David Beckham: his life, times, right foot & torso

Beckham: part of the body of work

The British edition of Esquire magazine has just celebrated its 25th birthday, and may it see many more. It's a lovely publication to write for, and I am proud to be associated with it. For its special anniversary issue Esquire commissioned 25 portraits of British men who have been especially influential in the public life and culture of the nation across those two-and-a-half decades. The whole exercise will repay your time but I recommend especially the issue's centre-piece, a long interview with Tony Blair by Esquire editor Alex Bilmes.

My brief was to write on David Beckham, who has certainly, in a cultural sense, bestrode the times through which he's lived. The full piece is online here. I describe him as 'the world's foremost metrosexual' whose 'great fame really has less to do with football than any famous footballer you could name.' Possibly these thoughts have occurred to you, too?

On a footballing level, though, I would draw attention to my brief but pointed analysis of the key items in Beckham's his portfolio of skills; and my assessment of his performances in major tournaments for the national side, a matter on which his diehard admirers seem rarely to want to consider the full evidence.

Esquire (July 2016) now on stands: George Best

I haven't written about football at any great length since this, about Zinedine Zidane in 2006, but I'm pleased to report that I have another long piece about another truly great player - George Best - in the new Esquire. The Best essay is rather more concerned with class and culture and money and celebrity in the UK over the last 50 years than it is with what goes on inside the mind of a true master when he's out in the middle of the park - which was and is my interest in the great Zidane. But Best's gifts have been well examined, I have to say, and remain available to the eyes of newcomers on tape. What has happened to the national game in light of socio-economic changes in wider British society still has work to be done on it, in my view, and I will have more to say on that myself in a new book next year.

In footballing terms, though, there's just one thing I'd want to add to what's printed in Esquire, related to this notion of a comparison between supreme athlete and megastar musician that has advanced with the more the former receives in remuneration and adulation. The performance anxiety of a footballer ought really to exceed that of any rock star: the crowd is tougher, plus there’s an opposition whose job is to stop you playing. But Best relished adversity. In the European Cup Final of 1968 against Benfica, he was targeted, fouled, and repeatedly felled – a lesser man might have been psyched out of the game. Instead Best scored a crucial goal that put Man United on the way to their first European trophy. Not just a pretty face, to put it mildly.