YELLOW CARD, DAVID BECKHAM, FOR TALKING A RIGHT LOAD OF TOSH
David Beckham further claimed that Manchester United are a superior club because of their history
Sunday July 24,2011
By Jim Holden
DAVID BECKHAM joined the merry band of football glitterati queuing up to bash Manchester City with perhaps the most laughable statement of the bleedin’ obvious uttered by a famous sportsman.
“They are never going to be Manchester United,” said Beckham when asked about the City team he will play against today in a friendly fixture for his current club LA Galaxy.
Well, lordy, lordy. Who’d have thought it?
There is some news you should know, Mr Beckham, in your Hotel California exile. City fans don’t want to be Manchester United. They never have done. They are proud to be Man City through good times and bad.
Beckham further claimed that United are a superior club because of their history, and a superior side at the moment because of their far stronger team spirit.
He said that success in football is “not all about paying fortunes for players”, in the manner of City right now.
David Beckham further claimed that Manchester United are a superior club because of their history
This is one-eyed analysis of the most vacuous kind.
Has Beckham not noticed how Manchester United have been spending vast transfer sums on players for a very long time? Did he miss the £30million fee for Rio Ferdinand nine years ago? And the £25.6m spent acquiring Wayne Rooney, and the £28m for Dimitar Berbatov?
Perhaps Beckham also failed to spot the £20m United paid this summer for 20-year-old goalkeeper David De Gea and the £17m for Ashley Young.
How convenient.
As the Premier League season approaches, starting with the Community Shield match between the two Manchester clubs in a fortnight, it seems to me that it’s time for the City-bashers to pipe down.
Yes, the club managed by Roberto Mancini has its faults, but the unbridled joy of their supporters when the FA Cup was captured in May showed that the heart and soul of a traditional English football club remains intact behind the riches showered on them by the sheikhs of Abu Dhabi.
That emotion was about City’s history. It’s different to that of United, but it is still history.
Nor should we forget that for a thrilling period in the late 1960s United and City were relative equals, both winning League titles and European trophies. That is a history which may soon be repeated because both clubs have pots of money to spend.
The other element of Beckham’s bashing of City was the matter of team spirit. Well, that’s always a fragile quality in sport.
It can certainly be fostered by a great manager like Sir Alex Ferguson but it wings in mostly on the back of success.
It is one of Ferguson’s many former players, Steve Archibald, who gave the most eloquent description of team spirit in sport, saying: “It is an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory.”
Beckham’s views are wooden by comparison.
He sounds like nothing more than a propaganda merchant for Manchester United, saying that he “wouldn’t want to be around Manchester City” – as if their spending of money is somehow tainted.
It is a crass thought.
David Beckham has followed the money throughout his career, moving from Manchester United to Real Madrid for a vast income, and then to America for even more.
His comments about Manchester City are more than a bit rich.
