Beckham well aware it's only a celebrity game

Keith Duggan Sideline CutDavid Beckham must be the smartest individual in professional sports. Maybe - as he took pains to emphasise in his most recent public deliberations - his voice is too reedy and words are a constant source of bafflement, but he plays the empty and disposable world of big-time sports like a chess master.

Oh, they must be pining on Fleet Street this morning. Overnight, the tabloid scandal diggers, with their gold chains and imitation Ralph Lauren shirts, the slightly more suave and ruffled knights of the broadsheets and, most crucially, the front-page picture editors realise they have lost close access to their most precious commodity.

There is a great scene in Jim Sheridan's film In the Name of The Father where Gerry Conlon eyes up a couple of posh sorts heading out for the night in the Sloaney part of London. A friendly bobby waltzes into the frame and notes the Irishman's keen interest. "Fack off, Paddy," he says with a cockney sneer. "They're out of your league."

The same applies to Beckham and the English press. As swiftly and as devastatingly as one of his long-distance free kicks, he has moved beyond the orbit of the native ink fiends and even if Ronaldinho ends up as the new cult hero of the Moss Side, the Premiership product has lost its brightest bulb.

Managing to appear in the key pages of the New York Times and Sports Illustrated while simultaneously embarking on a charm offensive in the Orient takes true genius. The very fact of his omnipotence - the fact that his mere declaration of a fondness for sushi - has overshadowed the climax of La Liga - provides manifest proof that Beckham has it all figured out. If Oscar Wilde were around today, the bet is he would hail Beckham as his hero in life.

The metamorphosis of other sports stars into global figures has been easy to figure. The story of Tiger's ascent to the throne of golf has neat parallels with slavery and racism to help it along. Anna Kournikova's brief teenage assault upon the world happened because there are Humberts in the media business same as everywhere else. Mike Tyson's dominion over the dark side has been aided by his attempts to compile the most detailed rap book since his old hero Sonny Liston roamed America's underworld.

But what is David Beckham? At best a pleasant looking and deeply inoffensive Essex lad whose chief mode of articulation and self-expression is jewellery. As assets go, his hardly seemed the most bankable even after he announced his penchant for the sensational with that halfway-line lob of Dave Beasant back in 95/96.

As much as he has made the most of his ability as a footballer, Beckham has made the utmost of his physical appeal (which is lost on a significant minority). We don't know much about these things, but is it not true that Roy Keane is, pound for pound, a more handsome dude, a Robert De Niro to Beckham's Ryan O'Neal?

What Beckham understood perhaps before any other figure in English football is the Premiership is just a television show, that it really has little or nothing to do with the traditional English game. Those around him failed to figure that. For them, the game of soccer and its traditions and particularly those held dear at Manchester United represent the values by which they have chosen to live their life. Keane, in particular, appears to cherish a selfless loyalty to Manchester United football club - which to him means the team of players and the legacy of those players that sat in the dressing-room before him. The glitz they see as just a hindrance. But Beckham embraced the fact that the two now go hand in hand.

For what are the winter afternoons of live Premiership soccer now but loud and gaudy bursts of sporting soap opera? Occasionally, even frequently, its fans are treated to excellent soccer but just in case, the gimmickry of the camera angles, the replays, the build-up are there to keep us hooked.

Beckham intuitively got all that and he got it immediately. All of the episodes that have caused amusement - the sarong, the nail-varnish, the tattoo - all of the instances that were snobbishly derided as being the conceit of a peacock with too much cash and too little taste - have been means to an end. He played the cut-throat English media like a violin. He is the first European superstar to market himself in the best tradition of American sports stars, like Shaquille O'Neal, who moonlights as a rap artiste, or most recently Yao Ming, the Chinese beanpole whose height and ethnicity have turned him into a household figure in the States. Beckham is simply doing the same; putting his best face forward and raking in the lucre.

And remarkably, Beckham has never pretended to be anything other than who he is. In his latest interview, he reminisces: "Looking, back on it, I'm thinking why did I do that? I see pictures now and I turn to Victoria and I say, that was a mistake."

Gesticulating to the English fans? Rowing with Alex? Getting sent off in the 1998 World Cup? Don't be silly. He is talking about his Mohican haircut. Introspection is only skin deep. Beckham claimed his only cares are his family, his football and fashion. Good for him. He knows fashion doesn't keep and maybe Alex Ferguson is yesterday's tailor and maybe Beckham has bolted, however reluctantly, with exquisite timing.

All the hyperbole and high-minded pronouncements on Beckham's attempts to "break" America, on his move to Madrid, on what he might do next; they are a reflection less on the man than on the world about him. America is too vast and soccer too insignificant for Beckham to ever be anything other than half an hour on Jay Leno. But that is precisely what he requires of America. It is not as if he desires to be feted by Mailer or wants his face carved into Rushmore.

Joe Di Maggio still represents the pinnacle of post-war American athletic achievement, the poster boy of a golden age, but in his dying days, he was hawked and whored for all he was worth.

Somehow you get the feeling Beckham is smarter than that. He knows the celebrity game. In ten years' time, professional sport will be more choreographed and scripted and airheaded than ever. What will have become of Beckham by then remains to be seen. There is a good chance, though, he will reveal himself as a figure of much more substance than he has been given credit for. Otherwise, he will just keep on shopping.