unstoppable force. In Paris tomorrow, English football’s golden personage will win a century of caps for his country and whatever side of the fence you sit on, it is no longer possible to be unmoved by such an achievement.

Even the FA and the man himself have dispensed with the standard coyness as the moment grows nearer. Beckham spoke yesterday like a man who had been told that magic is in the air, meaning that even Fabio Capello, the England manager, had softened his Godfather stance to tip him the wink. To keep him in suspense would have been perverse, anyway.

There is a difference between being tough and acting tough and to summon Beckham from Los Angeles four days before the Major League Soccer season starts only to ignore him would have been counter-productively mean-spirited. Beckham is popular, and not only with the public. David James, his England team-mate, spoke warmly of him yesterday and to toy with the emotions of a player on the verge of such an important milestone would have done Capello little credit.

So Beckham plays and perhaps starts, and most importantly does so on merit. This is still an audition of sorts because Capello is yet to be convinced that a transatlantic commute is compatible with international football in a European qualifying campaign, but it is good news for the player that the match against France has been selected for his comeback, rather than the spring friendlies against the United States and Trinidad & Tobago. This is the most meaningful fixture Capello’s England will play this season, certainly the toughest, and Beckham would not get in on ceremony alone, a fact he appears to appreciate.

“There are not many that have reached 100, but it is important for me to take it beyond that, for quite a few years yet,” Beckham said. “I wouldn’t be sat here if I didn’t feel I could do it, I would have retired. Many people have said my pace has gone, but my answer is that I’ve never had a major amount of pace anyway. My game is very simple: give me five yards and I’ll cross it. I’ll put the ball where we need to score. Since 1996 when I made my debut, nothing has changed.”

Yet something has, because the Beckham who will play tomorrow is vastly different from the player who finished the 2006 World Cup finals under Sven-Göran Eriksson and was initially consigned to history by Steve McClaren. Although the phone call that informed him of his demotion still hurts — Beckham described it yesterday as the lowest point of his England career — for the first time there came the admission that it also acted as inspiration.

When McClaren dropped him, Beckham had been in decline for some time. Ineffective in a promising England team at the European Championship finals in 2004 — he was the weakest link in England’s midfield four — the continued indulgence of Eriksson did him no good and by 2006 he resembled little more than a place-kicker as a moribund England team stunk out the World Cup in Germany.

Beckham’s accurate free kicks were invaluable in an uninspired campaign, but they masked his anonymity in open play. He was at his best when the game stopped and McClaren rightly identified that England’s progress required pace on the flanks. As a succession of replacements failed to make the position their own, however, so Beckham’s determination to recapture past glories became apparent. It was not enough to save a troubled head coach, but the maligned McClaren at least deserves credit for reading the situation correctly, considering Beckham’s honest admission yesterday that a spark had gone from his game.

“When I was left out, I came back knowing that I had to prove to people that I deserved to be there again,” he said. “People felt at the time that it had been easy for me because I’d had a good relationship with the previous manager and they were just picking me for my name. So that was my motivation and I started enjoying it more when I came back. I’d seen how it could be taken away from me and I didn’t want that to happen again. I played with new belief.”

The reason the present manager and player seem such a natural fit is because Capello understands this rebellious facet of Beckham’s character, so he is constantly working to trigger it. Leaving him out of the manager’s first match, against Switzerland, was a logical move on football grounds, but also one that would generate Beckham’s desire to prove his worth again. When asked who he would be thinking of as he wins his century of caps, he gave a big smile and, surveying the room of football writers, said: “All of you lot.”

He amended that to a warmer tribute that included his family and friends and the managers who have supported him, but the first answer was nearest the truth. Winners are not motivated by gooey feelings about loved ones — those come later — but by thoughts of defiance and vindication. Beckham’s muse is every person who has written him off and when he walks out in Paris he will not be thinking “I love you all” but “suck on this”. Good luck to him.

What remains to be seen is whether Beckham starts the game, or finishes it. If John Terry is named captain, many presume that Beckham will be introduced as a substitute because tradition dictates that an international centurion is given the honour of leading the team.

Capello is no slave to tradition, however. There is no FA statute to this effect and Beckham appeared happy to serve in the ranks — knowing that he will be the centre of attention anyway, of course — suggesting that he may yet start under Terry, with David Bentley, Beckham’s rival on the right flank, introduced later.

Both men have a grand sense of theatre and Bentley will enjoy nothing more than an attempt to steal Beckham’s thunder. No doubt this competition is what Capello hopes to stimulate. For Beckham, it has been long overdue. At his best with cordite in his nostrils, had he been properly tested like this under Eriksson he might not be awaiting his 100th cap but encroaching on Peter Shilton’s 125.

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