SPIN IT LIKE BECKHAM (BECKHAM)

When people list the greatest footballers of all time, some obvious names appear.

Pele, Diego Maradona, George Best, Johann Cruyff, Lionel Messi, Eusebio, Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldo of Portugal all figure.

There are other players not quite on that level who had a facet to their game that could still make people's jaws drop.

Paul Gascoigne, Kenny Dalglish, George Weah, Liam Brady, Bobby Charlton, Franz Beckenbauer, Ruud Gullit, Roberto Baggio, Denis Law, Eric Cantona, Zico, Paolo Maldini, Roy Keane, Steven Gerard, Mo Salah, Erling Haaland, and Marco Van Basten are all in that category.  

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They are players who, on occasion, had the skill and the ability to grab a game by the scruff of the neck and propel their team to victory.

David Beckham falls into that category.

The former England, Real Madrid and Manchester United player had a sweet right foot which made him one of the best crossers of the ball and a free kick specialist.

Beckham wasn't the type of player to get stuck into tackles or score headers.

He was a solid professional who used his very particular set of skills to stunning effect on occasions when playing for Manchester United, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Paris St Germain or England.

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What really set him apart from other players, though, was his carefully cultivated image.

Few players have managed to construct a brand in the way that Beckham has.

Much more talented players don't have the same name recognition.

And few footballers' brands could have survived the storms that flared up over allegations of an extramarital affair and his ambassadorial role for the Qatar World Cup despite that country's record on LGBTQ+ rights.

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Ever conscious of his image, Beckham has always been seen at right events in the right clothes at the right time.

Working closely with Simon Fuller, he has played the PR game like few other sports stars without ever saying anything particularly dazzling.

For some, David Beckham is the perfect example of image over substance.

It's not what you say that matters or even how you say it.

If you look good and look confident, that's enough for a lot of people.

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The David Beckham phenomenon is, therefore, ripe for a documentary treatment and Netflix have duly obliged with a four part miniseries reflecting on his life.

Like everything associated with Beckham, however, it's a tightly controlled affair with the player turned football club owner asking, on the recommendation of his celebrity buddy Leonardo DiCaprio, 'Succession' star Fisher Stevens to direct it.

'Succession' fans will know Stevens plays Logan Roy's PR man Hugo Baker but he has an accomplished CV as a director, having made the award winning 2007 documentary 'Crazy Love' about the New York attorney Burt Pugach and his girlfriend Linda Riss, the 2012 black comedy feature 'Stand Up Guys' with Al Pacino, Alan Arkin and Christopher Walken and Apple TV+ movie 'Palmer' with Justin Timberlake, Juno Temple and June Squibb.

He won an Evening Standard British Film Award for his acclaimed 2016 climate change documentary 'Before The Flood' on which he collaborated with DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese and Brett Ratner.

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Here, though, he has come up with the sort of four part hagiography that Hugo might dream of commissioning for Logan Roy.

In Stevens and Beckham's version of events, the fashion and football icon was a Manchester United fan who achieved his dream of making it to the club and becoming an important element in Alex Ferguson's phenomenal revival of a sleeping English football giant.

Beckham was catapulted to fame by a stunning goal from the halfway line against Wimbledon in 1996 - an undisputably great goal and a moment of breathtaking opportunism.

A good looking lad, he landed a Spice Girl who he married in a Luttrestown Castle near Dublin and who was never really into the football thing.

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An increasingly influential player for Manchester United and England, we see how his fame eventually irked manager Alex Ferguson.

A fallout between the two led to him going to Real Madrid where he had a bumpy start, after that to LA Galaxy where he had to adjust to a league that wasn't up to his standards, then AC Milan on loan and Paris St Germain.

Occasionally Stevens and Beckham throw us the odd tasty morsel like the tensions that boiled over between him and his LA Galaxy teammate, Landon Donovan or details of his OCD.

However for the most part it's a carefully executed Brand Beckham production, seeking to portray its star in the best possible light.

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But there are some puzzling omissions from the story.

Beckham's father and mother feature in the documentary but no mention is made of his two sisters.

His other English Real Madrid teammate Steve McMenamin is also missing, while the documentary waxes lyrical about a team that included Brazil's Ronaldo, Zidane, Portugal's Luis Figo.

The injury that ruled him out of the England squad that flopped under Fabio Capello at the 2010 South Africa World Cup isn't even mentioned which must have been a massive blow to a player who proudly donned the Three Lions.

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Even more bizarrely, while the documentary has to acknowledge the tabloid newspaper coverage of his alleged affair with his Dutch personal assistant Rebecca Loos that threatened to damage his brand while in Madrid, she is never named.

Indeed David Beckham talks rather obliquely about "horrible stories" that put his marriage under pressure and the impact of seeing Victoria hurt by them.

He tells Stevens:"But we're fighters and at that time we needed to fight for each other. We needed to fight for our family and what we had was worth fighting for. 

"But ultimately, it's our private life."

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So there you go. Move along folks - absolutely nothing to see.

The documentary also glosses over the bumpy start to his tenure as the owner of his own football club, Inter Miami.

Comedian Joe Lycett's superb trolling of Beckham over his endorsement of the Qatar World Cup is just ignored.

Nevertheless, Stevens assembles an impressive roster of talking heads apart from Victoria and David including former teammates Cantona, Figo, Michel Segado, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, Steve Bruce, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Rio Ferdinand and Landon Donovan, Argentinian rival Diego Simone, former managers Alex Ferguson, Carlos Queiroz and Fabio Capello, Spice Girl Mel C and former New Order bassist Peter Hook.

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As usual, Roy Keane earns the biggest laugh with his incredulity at Beckham's luxury spending habits: "Who the f**k buys a pen?"

Ultimately, though, 'Beckham' suffers from the same problem a lot of sports and pop star documentaries have these days.

Its subject is an executive producer and he's not willing to let the makers really get under his skin.

Like Beckham himself, it's nicely presented but ultimately it's lacking any depth and any real insight.

It's like a bland hamburger, minus the beef.

('Beckham' was made available for streaming on Netflix on October 4, 2023)