Last Thoughts On David Beckham

So the international career of David Robert Joseph Beckham OBE has ended for the second time, again for reasons beyond his control. A ruptured Achilles tendon has ensured that he won't be going to the World Cup, and even the most one-sided Beckham apologists couldn't possibly think he'd make the European Championships in 2012.

He could well go down in history as being the last player, at least from western Europe, who'll be primarily remembered as an international footballer. The images of him that will endure won't feature him clutching the European Cup he contributed so much towards winning, or even the 50-yard lob against Wimbledon in 1996 that shot him to national fame.

No, Beckham's iconic moments are a petulant kick at an Argentinian, a shaven-headed one-man-show against Greece, and tears (not for the first or last time) in Gelsenkirchen. The reasons for this are both down to the man himself and the particular circumstances of his club career.

Firstly, gaining the England captaincy in 2000 profoundly changed Beckham and how he saw the importance of playing for his country. Only months before he'd been giving the finger to his own fans after a truly pathetic defeat to Portugal in Euro 2000. But as captain, he seemed to relish the challenge of dragging the national team up from the sorry mess Kevin Keegan had left it in.

The 2001-02 season confirmed him as an England player first and foremost. He made "metatarsal" enter the national lexicon and, after an injury saga played out in the world's media, catharsis against Argentina made up for a quarter-final defeat.

With nearly seven years hindsight, his departure from Manchester United in 2003 seems more and more closely tied to his international career. Alex Ferguson saw the England captaincy as another part of Beckham's "celebrity lifestyle", and only a year later the more obedient Paul Scholes would give up playing for his country. Becoming a Galactico in Madrid was never about the football, just somewhere to keep fit between England games.

But fit he never really was, neither in 2004 nor 2006, and after he gave up the captaincy at a tearful press conference he was deemed surplus to requirements by the clipboard-carrying buffoons of the new regime. With nothing left to play for in Europe now that his beloved England had rejected him, he signed a contract to chase dollars in the MLS at the start of 2007.

But Steve McClaren came calling again, tail-between-legs, and the boy Beckham was back in favour. England would sink even lower under McClaren than they had with Keegan, and when Fabio Capello took over he made it clear that there'd bee no more caps for Beckham unless he was playing in a proper league.

Effectively tearing up his MLS contract with LA Galaxy, he agreed a loan deal with AC Milan that would see him play from January to May in 2009 and 2010. Always overlooked in the Galaxy story is that Beckham only left for America because he was convinced that he'd never play for his country again. So excited was he by the prospect (and only that, remember) of going to one more World Cup that he abandoned the project he'd claimed to be so committed to when he arrived in Los Angeles in July 2007. He based his entire career from 2003 onwards around representing his country. Footballers just don't do that any more.

This phenomenon also has a lot to do with circumstance. Beckham's peak period as a player, from 1998-2003, was a time before the Champions League became the all-consuming behemoth it is today. Real Madrid's pathetic form in the competition since 2003 meant that he never played a prominent role in the modern, bloated, Anglo-centric Champions League.

The European Cup now showcases the drama of World Cups annually rather than every four years, broadcast live around the globe to hundreds of millions. International football just isn't as important or as entertaining to most people any more. We live in a football world where players can be labelled "world class" without ever performing at the very highest level which, in terms of technical and tactical proficiency, is still the World Cup. The Champions League defines Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo and their peers, their national teams are a side story.

Beckham was the last player whose narrative was played out in the shirt of his country, but now the story is almost certainly over.

At Least They're Teaching Them Something

Conservative changes made by the Texas Board of Education to the state's history curriculum have stirred everyone else into a predictable frenzy this week. But at least the American education system actually teaches its kids (a version) of their own country's history.

I obtained my history GCSE at the age of sixteen without being publicly examined on any British history bar the Home Guard. That, frankly, is a disgrace. My classmates and I were given a whistle-stop tour of the history of the Isles from 1066 to Cromwell in the first two years of high school, then skipping a few centuries out altogether for 1914 and the Great War a year later. Then came a tedious two-year slog through those favourite subjects of the British school history curriculum: the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

A 2008 survey found that 45 per cent of the population had no idea what the Magna Carta was. This has to be related to the type of history that's taught in schools.

Solutions? How about a course called something like "The Evolution of British Democracy", going from 1215 to 1945, perhaps. It couldn't be a fully comprehensive take on the entire history of the nation, but by focusing on the instances in which democratic gains were made at the expense of the monarchy, students would at least get a sense of why the country they live in is as it is.

Constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy are our greatest achievements as a nation and they should form a key part of any compulsory history syllabus. There's more to British history than the Blitz and Dunkirk. Then we might be able to foster a genuine national identity without introducing the shudder-inducing "Britain Day" or any gaudy flag-waving.

Ramps, "Mental Toughness" and Tangos

I've just finished reading "Strictly Me", Mark Ramprakash's awfully-titled autobiography and, if you put the dancing anecdote bookends to one side, it's on a level far above most player-penned sports books. Ramps, as he's known by those of us sad enough to care, is the archetypical cricketing enigma.

His record in county cricket is nothing short of phenomenal. He's scored 108 first class hundreds at 54.32 in a career that's been running 13 years and isn't done yet. He averaged over 100 for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. A century of centuries is a staggering achievement - only 24 other men have done it - and Ramprakash is likely to be the last to reach the milestone.

And yet for England, at the highest level, Ramps failed. Fifty-two Tests yielded just two centuries and 2350 runs at just over 27. For a batsman of his talent that's an awful return, and so his book is an exercise in justifying these failings to the public and, one would imagine, to himself.

Many of his justifications hold up. He was messed around by the England management throughout his career in a way that just wouldn't happen in the age of Belly, Colly, Swanny and Cooky. Ramps was asked to bat everywhere from one to seven in his Test career and not given a clear enough of what his role in the side was supposed to be by management. If Ian Bell or Paul Collingwood had made their Test débuts in the early nineties, their careers of failure interspersed with sporadic success would likely have gone the same way as Ramps'.

What really rankles with the Surrey batsman is the accusation that he always lacked the requisite "mental toughness" to succeed at the highest level. In fact, he devotes a whole chapter to laying out his case for having as tough a mind as anyone. Exhibit A for the defence seems to be "but I averaged 40-odd against Australia!", and not a whole lot else.

Now I don't really believe in "mental toughness" as a concept. It's Peter Moores and Steve McClaren-esque management speak, and we all know where that got us. No, I believe Ramps has as tough a mind as anyone. You don't get 100 hundreds without extraordinary levels of concentration.

His problem, reading through the book's lines, was the whole experience of transferring from domestic to international cricket. In his first five Tests, he recorded scores of 27, 27, 24, 13, 21, 29, 25, 25 and 19. Almost there, but not quite. At Middlesex he was the golden boy, Gatting's heir apparent. He scored runs, commanded respect even as a kid, and spoke his mind, often getting himself in trouble.

What comes out in the book is the emotional trauma a player goes through when he transfers from an environment where he's the first name on the team sheet to one where he's constantly fighting for his place and under never-ending pressure to perform. Confidence gets shot, you don't speak up, you're not one of the leading personalities in the dressing room.

The best example comes in 1999, just after Alec Stewart had been sacked following the quadrennial disaster that is England at the cricket World Cup. Ramps was called in, along with Nasser Hussain, for talks with the ECB about the team's future direction. What occurred is so damning that it really needs to be quoted in full:

"Well, my 'interview' lasted five minutes, while Nasser was in there for an hour. We were both asked for our opinions about the England set-up and what we would do if we were in charge, and obviously Nasser had a lot of views and no hesitation about putting them across. As for me, I didn't really have a lot to say. I actually didn't think I should have been there."

Nothing to say! Eight years of being messed around the order, moved in and out of the side and not given a clear role and he has nothing to say when they ask him how he'd shake things up. Ramps doesn't acknowledge the irony in the book that, by the time of this section, he's just spent 150 pages complaining about the England set-up and articulating it's 1990s problems. That feeling of being out of one's depth had silenced a voice that was infamous around the county circuit for being outspoken.

The Biggest Game That's Never Played

Imagine if Manchester United and Liverpool had only ever played each other 35 times. Or if the Yankees and the Red Sox had met on just seven occasions since 1988. Supporters of some teams don't get to meet their fiercest rivals every year, and when Portsmouth and Southampton clash on Saturday lunchtime for the first time in almost five years fans will witness a real collector's item: the South Coast Derby.

The FA Cup Fifth Round tie will be the thirty-sixth time the two clubs have met since they were admitted to the Football League in 1920. Vastly differing fortunes during the following 90 years conspired to make the fixture one of the rarest derbies in English football. Even Bradford City and the now non-League Bradford Park Avenue managed 56 league and cup meetings.

The reason behind this dearth of derbies was Pompey's plight from the mid-seventies onwards, which reached its nadir with relegation to the old Fourth Division in 1978. From this period onwards Southampton were in the ascendency, winning the Cup in 1976 and beginning an unbroken 27-year top-flight stint in 1978.

Between 1976 and 2003, the "Skates" and the "Scummers" met just twice in the league - during Pompey's short-lived return to the old Division One for the 1986/87 season. A two-all August draw at Fratton Park was followed by a rare Blues win at the Dell, 2-0.

A 3-0 1996 Cup victory for Saints was all that transpired between the two sides until Portsmouth were promoted, under Harry Redknapp, to what was by now the Premiership in 2003. Relations between both sets of fans had been tense, often violent, since the 1970s, but the 21st Century would see animosity between the clubs reach up to the boardroom.

Saints won their home league game in the 2003/04 season, as well as a League Cup tie at the new St. Mary's stadium, but a Yakubu goal in March 2004 was enough to secure Pompey a 1-0 derby triumph to start a run that would eventually keep them up.

This was merely the calm before the storm, however. Another St. Mary's win for Southampton started the 2004-05 campaign, but Redknapp's relationship with Blues chairman Milan Mandaric was strained, and the former West Ham boss quit the club. Incredibly, he almost immediately was appointed manager at the now struggling club "down the road", leaving Pompey fans feeling betrayed.

Mandaric fell out with Saints owner Rupert Lowe, and relations deteriorated to the extent that the Serbian sent a boxed duck to his hunting, shooting, fishing counterpart as a barbed Christmas present.

After fate threw the clubs together for a January FA Cup match at St. Mary's, controversially won by the home side after a dubious penalty, two sides facing the drop met at Fratton Park in the warmth of late April for a must-win game. Redknapp was back and Pompey fans bayed for blood. They got it. Saints were demolished 4-1 and Redknapp squirmed on the bench throughout. A month later Southampton were relegated, and the two clubs went back to their usual life in separate divisions.

It's now five years later, and so much has happened in the meantime. Redknapp failed to adjust to life in what was now the Championship, left Saints and came back to Fratton to save Pompey from relegation once more. Gradually being re-accepted, he presided over an era of over-spending to success under new owner Sacha Gaydamak. Fans saw a team stuffed with quality win the FA Cup at Wembley in 2008, but now face the very real prospect of the club ceasing to exist after nearly two years of turmoil, fire-sales and incompetent leadership. Redknapp hot-footed it to Spurs as soon as he realised he wasn't going to be able to do what he liked with the club's cheque book any longer.

Saints suffered all that a little earlier. After almost escaping back to the Premiership at the second attempt, administration and relegation in 2009 was the culmination of two seasons of debt and derision. Now under the ownership of Markus Liebherr, their future seems bright. They're going to Wembley after reaching the final of the JP Trophy, and could still make the play-offs despite starting the 09-10 season with a ten-point deduction.

From a personal point of view, I've got mixed feelings going into this derby. On the one hand, I'm more concerned about the survival of the club I love than beating our biggest rivals. On the other, a victory over Southampton would go a hell of a long way to numbing the pain of what has been a truly depressing nine months to be a Portsmouth supporter, especially dragging oneself out of bed on a Saturday morning thousands of miles away. But it'll mean nothing if the club folds in a week.

Also, I don't really know any of the Saints players. I couldn't point out Rickie Lambert or Papa Waigo from a crowd of people. It's not like seven years ago when we'd hate the likes of Jason Dodd or the defecting Nigel Quashie.

But we have to win to avoid the shame of losing to a side two divisions below us. We have to get our first ever FA Cup win over that horrible lot down the M27. Pompey need to have the bragging rights when we go into our derby in the Championship during the 2011/12 season (if Mrs. Registrar Derrett sees sense, anyway).

The Lonesome Death of the "Event" Record Store

Tomorrow sees the release of the remastered Beatles albums, but you won't see Paul or Ringo turning up in New York. Gone are the days when a major release would be accompanied by an event at a big-name record store, the reason being there aren't any such stores left in Manhattan.

The Virgin Megastore in Times Square stands empty. Tower Records fell almost three years ago. The independents aren't benefiting from this either - Etherea Records closed down earlier this year.

New York, then, is in danger of becoming the city where nothing happens - at least with regard to the high end of the music business. As recently as 2001, Michael Jackson sat patiently like a regular pop star and signed autographs in the Times Square Virgin.

Signings are a rare thing these days, as selling records is no longer how artists and record companies make the bulk of their money. This is generated by the tours, and New York is as busy in that respect as one would expect. Britney Spears has just passed through town and Jay-Z is arriving any day now.

But the megastar no longer has to connect with his or her public in any way. The event no longer fits into record companies' business model. This is all well and good, but it makes life considerably less interesting for those in the city who want to see things that wouldn't happen anywhere else.

Brooklyn Bridge Boot Camp

"9/11 Truth Movement" in Harlem and American scaremongering

In Harlem on a scorching Friday afternoon, the boarded-up nightclub next to one of the prettiest churches in New York took most of the attention. Instead of the usual posters advertising gigs or the latest Judd Apatow movie, the passer-by was encouraged to consider the possibility that 9/11 was "a thoroughly un-convincing lie".

The 911 Truth Movement is a loose grouping of conspiracy theorists who question the mainstream account of the attacks of September 2001. This in itself isn't particularly shocking or interesting. A second glance at the language, however, offers an insight into how Americans who engage in reactionary politics try to get their message across.

Take a look at the top-center poster above, where the viewer is invited to choose whether he is a "dumb-ass", "coward" or "Nazi" for being apparently duped by the 9/11 conspiracy.

Now look at how Rush Limbaugh described Obama's health care plan this week:

"If you want to do a comparison...between the people pushing (the health care bill) and the people opposing it, to national socialism in Germany, it ain't a contest. The people pushing this health care bill have far more in common with the national socialists of Germany - exempting genocide - than any of us who are opposing this health care have."

Pretty shocking. And this type of language just fans the flames in this part of the world. When you get scenes like this in a liberal state like California, you know that vitriolic language has fanned the flames to the point where all common sense and reason go out the window.

One kind of expects this language from conspiracy theorists, it's their stock in trade after all, and they'd have little or no public profile without it. But it's worrying that a significant proportion of the political establishment here throw words like "Nazi" and "evil" at people who are trying to do something as noble as expanding health coverage.

Similar strokes for very different folks, then.