David Beckham will make his first acquaintance on Saturday with the Milan Lab,
the high-performance sports science department of Italy’s most glamorous
football club.
There, Beckham will take his medical before joining Milan for a scheduled loan
spell of two to three months, his absence from his employers, Los Angeles
Galaxy, coinciding with the Major League Soccer (MLS) close-season.
Beckham’s aim is to preserve his match fitness for England’s next
internationals, his ambition to participate in Milan’s pursuit of the
scudetto, the Italian league title, and their progress in the Uefa Cup.
The medical should be fine; Beckham has always been a fine athlete and jet lag
is not a long-term condition. He has recently been in New Zealand, playing
an exhibition match designed around his box-office appeal, after a season in
which the Galaxy again finished low in the MLS hierarchy. Beckham will be
playing football in a fourth different continent in the space of just over a
month when he travels with Milan to Dubai, their base for the later part of
the Serie A winter break. Before that, he will take his place as a guest of
honour in the stands at San Siro next Sunday, watching Milan sign off on
2008 at home to Udinese.
This evening, Beckham ought to tune in for the big one: Juventus versus Milan,
second against third in the table. As he looks down the team sheets he might
make out a reassuring welcome mat for a 33-year-old just about to start a
new adventure incalcio.
Juve’s captain, Alessandro del Piero, is a year older than Beckham and
currently thriving in the company of Italy’s elite. Milan’s captain, Paolo
Maldini, is in his 41st year, his partner in Milan’s defence, Giuseppe
Favalli, in his 37th. Pippo Inzaghi, 35, has a slight injury so Milan’s
recent addition, 32-year-old Andriy Shevchenko, may get a start at
centre-forward.
Milan’s biggest summer signing, Ronaldinho, is one of several fitness doubts,
particularly in midfield, where resources may be so stretched that Emerson,
32, makes the starting XI. When you reel off these names you wonder if
Milan’s recruitment strategy has been subcontracted to Step-toe and Son, the
purveyors of other people’s discarded bric-a-brac: Shevchenko returned to
Milan because Chelsea had run out of uses for him; Barcelona ushered
Ronaldinho out of Camp Nou with some determination. Madrid finally got a
price for Emerson well over a year after their fans had started jeering his
square passes and his anaesthetic effect on the pace of a game.
Across town at Inter, Jose Mourinho takes umbrage when Serie A is described as
an “elephants’ graveyard”. At least it isn’t in his yard, he insists. The
Inter president, Massimo Moratti, sees the fading elephants only in the red
half of the city and lists the parade of Milan’s used-to-bes over the past
three years: Christian Vieri, arrived aged 32, moved on before he turned 33;
Ronaldo, packed off by Madrid in January 2007, gone after 16 games;
Ronaldinho; Beckham.
Ronaldinho, though, has scored some of Milan’s most important goals this
season: the winner in the derby against Inter; the one that inspired the
comeback from two goals down to a 2-2 draw at Portsmouth and with it secured
participation in Europe, albeit the Uefa Cup, into the new year.
There is, however, a rickety quality to Milan’s football.
They have won only one of their past five matches and had conceded nine goals
in four games before last weekend’s 1-0 victory over Catania. The idea that
footballers on a descent from their peak years can be revived at Milan is
unproven. Shevchenko has not scored a league goal since returning in August.
Ronaldinho has scored several, has charmed the Milanisti, but attracts some
cynical comments. Luciano Moggi, a former Juventus managing director,
contributed this to the build-up to this evening’s match: “Ronaldinho can do
everything with his feet but as soon as the speed of the game increases, he
just watches it going on around him and takes the odd free kick.”
Now enter another footballer, Beckham, who takes the odd free kick as well or
even better than Ronaldinho. Beckham’s arrival in Milan poses some of the
same questions that his landing at Real Madrid did five and a half years
ago: who lines up first in the queue to seize dead-ball opportunities? Is it
Beckham, with his wonderful right foot, or Ronaldinho, who has already
converted four free kicks this season? Or Andrea Pirlo, once peerless in
Italy for his free kicks? The list extends. Kaka has a useful shot from
range. Shevchenko regards direct free kicks as an important part of his
arsenal. And if they want a forceful left foot, there’s full-back Marek
Jankulovski.
The Milan manager, Carlo Ancelotti, will designate a team hierarchy, if only
to avoid the sort of scenes that occasionally surfaced when Beckham became
the fifth of the so-called galacticos at Madrid and Roberto Carlos and Luis
Figo looked as if they wanted to race the Englishman to the dead ball before
he could start measuring his run-up. Zinedine Zidane would amble by when
this was going on, secretly convinced that if anybody should be taking free
kicks, that person ought to have been him.
Beckham can state his case for his position in the free kick queue only once
he is on the pitch. He may not expect to start Milan’s first game in the new
year, away at Roma, but will have spotted that there may be a hole to fill
on the right of midfield. On Saturday, when Beckham gets his limbs, joints
and body-fat levels checked out at the Milan Lab, Rino Gattuso will be
having surgery on a knee complaint. Gattuso’s recovery may rule him out for
the rest of the season. Now, Beckham is no more like the pugnacious Gattuso
than he was like Claude Makelele when joining Real Madrid in the summer of
2003 but he still found himself in Makelele’s berth at the Bernabeu. There,
he scored within three minutes of his league debut. Milan will not expect
anything as dramatic as that but they will ask soon enough what exactly he
is there for.
There will be far less of the ostentation that accompanied Beckham’s arrival
at Madrid – where they televised parts of the Brazilian Ronaldo’s medical,
as if it were an episode of Holby City – or even in Los Angeles 16 months
ago, although Milan are causing some intrigue by delaying the announcement
of which jersey number the former England captain will be given. The number
23 is already the property of another blond midfielder, Massimo Ambrosini.
The number seven belongs to the Brazilian striker Alexandre Pato. Naturally,
Milan expect to sell many replicas of the shirt that bears the Englishman’s
name and his new digits. Beckham’s hope is that he is allowed to wear it
often enough in public to persuade Fabio Capello that his international
number is not yet up.
Beckham’s Italian diary
DEC 20
In Milan for his medical. Should be a formality and excuse to show off his new
club strip and squad number
DEC 21
Presentation to Milan fans at San Siro before the home match with Udinese.
Then home for Christmas, if he can remember where that is these days, as
Serie A shuts down for its winter break
DEC 29
Joins the Milan squad for a warm-weather break in Dubai, before returning for
training at San Siro in early January
JAN 10/11 2009
Eligible for Serie A debut, a tough fixture away at Roma
FEB 7
Fingers crossed as Fabio Capello, inset, names his England squad for Feb 11
friendly in Spain
FEB 15
The big one. Will he make the lineup for the Milan derby with Inter?
MARCH 21
Duty calls. Back in California as the MLS season resumes with a home game
against DC United
NEW RECRUIT TO THE OLD BRIGADE
- David Beckham At 33, he is no spring chicken, but at Milan he is just
a young whippersnapper. Coach Carlo Ancelotti’s squad is packed with
football’s senior citizens
- Giuseppe Favalli He will be 37 next month. The defender didn’t even
join the club until he was 34 and has since won Serie A, Champions League
and Club World Cup medals
- Andriy Shevchenko The 32-year-old Ukrainian striker is back at San
Siro two years after signing for Chelsea for £30m. He won everything in his
first spell with the club, including the Champions League in 2003
- Pippo Inzaghi The 35-year-old World Cup-winner scored twice in the
2007 Champions League final win over Liverpool and has over 100 goals for
Milan
- Paolo Maldini Now 40, the defender is the grand-daddy of them all. He
has five Champions League winner’s medals
