THE ODDEST THING ABOUT DAVID BECKHAM is that someone so bland generates such fervent disagreement. Is he one of the most accomplished football players of his generation or an above average midfield player selected for his marketing clout? A decent family man or a mobile phone-wielding adulterer? A strong and generous team captain or a self-obsessed despot? The man has spent the past six years on our front and back pages and yet the jury is still out.

Even on those rare occasions when a consensus threatens to build, the man himself steps in to shatter it. After the World Cup in 1998 he was widely despised for the petulant challenge and sending-off that many believed had cost England a place in the quarter-finals. The very next season he responded with a string of performances of such spellbinding maturity that he recaptured most of the hearts he had so recently broken.

When, in February of this year, he seemed finally to have won round the sceptics during Real Madrid’s brilliant first half to the season, he suddenly and inexplicably lost his form. Not even the captain’s armband at the European Championships could provide sufficient inspiration.

The football journalists responded by arguing that the captain should be dropped from the England side and that Sven-Göran Eriksson’s inability to do so was evidence of dangerous sycophancy.

And then Beckham produces a performance against Wales on Saturday to take the breath away. The goal itself was a thing of beauty; a demonstration that, despite those humiliating penalty misses in Portugal, Beckham retains a deep aesthetic appreciation of the theatre of football. Then he goes and gets himself unnecessarily booked and suspended from the next match.

So, the Beckham controversy rumbles on. First he builds and then he defies expectations. At the culmination of his first season at Real Madrid there was exactly the same heated debate and divided opinion in Spain that he had left behind in the UK. Most pundits had said that his opening spell alongside Zidane, Figo and Ronaldo would make or break him. It managed to do both.

Those 12 months, commencing with his murky transfer and culminating with that hoof over the bar against Portugal generated almost as much newsprint as the rest of his career combined. Of the succession of books seeking to cast light on that bewildering period, John Carlin’s White Angels is probably the pick of the bunch.

It conveys the astonishing turnaround in the club’s fortunes from early March. It describes with admirable firsthand detail the conceit of Florentino Pérez and the galáctico transfer policy that so nearly struck gold. It details the marketing master plan of José Ángel Sánchez and his belief that, so long as the team remain competitive, the brand is more important than the results.

The only problem is that the author never really gets close to the man he is seeking to uncover. We learn little that has not already been raked over by the newspapers. We get no closer to a conclusion. Which is strangely appropriate. Let the debate continue...

• White Angels, Bloomsbury, £16.99

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