“He is famous because he is famous”
Common saying in English
I'm going to do something negligible to a journalist. I am going to speak out on a topic that I am not familiar with. The consolation (for fools) is that I will not be the first nor the last, as two or three fellow radio and television talk show colleagues will recognize.
The subject is the documentary that is going around the world about David Beckham, produced with his blessing and collaboration. I know it's going around the world because not a day has gone by in the last two weeks without someone telling me about it by email or text message from England, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Australia, Japan or right here in Spain.
I haven't seen it. I'm not even going to see it. Because? First, because I already know everything I need to know about Beckham, and more, thank you. Second, because in the course of my life there have been a hundred better soccer players than Beckham. Third, because there have been at least a thousand who are more interesting than him as a person.
Better than him: well, apart from the obvious ones like Messi, Maradona, Pelé, Di Stéfano and Ronaldinho (ah, Ronaldinho, I will always love you!), I would be more interested in seeing a documentary that delved into the careers of Guti, or Paul Scholes , or Alessandro del Piero, or Iván de la Peña, to limit myself to some of Beckham's contemporaries.
More interesting than him as people: Maradona and Ronaldinho again, of course, and almost everyone who has played professionally since Beckham debuted some 30 years ago. If I chose one it would be Éric Cantona, Beckham's teammate at Manchester United, a philosopher not only of football but of life who once gave a kung fu kick to a rival fan who was insulting him, the one who closed his career at the top at age 30 and became a film actor. Next to Cantona, Beckham is a dead fly. Well, we all are, to be fair.
It's not that Beckham is a bad guy. I knew him a little. Far from being arrogant and conceited, I remember from when I did a book about the galactic Real Madrid that of all those famous, and not so famous, who dressed in white, he was the most attentive to normal people, the one who when the team came to Barajas from Munich or Monaco at four in the morning stayed longer to sign autographs or take photos with the large group of fans who were waiting for them at the airport. If he went to a newspaper to do an interview, he greeted the journalists and the cleaning ladies with equal courtesy.
But on the field he did not contribute any added value to Madrid, quite the opposite. He took the job from Claude Makelele, the best defensive midfielder in the world in his day. Escorted by the soldier Makelele, the real galacticos (Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo, Raúl and Roberto Carlos) would have won everything. With Beckham, in that first season of his when all the greats were there, they did not win either the League or the Champions League. What Beckham did do for Madrid was praise the brand and the bank account.
The interesting thing about Beckham is not him, but the commercial phenomenon he represents. A documentary that anatomizes why someone is famous because they are famous, like the Kardashians, I would really want to see that. It would help me better understand the human comedy and banality of the times we live in.
I understand that, far from going there, the documentary tells us about Beckham's life. That he spent many hours learning to control the ball with his father, who was a very persevering guy, an overcomer of obstacles who, when he fell, got back up: that is, like all those who manage to make a living playing soccer, in Spain, Argentina or South Korea. I also understand (because it is impossible not to find out a little about what the documentary is about if you are an avid newspaper reader) that Beckham went through a difficult time with his wife, the singer who couldn't sing, when he had an affair with a woman in Madrid. Already. Celebrity Gossip: Forgive me if I yawn. Which brings me to a fourth reason why I don't want to see the documentary: Call me a snob, if you want, but I don't want to be complicit in a global phenomenon as vacuous as the one Beckham represents. And there is also a fifth reason: that I appear in the documentary, the most compelling proof that it cannot be a serious project.
