David Beckham Is Still the Best
“If you’ve never seen the young man play live,” David Foster Wallace once wrote about Roger Federer, “and then do, in person, on the sacred grass of Wimbledon, through the literally withering heat and then wind and rain of the ‘06 fortnight, then you are apt to have what one of the tournament’s press bus drivers describes as a ‘bloody near-religious experience.’”
In the aforementioned piece, called “Roger Federer as Religious Experience”, Wallace, in a single sentence, sums up the appeal of any sport: “Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.”
This beauty he writes of is not erotic nor supernatural nor necessarily even aesthetic, but rather, according to Wallace, “Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.”
Taking this reconciliation as the true goal, and Federer as its apogee in tennis, who is soccer’s corollary exemplar? Who exhibits not just graceful control but vision, not just a well-honed physical body but a mind capable of overcoming its evolutionary shortcomings and utilizing its features to the best of its abilities to achieve the physiological maximum of the human condition?
I submit that, despite the influx of new talent, the re-emergence of the aesthetically pleasing and functional “total football,” and the number of players who are simply physically beautiful, the best contender is still—for all the surrounding soap opera and over-hyping media machine—David Beckham.
Bear with me.
Messi may score more goals, and Ronaldo’s abs may be more classically chiseled, but neither can command a game like Beckham still can at his age—often without even touching the ball. Xavi and Iniesta may play masterfully in their roles, manoeuvring with feigned attacks and re-directions only rivaled by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, but neither can single-handedly bring a crowd to its feet just by making one pass or taking one free kick. The other British footballers may embody a brute strength and a hardened and literally weathered will, but neither Rooney nor Lampard nor Terry can make players run to a space seemingly just by thinking about it.
Beckham can do all of these things while making a city like Los Angeles, at least for a brief moment, care about soccer. This is a city that, from what I can tell, hardly cares about the Lakers, even when they win the championship. Thierry Henry comes close in style and grace, and can still bring people to their feet or knees. But Beckham can apparently still do this just by warming up on the sidelines, even if is time is limited by fatigue or injury.
In fact, Beckham’s older age only adds to his appeal; his wisdom is almost grandfatherly (not unlike Lee’s), and his movement, having to be limited only to essential strokes, is, as we used to say in the ‘90s, “poetry in motion.”
This may seem like an uninspired choice, but honestly, who still does it better than Beckham?
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