It left you questioning whether football really is a team sport. The abundance of free-kicks he had already wasted in this game changed nothing, there was a certain destiny about this. The final note of a beautiful tune, so obvious yet so perfect.
David Beckham wound the ball up and over the Greece wall, curling it sumptuously into the far corner. The goalkeeper was unmoved; Beckham was anything but. To the corner flag of his favourite theatre, Old Trafford, to celebrate a vital goal for England.
But this was also a vital goal for Beckham. This is how the man would be remembered. Judgement day for Golden Balls was a World Cup qualifier against Greece.
It seems a slightly trivial occasion for a person’s legacy to be decided. But this particular moment in this particular match stood, and still stands, for something much larger.
The sumptuous free-kick which Beckham scored against Greece on October 6 2001 was the final box-ticking exercise.
Few who watched it live would have argued that Beckham had not been the most accomplished player on that pitch by a gargantuan margin. It was dizzying to witness his effortless yet extraordinary long passes and how much sharper and more involved he was than anyone else in either white or blue.
It was like watching a swan gliding through a flock of geese. It was like watching Daniel Craig eclipse all of his 007 predecessors in his very first Bond film. On this particular afternoon, it almost felt as though comparison was unfair on the other 21 players.
People watch football in different ways. And they watch it to different extents.
Beckham’s glorious Greece-busting goal was the final tick in the box to satisfy the final group of people still somehow unconvinced that this masterful individual performance had, in fact, been a masterful individual performance.
If goals are all that matters in football, then Beckham had ensured in the 93rd minute that he would be remembered for this match forever. Remembered for his goal by some, remembered for his performance and his goal by most. But, most significantly, remembered.
England, buoyed by their 5–1 trouncing of Germany in Munich just two games prior, headed into their final qualifier needing only a point to finish top. If they managed that, they would condemn Germany to the playoffs and qualify automatically as group winners.
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READ: Remembering Germany 1-5 England, 20 years on: ‘A very, very special night’
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Against lowly Greece, though,…
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