POSTED: Friday August 13th 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Beckham Dropkicked off English National Team

English soccer team head coach Fabio Capello has earned a veritable red card for his actions in cutting David Beckham off the team the way that he did.

Forget bending. If I’m David Beckham’s heart right now, I’m pretty gosh darn broken. And if I’m Beckham himself I’m completely pissed off.

How else can he react to English manager Fabio Capello’s comments on Wednesday, effectively dismissing Beckham from further competition as a member of his national team?

“Thank you for helping me during the World Cup, but [Beckham is] probably a little old,” he said during a television interview, apparently completely ignorant to the fact that he is 64 and in reference to Beckham, who is 35, sitting out the tournament due to injury, yet remaining with the team and staying on as a coaching assistant of sorts. “Thank you.”

No, thank you Mr. Capello. Yesterday I neglected to hold a door open for someone exiting the subway just after me. It ate away at me all day. Now I’m confident in the knowledge that much less considerate people in the world exist. In fact, I’m pretty sure if I had kept my seat on the packed train right in front of a clearly tired elderly pregnant woman (possible presumably through the miracle of science) with her two other young children running around, all the while carrying groceries and a walking cane to help her with her limp, I’d still be feeling much more like a decent human being today thanks to you.

Whatever you’ve got Mr. Capello, whatever that “je ne sais quoi” is, you should bottle it up and sell it, because you’d make millions in no time, giving people all over this world of ours the chance to feel better about themselves. Indeed, in a separate subsequent interview, Capello confirmed the implications of his earlier comments.

“I think, I hope that when David is ok he can play here in a friendly at Wembley to say goodbye. I won’t pick him for any more competitive games,” he said, appearing to try and calm any uproar his initial comments may have incited. Instead, by not backtracking completely and pulling out the “I was misinterpreted because Italian is my first language; of course David can play for England again. I just meant to say that he will have to take on more of a leadership and less of a starring role on the team” card (it is a pretty rare card to find admittedly), Capello has probably forever sullied his spotless reputation as the coach that led England to a 4-1 embarrassment of a tournament-ending loss against the Germans during the World Cup.

Capello has said that he tried but failed to reach Beckham before announcing to everyone his plans to not have him back. So, not only did he not even discuss this forced retirement from the national team with Beckham before the interview, he wanted to, but just couldn’t properly coordinate a good time with any one member of Beckham’s presumably huge posse. It seems to me that story is about as transparent as those thick-framed things you call glasses. If you had thought about reaching Beckham, you would have, plain and simple.

Now, I’m not a fan of Beckham’s. I think he is one of the most overrated athletes and the most overrated brand on the planet. The fact that he play is Major League Soccer, where actual talent goes to die, is evidence of this. Still, he has played in the second-highest amount of games for England in his career and that alone should have merited him the chance to step back from the game at the national level on his own terms. Even though Beckham has said that he will never retire from playing for his country and has implied that for him to cease playing for England he would have to be not picked again, there are undoubtedly better ways for Capello to have handled the situation. Making Beckham a part of the process, calling for a joint press conference, anything at all really… except of course saying in passing during a nothing interview before a relatively nothing international friendly game against Hungary that your team’s most recognizable player, perhaps the most recognizable player in the world, is suddenly not good enough. Sure, everyone’s known it for years, but there is a such thing as class. Look it up if you think your glasses are thick enough and your skull not.

This is not necessarily the end of Beckham’s career with England. In 2006, he relinquished his captaincy and was dropped by then-coach Steve McClaren. Beckham has obviously since rejoined the team and McClaren was fired a few years ago after England failed to qualify for the Euro 2008 tournament. So arguably bad players do survive bad coaches. I wonder if bad coaches survive bad miscues in the media.

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Keywords · Fabio Capello · England · David Beckham · Germany · Steve McClaren · World Cup

Name: John Waverly
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