Graphic: Milanello miracles - keeping players fit into their 40s

As David Beckham’s England career just goes on and on, so the list of those who have enjoyed writing him off in recent years grows longer and longer. If a circus forever seems to surround the on-loan AC Milan player, the one thing the 33-year-old seems adept at doing is not to let it affect his enduring playing career.

With Beckham due to equal Bobby Moore’s outfield record of 108 England caps if he faces Spain on Wednesday night, he has surely become the ultimate survivor in the face of cynicism. Supposedly washed up at Real Madrid three years ago, and again when dropped out of an England squad altogether in 2006, and again when he opted to pursue his career in Los Angeles in 2007, Beckham has left quite a few high-minded critics wrong-footed. Even Fabio Capello, a single-minded man who supposedly wielded the ultimate axe in Madrid two years years ago, has been won round.

When Beckham spoke to some of us in Glasgow last week after Milan played Rangers in a friendly at Ibrox, one thing became clear: this is a man who believes that he has years left in the game. If Beckham had been a player of the 1960s or 1970s, he would have had his walking sticks ordered. These days, though — and especially, it would seem, at far-sighted Milan — the former England captain is able to see another three or four years unfolding in front of him in football. The Italian giants are prepared to increase their offer to Los Angeles Galaxy after an initial bid of $10 million (about £6.75 million) fell far short of what the Major League Soccer club would consider to make permanent his loan deal.

Milan, as Beckham confessed, have completely rejuvenated him. A naturally lithe, fit and proportioned athlete in any case, life with the Rossoneri has only enhanced his health and conditioning to a degree that he feels is equal to any point in his career. The physiology of this can be baffling — not to say a tad tedious — to ordinary mortals, but when Beckham’s body-fat, blood count and sugar levels are all more balanced than they have been in years, as he claims they are, yet more is clearly going right for him.

“Going to Milan has been one of best things that has ever happened to me,” Beckham told me in Glasgow. “Even though I’ve had a touch of flu over the past few days I’m still feeling better physically than I have done for ages. The club has put me on a programme that has definitely made a difference.”

Pitching up at Milan has been only the latest in Beckham’s endlessly confounding career. Some wondered if he would even get a game in Carlo Ancelotti’s overhauled side and Beckham himself said that he knew he faced a challenge in getting into the Milan team. So what does he do instead? He plays every game, scores goals, provides assists, and becomes “an inspiration” — Ancelotti’s words — in his new career in Italy. Little wonder Beckham said last week: “I knew I might enjoy Milan but I never knew I’d enjoy it this much.”

Those who like to claim that “the myth” of Beckham, the great footballer, has duped victim upon victim now have a hard task trying to look convincing. On one count alone, 108 caps, if Beckham gets there, would amount to some con trick. Or put it another way: Sir Alex Ferguson, Sven-Göran Eriksson, Capello and Ancelotti all have been conned. It is an absurd way of thinking and one put in context by Ally McCoist, a Rangers assistant manager and keen student of football who commented last week of Beckham: “He is still fantastic to watch on a football pitch. Not many players have his presence.”

Beckham says that “the 2010 World Cup finals are definitely still in my thoughts”. For some, this might be taking the Beckham phenomenon a little too far — at 35, realistically, could he still consider being with England in South Africa? Well, increasingly, it is said that the psychological strength of an athlete is half the battle, and one thing is for sure: Beckham certainly believes that he can be with England at the finals in 18 months’ time. Perhaps Capello thinks so as well.