With regards the recent incident with Beckham, it needs to be noted that deliberately getting carded for strategic reasons is nothing new – it’s been going on for years. For me, the thing to note was that he didn’t have the itelligence to keep quiet about it. We all know that Beckham speaks like and most probably has the wherewithal of a 12 year old. I should think he thought he was able, by going public, to show people that he has a little more about him than people suspect, but in effect all he has done is potentially score a spectacular own goal.

Being an Englishman, of course, i couldn’t give two hoots and suspect this will all blow over when we get beaten 3-0 in Cardiff against 10 men with Bread of Heaven ringing in our ears.

I read somewhere that Beckham believes admitting premeditation in his foul on Thatcher proves that he is not the idiot he is portrayed as by certain elements of the media. And while having the cool head to make this decision in the heat of the moment would back up his claim on a superficial level, he obviously didn’t have the sense to think this through and will surely end up regretting it.

But here’s the thing. Beckham may be a self-admitted cheat and a whinging showboater, like his fashionista friend Mr. Totti (what a waste of space), but most English players aren’t. The same applies for Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Scandanavian players etc. World football as one concept doesn’t exist. The game is different—and played based on different footballing worldviews, interpretation of rules, tacit assumptions—depending on where it is played. If you want to put it in more radical terms, a struggle is currently underway to define the very concept of football.

The hard-but-fair, “football as a man’s game” school is still in very much in the ascendancy over the school of gamesmanship/cheating in many parts of the world. Remember tournaments like the World Cup and Champions League are merely showcases, and not necessarily indicative of the game itself. I invite you to play or watch a local level football match in Belfast, for example, if you want conclusive proof that football players don’t eat quiche. At the professional level, I can only suggest watching the English Premiership (best of the world’s big top leagues to watch) instead of the Champions League, internationals or the Italian League.

I think you’re being visionary, though. With the help of the media, TV deals, sponsorship, competitions like the Champions League, and the free international flow of players/coaches, the trend of globalization of football as a sport played by moaning primadonna fashion-models with half-time hairdressers and legs insured for the GDP of African nations will surely continue. But that is not a comment on the sport itself and its intrinsic failure to be a good, honest, and masculine in the American sense. I reckon it speaks rather of the nature of our society.