The miniseries about one of the strongest English footballers of the modern era represents a wonderful narrative surprise.
The approach was skeptical. I won’t deny that I thought it could be that product you look at distractedly, a background. As if the monitor became a fireplace that you light, occasionally look at, but which mainly serves as a filler of the space around you. However, the first ten minutes of viewing were enough to understand that the character, his way of approaching his career, his background and his relationship with his wife are profound and anything but obvious. There is a substratum of humanity in his story that completely goes beyond the media figure. Oh yes, because David Beckham was a fundamental moment of transition towards what footballers have become. It was the first truly global brand. The first body that crossed the looking glass and made itself a business, marketing, product. Without ever losing, in all this, the connection with the green meadow that created it.
The greatness of the footballer, beyond his indisputable technical skills, was forged by an old Scottish socialist who built a wonderful team from the ground up. The Bossas all the kids he raised call him: Sir Alex Ferguson. This grumpy and inflexible coach has coddled, berated and humanely trained Beckham since he was 15, building the entire pavement of his career through sacrifice and application. A padre who did not hesitate to relegate him to the bench, when necessary and even sell him, when he believed he had reached the peak of his physical form, putting the good of the team before that of the boy. And he claims it, without problems, without hesitation or false posthumous regrets.
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Another character structures David’s life: his father, the real one. A sanguine United fan, a worker from the suburbs, who without asking for aspirations or evaluating the boy’s inclinations, puts a ball at his feet, a Red Devils t-shirt on him and, between the lawn of the small garden of the typical brick house of the English workers’ suburbs and that of the pitches of the local teams, gives him the work ethic of working class. One of Beckham’s names is, in fact, Robert: in honor of Bobby Charlton, the elegant English center forward who wrote the history of the sport in England and beyond.
A central moment of the entire narrative becomes the expulsion that David received at the 1998 World Cup, in France, against Argentina. The rivalry between the two teams and between the two countries is not only cultural and linked to colonialism but, more in the modern era, is intertwined with that absurd war of the Malvinas. That conflict opened an immense wound in the Argentine people, so much so that it transcended the act of war in itself to become the inspiration for the two most iconic goals in the history of the World Cup, but of football in general: the God’s hand e The Goal of the Century, both signed by Diego Armando Maradona. In such a heartfelt match and in a country where an aristocratic arrogance reigns, which claims every title at national level for itself by lineage alone, the expulsion, which however did not really cost the elimination of the Three Lions, of the player on whom every subject of Her Majesty had pinned their hopes on “making her come home”, it generated an unlikely wave of hatred.
Beckham, for years, had to suffer attacks of all kinds in every square inch of England he walked on. Only in his Manchester, the red shore, did he find that affection and protection that earned him that bit of sanity that didn’t let him sink. Because it is precisely psychological health that we are talking about. In the episode where this theme is addressed, the suffering, still clearly visible in his eyes, which a boy of just over twenty years old at the time had attracted upon himself is clear. One of the strong points of the narrative of this series is precisely the way in which this theme is addressed, effectively leaving room for the camera and the subtle voice of the player to tell the story.. The torment that is still a scar in the boy’s mind and soul emerges with unprecedented force.
Only in recent years has the topic become the object of studies and attention, given that collective thought sees the professional footballer as a means of production capable of generating an unprecedented added value which certainly entails a generous salary . However, what is not considered is that he is locked in a gilded cage. The curly-haired boy from Villa Fiorito mentioned above was the victim, and with him many others. They earn a lot and it is almost right, in the eyes of the average fan, that they should behave like monkeys aimed at entertaining the public, subject to ridicule and ridicule wherever they do not meet the very high expectations placed on them.
It has been said that Beckham, due to his technical caliber, his marriage to the “Spice Girl” Victoria Adams and pure aesthetics, became one of the first global brands. He embodied, despite himself, globalization which, in the early years of the new century, as a symbol of modernity and progress but, above all, the sale of its image as a brand. Mitchel Salgado, Real Madrid player at the time of the Galacticos, says it well when talking about the tour world championship that the team was forced to do on behalf of sponsors: “People didn’t come to see us play football, but to see Beckham. We weren’t footballers but rock stars.” For this reason, David was a watershed, he marked an era. Despite himself, he has become a symbol of an epochal economic and human change. The aforementioned move from United also contributed to this, this by Ferguson’s sole will: that Real Madrid represented a new way of understanding the game.
Money was starting to become decisive and was digging the first lines of the furrow that now sees the Arab championship attracting many footballers, despite the technical aspect. THE Galacticos they were a blinding monstrosity that, in fact, the god of football did not forgive. Beckham, in just under four years in White T-shirt, won a Spanish title and a Spanish Super Cup. Not much, considering that he played with Zidane, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Figo, Raul and other “side” champions. Florentino Perez said it clearly: not only was the technical caliber of the player decisive in the purchase but, above all, the fact that the costs incurred by the coffers You meringues they were three times recovered from the revenue. Pure, simple and damn banal marketing. Beckham was also this.
Extracting the right complexity from an apparently simple figure is the strength of this mini-series. Which is why if you look at it with a careful and critical eye it reveals the wings of this golden circus that we are used to watching from screens or from uncomfortable stands. It exposes the fragility of a man who, however, becomes a paradigm of modern football without scruples towards its creators and who turns them into cannon fodder. In a certain sense it makes us reconcile with a dimension of romanticism that each of us still tries to see in the popular sport par excellence because we all dream of becoming Beckham.