There’s only two David Beckhams

That’s the life of David Beckham. Hero and villain rolled into one; someone who can make grown men weep one week with the sheer beauty of his craft in England colours, then chant abuse at him the next when he practises the same trade for Manchester United. When Deportivo’s Aldo Duscher went in with both feet on Wednesday night, he plunged not just a club or even a country but the footballing world into a state of shock. A world cup without Beckham would be everyone’s worst nightmare: for England, for his fans in Japan, for the legion of sponsors, for anyone wanting to see the world’s best on display. As a footballer, Beckham has few peers. His skills alone would make him one of the best; few current players are better than he in a dead-ball situation, to hit the free-kick in such a way that it clears the wall and the goalkeeper behind. Even those shots are now so common as to be almost passe. More spectacular, breathtaking even, are those instances when he spots the tiniest chink in a goalkeeper’s cover, sizes up distance and angle and threads the ball through that chink into the goal. All in the blink of an eye, in perpetual motion, often from more than 40 yards out and with his first touch.

That’s the jam. His bread-and-butter shot is the crossfield killer pass, hit like a bullet and laser-guided to land at a teammate’s feet 60, 70 yards away, in the process switching play and throwing off the opponents. It seems so easy when it happens, but it’s actually the result of hours of practice, after everyone else has gone home, trying to hone that skill to perfection. So much so that ‘bend it like Beckham’ has become a catchphrase of the times.

That, too, isn’t the sum of his abilities. His prodigious stamina — he was a cross-country runner in his youth — means he has a higher workrate than any top-flight footballer, able to keep running when others have fallen by the wayside. And his never-say-die, unquenchable spirit, backed by an overwhelming love of the game, means there’s nothing he’d rather do than play football all day.

He has guts, too. England were down by a goal to Greece in the final World Cup qualifying match last October when they got a free-kick in the 93rd minute. It was make or break; miss, and it would be down to a tricky qualifier against Ukraine. He’d already, as Simon Barnes said, played all four positions in midfield, in the kind of frenzied performance that normally saw him getting sent off for a thigh-high tackle. Not this time. He could have taken the escape clause — Teddy Sheringham wanted to take the kick — but probably realised somewhere inside that this was to be his Moment.

He took the kick and scored.

Enough reasons there for football fans to worship the ground he walks. That isn’t the case, however; instead, it is Beckham’s fate that he must hear rival fans calling his wife a whore and saying they hope his son dies of cancer. The explanation for that lies in a past Beckham is desperately trying to forget, in demons who have, with distressing regularity, rekindled the petulant streak in him to bring him crashing down to earth just when he’s set to soar. It can be pinned down to one moment in France 1998, when a moment’s madness against Argentina brought him a red card and sent a resurgent England out of the World Cup.

Instantly, Beckham became the target of a nation’s frustration, no matter that he’d scored so spectacularly against Colombia just days before. That was the moment Beckham’s profile changed from being just another talented footballer to being a public figure. Then on, everything he did — or didn’t — was grist to the media mill, and to the punditry of a football-mad country.

It seems almost perverse but Beckham took to the public eye like a moth to a flame, often with the same consequences. It helped that his fiancee/wife was, if anything, equally famous as a member of the Spice Girls. Each a millionaire several times over, they believed in the credo, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it’. Their sprawling country estate was soon dubbed ‘Beckenham Palace’, their marriage in 1999 in an Irish castle the ultimate kitsch statement.

Beckham the fashionista blossomed. Whether it was a sarong or his wife’s thongs, a Mohican haircut or spikes, half-shaved eyebrows or a tattoo on his back, he went the whole hog. The footballer became a cult figure and it appeared that, somewhere along the way, the lines blurred. For his club manager Sir Alex Ferguson, a strict disciplinarian of the old school, Beckham’s transgressions became increasingly intolerable; on one occasion, he went to a fashion show a couple of days before a vital European cup-tie.

But for both Ferguson and England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, there is a thick silver lining to his celebrity: it acts as a cover for others perfectly happy to live in the shade. For United, this means Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Roy Keane can all go out there and do their stuff without any extra fears or worries. For England, it means Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard and Rio Ferdinand have fewer hang-ups. Beckham is the willing conscript to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

On the field, Beckham has never allowed one life to influence the other. For all his fame and wealth, he’s the hardest worker, a world away from the Europeans and Latin Americans who so often sweat in inverse proportion to their ability.

The greatest irony about Beckham, though, is that he’s also the perfect family man and a role model for children. He has been famously monogamous, is a doting father, doesn’t drink or smoke, helps out in the kitchen (where he makes a mean pasta) and abjures the self-destructive habits that others half as talented have fallen prey to. Other star footballers have groupies; Beckham has his family. One famous spat with Ferguson was when he missed training, calling in to say he had to look after his unwell son.

Indeed, the media has made much of Ferguson’s love-hate relationship with Beckham. They are the antithesis of each other, the perfect picture of a generation gap. The more Ferguson seeks to instil a rigid uniformity among his players, the more Beckham seems to delight in thumbing his nose. But the media have often got it wrong.

They did this season, when Beckham was ‘rested’ for half-a-dozen matches after running himself into the ground in that epiphanic display against Greece. ‘Rested’ was Ferguson’s explanation; the media came up with a million conspiracy theories, pointing to the fact that Beckham was yet to sign his new contract with United. When Beckham did get to play again, it was a revelation; fitter, fresher, sharper, he was the Beckham of old, scoring 16 goals this season. This could have been his best season ever. Till Duscher got his feet in. In her book Burchill on Beckham, British columnist Julie Burchill analyses why the Beckhams attract so much hatred and puts much of it down to sheer jealousy. Those who hate the Beckhams do so, she says, because they so very obviously made it all by themselves. ‘‘We pay lip-service to meritocracy but its rare reality disturbs us, makes us aware of our own idleness or bad luck.’’

‘‘When we regard a pair of young people who have achieved vast wealth from nothing — not from sponging off a spouse or waiting for a parent to die, not by trading off a famous name or good connections — we are forced to face our own busted dreams, and it hurts.’’

Last Wednesday, David Beckham could see a dream die. But if the past is anything to go by, he will cope with that disaster as well as he’s coped with his triumphs…and will probably be shaking hands with his teammate and opposing captain Juan-Sebastian Veron in Sapporo, come June 7.