PEOPLE always talk as if puberty were the hardest thing a person has to do: a change so complete that it requires a new mind, a new heart, a new personality. But this is to take a dismally physical view of life. The far bigger change takes place a little later and over a more prolonged period. It happens, roughly speaking, during your twenties. You can call it a coming to terms with personal inadequacy. It is life’s greatest adventure.
It was during this period of my life that I reluctantly came to terms with the fact that I was not a reincarnation of Blake, Basho and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I was not going to be Poet Laureate.
Better, on the whole, to concentrate on who I was rather than who I wanted to be: an uneasy business for us all and one never fully realised by any person of spirit. But it is an essential process if you are going to get anything done. I wrote poetic match reports about Redhill’s progress in the Athenian League.
Sport exaggerates and melodramatises everything it touches and, on Sunday night in Lisbon, David Beckham was placed face to face with his own inadequacies. He wept salt tears after the match. He had cost England victory against France, yes, but that was only part of it. He also had no option but to conclude that he is not quite as good a player as he has always wanted to be. He is very good, very good indeed, a wonderfully gifted footballer. But that’s small potatoes compared with greatness. Sunday showed us — and him — that for all his very-goodness, greatness still eludes him. And perhaps now always will.
There was a significant vignette even before that. His excellent whipped-in free kick was beautifully turned into the goal by Frank Lampard — and, for a second, Beckham wanted to do his badge-pummelling, I’m-the-one run at the crowd; he has, after all, measured out his life in photo opps. He realised just a fraction too late for comfort that this is not appropriate behaviour in one who has merely supplied a cross, and good taste prevailed. He went and hugged Lampard instead.
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Beckham’s determination to be the main man for England has at times been his (and England’s) greatest strength; against Germany, against Greece, against Argentina. But his deep psychological need for the centre of the stage is becoming his undoing. In particular, his insistence on taking penalties has led to disaster. It was always coming.
That penalty against Argentina in the World Cup two years ago was a wonderful moment on a wonderful day, but it was an awful penalty and it really should have been saved. In short, he got away with it. He missed a penalty in Turkey by falling over, but he got away with that one too, because 0-0 was all that was required. But on Sunday night his saved penalty cost England the match. Beckham’s penalties have always been a disaster waiting to happen: now they are merely a disaster.
If Beckham was still considering himself in terms of greatness, he had the unfortunate experience of watching Zinedine Zidane, a World Cup-winner and a player of unquestioned greatness, do exactly what Beckham had failed to do, score a penalty to win the match. If Beckham wants another tattoo, he could have written on his forehead the words “Not as good as Zizou”. No wonder he wept.
Beckham has had to make a few adjustments in other areas to his vision of greatness and perfection. His belief in himself as half of the world’s only perfect couple, involved in the world’s only perfect marriage, has taken a serious knock and, with it, his belief that the tabloids loved him uncritically. Allegations about his love life spiced up the sporting year and culminated in his apologising publicly in the sincerest and most articulate way he knows: by means of a haircut. He transformed himself into a shaven-headed penitent.
His belief in his football greatness took a further battering during the course of his season with Real Madrid, when his form fell away and his team failed to win anything, a tough break for a man who joined a side, moved abroad (and risked his marriage) to have a further try for greatness. The year ended in farce, defeat and a sending-off for swearing at a linesman.
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Beckham is 29 and at the age when final compromises between his real self and his idealised self must be realised. It will be fascinating over the course of England’s next two matches, against Switzerland and Croatia, to see how he responds to Sunday’s traumatic meeting with his inadequacies.
He is a man of strong will and will seek to alchemise disappointment into ambition and achievement. Too much realism can be counter-productive: if you want to do six impossible things before breakfast, you have first to believe them. But believing in impossible things is a characteristic of youth, of the early rather than the late twenties.
Beckham may still want greatness, but it is becoming harder for him to believe with sincerity that he can find greatness within himself. He has seen the moment of his greatness flicker, for he is not Zidane, nor was he meant to be.
THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER . . .
ENGLAND thought that they had earned one of their greatest victories until Zinedine Zidane struck twice in those traumatic waning moments. So did most sports editors. Here are some of the lead headlines that were set up as the match progressed and deadlines approached, only to be swiftly scrapped.
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DAILY EXPRESS:
Frank’s a lot
DAILY MIRROR:
French 0, Frank 1
DAILY MAIL:
Magnifique
THE SUN:
Frank you and goodnight
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DAILY TELEGRAPH:
Lampard lights up England
THE TIMES:
Lamp lights the way