Beckham leaving Madrid for Chelsea?

[Lee]

tsn.ca/soccer/news_story.asp?id=82190

Associated Press
4/30/2004

LONDON (AP) - Speculation is growing in Britain that David Beckham will leave Real Madrid to return to an English club.

Under a banner headline ``Adios Madrid,'' the Daily Telegraph reported Friday that Beckham's business partners were working on a move - with Chelsea the likely destination.

The London Evening Standard said Chelsea was ready to pay 40 million pounds ($92.2 million Cdn) for the England captain.

The Daily Mail suggested Chelsea would buy the star midfielder and loan him back to Real Madrid for a year, allowing him to fulfil a contract with a Spanish mobile phone company.

The stories - all citing unidentified sources - suggest the move is being driven by sponsors and Beckham's desire to return to England to be closer to his wife, Victoria, and their two sons, Romeo and Brooklyn.

Real Madrid officials are also reportedly upset at the commotion Beckham has caused since joining the club last summer in a $40-million US ($54.9-million Cdn) transfer from Manchester United. They cite intrusion by the British press, which reached a peak in the last few weeks following revelations about Beckham's alleged affairs with two women.

The turmoil coincided with Real Madrid's ouster from the Champions League quarter-finals by Monaco, its loss in the final of the Spanish King's Cup to lightly regarded Zaragoza, and its dip to second place in the league behind Valencia.

Millionaire Enrique Sobrino, who is campaigning to be Real Madrid's president, has said he would sell Beckham if elected.

The Daily Telegraph said both English champion Arsenal and Chelsea were interested in Beckham, but only Blues' Russian billionaire owner Roman Abramovich could afford him.

Chelsea manager Clauido Ranieri, widely expected to be replaced at the end of the season, was quoted earlier this week in an Italian newspaper as saying the club was trying to buy Beckham.

The Daily Telegraph said Manchester United would like to have him back, but that would only happen if Sir Alex Ferguson resigned as manager. It called that chance ``negligible.''

The Evening Standard repeated unconfirmed reports that Beckham met in February in a Madrid restaurant with Abramovich. The paper says Beckham's new personal manager, Terry Bryne, worked for Chelsea and has connections with the club.

Beckham, meanwhile will debut his new signature boot Saturday in Madrid's game against Deportivo La Coruna. The shoe, the Adidas PredatorPulse, uses technology developed in tandem with Prof. Gerald K. Cole and colleagues at the University of Calgary's Human Performance Laboratory, part of the school's faculty of kinesiology

[Patrik Sjöberg]

football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1213937,00.html

Beckham could be odd man out as galacticos fall to earth

Kevin McCarra
Tuesday May 11, 2004
The Guardian


David Beckham: His fringe may no longer flop, but he does

David Beckham is about to be the dominant figure in Real Madrid's thoughts, but only in a manner that will embarrass him. It is becoming essential for the club to sell him because he is the one member of the squad whose value could readily be realised in the transfer market. Another burst of fund-raising is demanded at the Bernabéu and there is not a moment to spare.

The Spanish title was surrendered sloppily to Valencia at the weekend, with Real, losing to Mallorca, beaten for the third match in a row. After that, the president Florentino Pérez doesn't need a psephologist to tell him it's time to worry about the elections later in the summer. He himself displaced Lorenzo Sanz in 2000 with the coup de thétre of promising to sign Luis Figo from Barcelona.

He has to dazzle the voters again, to make them so bewitched by the future that they do not look back at the season that is almost over. Names such as Ruud van Nistelrooy, Francesco Totti, Emerson, Walter Samuel and Xabi Alonso are already being dripped into the media. Real have conjured an illusion of prosperity without really having the means to pay for such stars with ease.

The true guide to their situation is to be found in their need to dispose of a dozen players a year ago as they sought a way to bring Beckham on to the payroll. The Real Madrid squad was denuded in the process and now the outcome of La Liga has laid bare the folly. Perez's strategy has to be revamped in the wake of such embarrassment.

The club is open to all offers but Figo is one of a group of older players who will not attract large bids and those who might be tempted by the 27-year-old Ronaldo will have to bear in mind his earlier injuries and, judging by the waistline, a nonchalant fitness regime. That leaves Beckham as the prize asset.

As with most stars, he seems to send mixed signals. Some interpretations have him scampering back to England to repair his marriage whereas others visualise him sticking it out at Real for another year to prove himself. The club, however, may well nudge him out of the Bernabéu despite his supposed worth as a marketing tool in the far east.

Back in August, on his Liga debut, he scored against Real Betis within three minutes and he went on to earn the fans' liking for his industriousness. The honest endeavour still puts some team- mates to shame, but it has been an increasingly inadequate quality since the turn of the year. With his side grinding to a halt, there have been too few outlets for the lavish long passes.

Beckham went to Spain with the belief that he could free himself of the Old Trafford servitude to the wing and become a genuine playmaker. The attempted transition has failed. The veteran Mallorca coach, even before his team had won on Satur day, delivered a judgment which was all the more devastating for being made without malice.

"He's finding it difficult in the middle," Luis Aragonés said. "He passes acceptably and works hard, but he doesn't think quickly. In the centre of midfield it's very important to know where you are going to place the ball before it comes to you. He doesn't think in a hurry."

Sir Alex Ferguson might like to frame the cutting on his office wall at Carrington. The Manchester United manager never budged from his belief that Beckham's proper position was on the flank. If a devastating cross is a player's greatest weapon, after all, it helps if he sticks to the wing.

Real have not transformed Beckham or our perceptions of him. As well as being the first of Pérez's galacticos to complete his debut season without a medal, he is the only one who cannot speak conversational Spanish. In Madrid they view him as something of a recluse and he has not embedded himself in the local culture.

With any luck his scaphoid and metatarsal bones will stay intact, but Sven-Goran Eriksson is taking to Euro 2004 a captain who has been hurt by his experience at the Bernabéu. A return to the England environment of which he is the master might, of course, be the perfect therapy. Irksome as the disruptive side-effects of his celebrity can be, his team-mates know very well that he is essential to their hopes of victory.

Life for Beckham may soon be almost exactly as it was before he began the Spanish experiment. Should Chelsea stump up £20m, he will be the adornment of the Premiership who plays on the right flank. In addition, he will be one more Englishman who failed abroad and it will soon feel as if his year in Madrid was just a figment of the imagination.