I will do something despicable for a reporter. I will speak on a subject that I do not know. The consolation (for fools) is that I will not be the first or the last, as two or three fellow radio and television talk shows will recognize.
The subject is the documentary that is making the rounds of the world about David Beckham, produced with his blessing and collaboration. I know it’s going around the world because not a day has gone by in the last two weeks without someone emailing or texting me about it from England, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Australia, Japan or right here, in Spain.
I haven’t seen it. I don’t even think to see him. Because? First, because I already know everything I need to know about Beckham, and more, thanks. Two, because in the course of my life there have been a hundred better football players than Beckham. Third, because there have been at least a thousand who are more interesting than him as a person.
Better than him: Well, apart from the obvious ones like Messi, Maradona, Pelé, Di Stéfano and Ronaldinho (ah, Ronaldinho, I’ll always love you!), I’d be more interested in seeing a documentary that delves into Guti’s careers, or of Paul Scholes, or of Alessandro del Piero, or of Iván de la Peña, to limit myself to some of Beckham’s contemporaries.
More interesting than him as people: Maradona and Ronaldinho again, of course, and almost everyone who has played professionally since Beckham made his debut now thirty years ago. If I were to pick one, it would be Eric Cantona, Beckham’s teammate at Manchester United, a philosopher not only of football but of life who once delivered a kung fu kick to a rival fan who was insulting him, causing he closed his career at the top at the age of 30 and became a film actor. Next to Cantona, Beckham is a badass. Well, we all are, to be fair.
Not that Beckham is a bad man. I got to know him a little. Far from being arrogant and conceited, I remember when I did a book about the galactic Real Madrid that, of all those famous and not so famous who wore white, he was the most attentive to ordinary people, what when the team he arrived in Barajas from Munich or Monaco at four in the morning, he stayed longer to sign autographs or take pictures with the large group of fans who were waiting for him at the airport. If he went to a newspaper to do an interview, he greeted the journalists and the working women with equal courtesy.
But on the field he did not bring any added value to Madrid, rather the opposite. He took the place of Claude Makelele, the best defensive midfielder in the world at the time. Escorted by the soldier Makelele, the real galacticos (Zidane Figo, Ronaldo, Raúl and Roberto Carlos) would have won everything. With Beckham, in that first season, when all the greats were there, they didn’t win either the League or the Champions League. What Beckham did do for Madrid was to boost the brand and the bank account.
The interesting thing about Beckham is not him but the commercial phenomenon he represents. A documentary that anatomized why someone is famous because they are famous, such as the Kardashians; I would like to see this one. It would help me better understand the human comedy and the banality of the time we live in.
I understand that, far from going that way, the documentary tells us about Beckham’s life. That he spent many hours learning to master the ball with his father, who was a very persevering person, an overcomer of obstacles who when he fell got up: in other words, like all those who get to earn a living playing in football, in Spain, in Argentina or in South Korea. I also understand (because it’s impossible not to know a little about the subject of the documentary if you’re an avid newspaper reader) that Beckham went through a rough patch with his wife, the singer who couldn’t sing, when he had an affair with a woman in Madrid. Now. Celebrity Gossip: Forgive Me If I Yawn. Which brings me to a fourth reason why I don’t want to see the documentary: call me a snob if you want, but I don’t wish to be complicit in a global phenomenon as hollow as the one Beckham represents. And there is also a fifth reason: that I appear in the documentary, the strongest proof that it cannot be a serious project.
