It’s the morning after the night before. The rain has dried up and the sun is coming out, but the mood – in the car, on the back pages, on the radio, across the nation – is still bleak. The hour-and-a-half journey across London to get to David Beckham’s Football Academy is eventful; it involves one inevitable sacking and no resignations from the employers of the sacked man.

In the lobby of the academy there are coffees and pastries, but no Beckham. You’d hardly blame him for pulling his covers over his head and going back to sleep. He is due to celebrate his academy’s second birthday, to pose for photographs and talk to some carefully selected media, Inside Sport included, about the good work it has done with the 44,000 kids who have been through its doors. I say carefully selected not because we were there, but because Nickelodeon, the children’s channel, and This Morning, the ITV show, were also present. England may be out of Euro 2008, but the Brand Beckham bandwagon rolls on. If there is one man on this planet you’d bank on turning up, it is him.

There is muted, slightly apologetic applause as he makes his way on to the pitch. The kids aren’t really aware of why we are all mournful, most of them were born after he was sent off at the 1998 World Cup. David Beckham, 99 caps and out – too easy for headline writers that one and too insignificant was his role in this campaign really to attribute any of this to him. Told he wasn’t needed at the beginning and then pulled in when things started to get hairy at the end. A bit like on Wednesday night, only this time the happy ending never materialised.

Beckham is adamant that he can be a part of the campaign to qualify for the World Cup in 2010 and, if it’s down to fitness and workrate, he argues that he will be up there with the best of them. When we met, he’d had two hours’ sleep and woken up realising that it wasn’t a bad dream, England really were not going to a leading championship for the first time in his international career.

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The faults that lie deep within the nation's football will not be cured simply by handing Steve McClaren his P45

Martin Samuel

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BACKGROUND

• O’Neill rules himself out of running

• Same old routine for Barwick and Co

• £2.5m for worst English manager

• English game paralysed by fear of the unknown

BACKGROUND

• The contenders

• Defeat puts paid to hopes of £2bn bonanza

• McClaren's epitaph: ‘Worse than Graham Taylor’

• Former coach faces fight to rebuild reputation

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• From 1 to 11: why number was up for England

• Beckham is the blueprint by which to rebuild national game

• Talisman expects backlash but is not retiring

• Carson hoping to bounce back

BACKGROUND

• Wembley authorities unable to explain quagmire

• England were a shower but I’d do it all again

• Time to support the other red and whites

• England got what they deserved, says Corluka

BACKGROUND

• England among also-rans in World Cup seedings

• Players’ egos responsible for failure, says Keane

• Own Goal

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He is a man who is able to put things in perspective: his father has recently been very ill, he has three young boys and he has achieved just about everything he could in domestic football in this country. He has so much more to be getting on with in life and so many more things to be doing than getting very wet on a Wednesday night in North London, watching his dreams being crushed. Which should be a lesson to all those footballers who think the game is a means to an end. Beckham has the end and he still wants the football.

He told me a tale about Sir Alex Ferguson asking him to train with the first team when he was 16, and how that didn’t mean he went home thinking he’d get a first-team wage. He was just thrilled to be asked. The implication was that so many boys are chasing the lifestyle, the cars and the money. “The manager [Ferguson] told us never to worry about all that because it would come if you were good enough,” Beckham said.

Beckham talked a lot about the money in football, defending it as the way things are, so let’s just get on with it, but worrying that it might become the overriding motivation for youngsters wanting to achieve something in the sport.

Beckham also argued England’s underachievement on the pitch was not down to the influx of foreigners; he cited the failure to qualify for the 1974 and 1978 World Cups and the lack of foreign players in the old first division rather quickly when the subject arose. Then again, he played with Eric Cantona and Peter Schmeichel – not just any old foreigners. Beckham is convinced we have more to learn from them than fear from them.

I understand his reference point and get the message, but I think we should fear them. Not for what they do for Portsmouth or Bolton Wanderers on a Saturday, but because they are hungrier than our kids. Those from Africa and Eastern Europe, players who won’t win Fifa World Player of the Year, but who may keep the local lad out of the side, are boys who have fought their way out of poverty. And trying to impose quotas will only demean the Barclays Premier League – it will not make our national side better.

The changes have to come from within this country and our system. The pool of talent has shrunk and it will carry on getting smaller as the cosseted kids of today prefer to sit in front of screens with virtual friends and virtual activity, meaning virtually no chance of success on a global stage again if we don’t decide what it is we really want.

Beckham walked off to greet more people; the word ambassador was made for him. The next England manager will not rule him out – nobody would make that mistake again – but you can’t help thinking he may now be stuck on 99. He is a man we should be utterly proud of, but, in the end, we took Beckham for granted and he has become the best example of tall poppy syndrome this country has seen.