4:54pm Monday 29th January 2007
By Blake Richardson
Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I am aware, David and Victoria Beckham have never been arrested by the police or been served with an ASBO; they are not foul-mouthed, ignorant, alcoholic,
drug-riddled or rude.
They are, in fact, genuinely pleasant people whose only 'crime' is to have made a success of their lives through dedication, ambition and no small amount of professionalism.
Unlike the vile Goody clan, the Beckhams are deserving role models to our younger generation. Both clearly dote on their children and are devoted to each other. They are, in a nutshell, two decent
individuals.
So why, every single day of the year, are these two great British success-stories painted as miscreants in the popular press? All we hear is Becks the illiterate, Posh the flop star, Becks the failed
footballer, Posh the fame addict.
Earlier this week we learned that Beckham had signed his first big-money endorsement since the announcement of his move to the US – as a dragon-slaying prince for Disney – which met with
the usual fun-poking and derisory headlines.
The national obsession that is Becks-bating rocketed to an all-time high following the news that 'Goldenballs' had signed a five-year £128million deal with Los Angeles Galaxy.
The story has been manna from heaven for the hacks. Whole forests were lost in just a few days to accommodate the extra pages needed to attack the Beckhams. As far as national newspaper journalists
are concerned, the decision to move to the celebrity capital of the world for such an obscene amount of money is unadulterated greed, and the pair have been knocked from pillar to goalpost with
typical red-top gusto.
But it is not David Beckham's fault that LA Galaxy want to offer him the earth to come and play for them. And so what if he is moving for the money? So what if he is moving to increase the Beckham
brand? All that makes him, in my book, is a very sensible person.
Only in this country, it seems, is the desire to make money ridiculed.
The truth is, Beckham's best days as a footballer are behind him. He has no chance of playing for England again and cannot even break into the Real Madrid first team.
The big four of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal don't want him and why would he - or should he - want to ply his trade playing for one of the lesser lights of the Premiership.
At 31 years old, he has done it all and won it all at club level, playing for the two biggest sides in the world, while on the international stage he represented his country 94 times.
It took talent and tenacity to battle back from the torment of the 1998 World Cup, where he was sent off against Argentina and blamed for costing England the tournament. But Beckham endured the
nation's vitriol - which included burning effigies of him strung up on lampposts - and went on to captain his country with passion and pride.
And the boy could play, contrary to the opinion of so many football writers. Just ask his peers, who voted him runner-up in the World Player of the Year awards twice in three years.
Do the people jealous of the couple's vast fortune not realise that it is they who have helped line their pockets with gold, for it is they who, in their millions, buy the magazines Posh and Becks
adorn and the newspapers they headline?
I, for one, will wish them well when they embark on their new life in LA. They may well be lauded for all the wrong reasons in America, based solely on their celebrity, but at least they will not
encounter the ridicule and jealousy that we bombard our superstars with in this country.
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