How good was David Beckham?

Nori- said:
A few people unhappy I said Beckham wasn't a fighter.

Occasionally lashing out unnecesarily or kicking someone in a World Cup isn't a fighter.....It's stupidity and Beckham did that quiet often.

By fighter I mean someone who can lift people around him when the cards were against us with just his spirit or put fear in the opposition before a ball is even kicked. A Keane, Costa, Viera type. Beckham was not a fighter. Everyone seems better than they were when you look back through rose tinted glasses or watch "best of" videos on YouTube.

As for the Beckham/De Bruyne argument..........Simple question without being biased. You are picking your best 11 and you have to pick a peak Beckham or peak De Bruyne who do you go for? In my opinion, a peak De Bruyne is almost unplayable.
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:lol:

I hope you're wumming.
 
Nori- said:
A few people unhappy I said Beckham wasn't a fighter.

Occasionally lashing out unnecesarily or kicking someone in a World Cup isn't a fighter.....It's stupidity and Beckham did that quiet often.

By fighter I mean someone who can lift people around him when the cards were against us with just his spirit or put fear in the opposition before a ball is even kicked. A Keane, Costa, Viera type. Beckham was not a fighter. Everyone seems better than they were when you look back through rose tinted glasses or watch "best of" videos on YouTube.

As for the Beckham/De Bruyne argument..........Simple question without being biased. You are picking your best 11 and you have to pick a peak Beckham or peak De Bruyne who do you go for? In my opinion, a peak De Bruyne is almost unplayable.
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From your comment I suspect you're too young to have watched Becks play.

De Bruyne is a great, but a totally different player to Becks so don't understand the comparison.
 
duffer said:
Where would Beckham play in your current set up?

Or do you think Ole would change the formation to accommodate him?
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Don't think Ole would change anything and I don't think he'd need to, considering the way Rashford's right footed crosses have been finding Cavani recently. Becks would be putting crosses onto Cavani's forehead week in week out. He'd also be the first senior right midfielder we've had in the squad since Nani and Valencia.

Towards the end of Becks' time we played 4-3-3 on a number of occasions, especially in Europe. Beckham was well versed in playing on the right of a front free.
 
I still haven't seen a better crosser of the ball than Beckham - not before and not since. Cavani would have scored a hatful of goals with Becks pinging the ball into him; martial might even score one or two!
 
Nori- said:
A few people unhappy I said Beckham wasn't a fighter.

Occasionally lashing out unnecesarily or kicking someone in a World Cup isn't a fighter.....It's stupidity and Beckham did that quiet often.

By fighter I mean someone who can lift people around him when the cards were against us with just his spirit or put fear in the opposition before a ball is even kicked. A Keane, Costa, Viera type. Beckham was not a fighter. Everyone seems better than they were when you look back through rose tinted glasses or watch "best of" videos on YouTube.

As for the Beckham/De Bruyne argument..........Simple question without being biased. You are picking your best 11 and you have to pick a peak Beckham or peak De Bruyne who do you go for? In my opinion, a peak De Bruyne is almost unplayable.
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Oh no, you doubled down.
 
Beckham was a fighter. Always gave everything. More limited than a Scholes but if you didn’t think he give 100% game I would doubt you ever saw him. He really was not this Spice Boy charcuterie he’s portrayed as.
 
Ruud van Nistelrooy threw a fit because as a dedicated striker it didn't feel anywhere near as good to play with Cristiano Ronaldo as it did getting service from Beckham.
 
Nori- said:
A few people unhappy I said Beckham wasn't a fighter.

Occasionally lashing out unnecesarily or kicking someone in a World Cup isn't a fighter.....It's stupidity and Beckham did that quiet often.

By fighter I mean someone who can lift people around him when the cards were against us with just his spirit or put fear in the opposition before a ball is even kicked. A Keane, Costa, Viera type. Beckham was not a fighter. Everyone seems better than they were when you look back through rose tinted glasses or watch "best of" videos on YouTube.

As for the Beckham/De Bruyne argument..........Simple question without being biased. You are picking your best 11 and you have to pick a peak Beckham or peak De Bruyne who do you go for? In my opinion, a peak De Bruyne is almost unplayable.
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You've never seen him play live have you? Not a fighter and couldn't defend? Your having a laugh. Go and watch England Vs Greece, and come back to me and say he couldn't lift the team around him.
 
Every single player who succeeded in Fergie's Manchester United was willing to scrap and dig deep for the win.
 
I’d rate Beckham as a “silent fighter”...he persevered until he succeeded. There was a startling incongruity between how he was portrayed in the media and his no-nonsense approach on the pitch.

One of my favourite players in my 30 years as a United supporter.
 
Nori- said:
The media status he had/has probably makes people people remember him more fondly.
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I think the opposite, the media attention probably diverted a lot of people’s attention away from how good he actually was on the pitch.

One of the clubs toppest of top players no doubt.
 
Volumiza said:
I think the opposite, the media attention probably diverted a lot of people’s attention away from how good he actually was on the pitch.

One of the clubs toppest of top players no doubt.
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Massively the opposite as you say.

Ultimately the best thing anyone can say about him is that he was the best player in the team in the best season we have ever had.

Now that's not to say he was better across his United career than some of the other legends in the 98/99 side, but he should have walked away with the Balon d'Or because he was the best player in the world that particular season.
 
JB7 said:
Massively the opposite as you say.

Ultimately the best thing anyone can say about him is that he was the best player in the team in the best season we have ever had.

Now that's not to say he was better across his United career than some of the other legends in the 98/99 side, but he should have walked away with the Balon d'Or because he was the best player in the world that particular season.
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How was his 1999/2000 season compared to 98/99 ? From what i've seen he was still in prime form. Until 2001-02 he was a top performer but his peak appears to have been in 99 or 2000. He even had good dribbling back then.
 
Incredible work-rate and obviously sensational crossing, set piece and long passing ability. A self made player who deserves enormous respect for what he did in a United shirt.

Having said that, of the 4 brilliant players we had in that midfield I would put him in last place in terms of importance to the team. Ole's stint in his position as we took the title in 2002/2003 perhaps helps that theory and we arguably needed to evolve from the style of play that he offered.

It's the fact that the most famous footballer of all time would not make most people's top 100 in terms of talent that doesn't sit nicely and his seeming love of his own celebrity that grated.

"He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right."

I think Bestie went way over the top in this burn but at the same time he was trying to highlight the quite basic nature of Beckham's game that some people can't see past when it comes to rating his greatness as a player. I begrudgingly count myself as one of them if I'm honest.
 
Luke1995 said:
How was his 1999/2000 season compared to 98/99 ? From what i've seen he was still in prime form. Until 2001-02 he was a top performer but his peak appears to have been in 99 or 2000. He even had good dribbling back then.
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Again, a fantastic season. We ran away with the title in 99/00 and he was devastating at times with his delivery, teams couldn't handle him. I tend to look at the 98/99 season as a peak due to him being such a stand-out but yeah in reality, the whole 98-02 period he was outstanding.
 
Unplayable! You knew exactly what he was about but no way of stopping it, I've never seen a player be able to hit a ball with such precision from anywhere on the pitch. Saying he isn't a fighter is a massive disservice, just go back and watch his OT return when we played him and Milan, he gave his absolute heart out and never stopped chasing our players down! That was Beckham to a tee, his engine was unreal. As has already been mentioned, he wasn't he best player throughout the best season we have had!

Hands down my favourite United player I've watched in my lifetime, followed closely Keane, Schloes and Ole.
 
mitchmouse said:
I still haven't seen a better crosser of the ball than Beckham - not before and not since.
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I find it interesting that of all the dozens of different skills in football, there's probably only one that has an undisputed best of all time.

The best header of the ball? The best short passer? The best long passer? The best dribbler? The best finisher? The best slide tackler? The best defensive positioning? Ask a hundred different people to answer those questions and you'd get many different answers. But the best crosser? It's got to be Beckham.
 
Nori- said:
A few people unhappy I said Beckham wasn't a fighter.

Occasionally lashing out unnecesarily or kicking someone in a World Cup isn't a fighter.....It's stupidity and Beckham did that quiet often.

By fighter I mean someone who can lift people around him when the cards were against us with just his spirit or put fear in the opposition before a ball is even kicked. A Keane, Costa, Viera type. Beckham was not a fighter. Everyone seems better than they were when you look back through rose tinted glasses or watch "best of" videos on YouTube.

As for the Beckham/De Bruyne argument..........Simple question without being biased. You are picking your best 11 and you have to pick a peak Beckham or peak De Bruyne who do you go for? In my opinion, a peak De Bruyne is almost unplayable.
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United vs Real Madrid 2nd leg at Old Trafford. Beckham started on the bench after falling out with SAF. Go watch that game in it's entirety and see if your opinion still holds true.
 
JB7 said:
Again, a fantastic season. We ran away with the title in 99/00 and he was devastating at times with his delivery, teams couldn't handle him. I tend to look at the 98/99 season as a peak due to him being such a stand-out but yeah in reality, the whole 98-02 period he was outstanding.
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I think he was very good in his first season at Madrid aswell. Unfortunately towards the end of 2004 his level started dropping compared to what it once was.
 
Inigo Montoya said:
The best crosser and free kick taker we’ve ever had. Also the hardest working RW we’ve ever had
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Agreed, apart from brilliant free kicks and crosses, a skill he improved by a massive amount of extra practice, outside of normal training hours.
His hard work and tenacity took him to higher levels than some more gifted, but lazier players never achieved.
 
Amazing player. In today’s game you could mould Beckham into one of the most dangerous central attacking midfielders in the game. Right of a three, up and down the pitch, peeling wide to whip in crosses and scoring goals every few games.

He’d probably make a pretty brilliant full back, too.
 
Dont forget he was demonised by a lot of people after the the kick out at Simone at the 1998 World cup. For me he stepped up and showed real character to become an even better player than he was after that.
 
A World Class midfielder who worked his bollocks off for the team, every game.
 
No one appreciated just how good this lad was. TAA gets lauded but becks was different level to him by a mile. Fit as a fiddle, tough, put the ball on a sixpence. He’s a huge star but he would be even bigger had he stayed. Gutted when he left
 
Munkehboi said:
Dont forget he was demonised by a lot of people after the the kick out at Simone at the 1998 World cup. For me he stepped up and showed real character to become an even better player than he was after that.
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He was arguably our best player in the treble season. Remarkable player with a strong mentality.
 
Lord SInister said:


Although the video maker is quite a fan boy, but this is quite a good video about David.
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People were keen to debate this when he signed for the LA Galaxy, wondering where he fit in a list of world's best players, or if he even belonged anywhere on such a list. I'd like to add to the argument in favor of Beckham being a world class player, because even at the tail end of his career he was still transforming teams. He was surrounded by brilliant players here at United and at Real Madrid, so when you see what he could do with a bunch of mediocre players, like at the LA Galaxy, you really saw his class.

Case in point: at the Galaxy, it took a few matches for his teammates to trust him. No one in the MLS could deliver a ball like him, and not just from free kicks, from open play with barely any calculation. Beckhams spots the run, looks down and delivers a dream ball into someone's pocket 40, 50, 60 yards no problem. The way his accuracy unleashed players has maybe been glossed over or taken for granted. A clever forward player could juke one way and get a yard on his marker and know the ball was coming, just keep running at the same pace and the ball would fall perfectly. Your team was always lifted when he got the ball because anything could happen, you always believed.

When you can launch an attack from virtually anywhere on the pitch, your opponents don't know whether to stick or twist. Beckham's ability to switch play, launch counters from his own penalty area and so on allowed United to stay on the front foot. Even at Los Angeles, Beckham was dropping jaws every week with his ability.

I think some of this gets lost in talking about how good he is, as people pick out weaknesses in his game and say he wasn't an all-conquering midfielder. Like, I don't know how great a tackler he was, and I don't know if his goals-to-minutes stats are where an all-time great would be, but if not, those stats are not telling close to the whole tale. When he left United, he took a lot of magic with him. It's one thing when a player can get his team out of jail with a nearly impossible free kick, and it's another thing entirely when you watch a player do things just delight and entertain -- while also winning matches. I loved him and was devastated when he left United.

When he finally showed up in Los Angeles, I was already a season ticket holder, and seeing him every week in the flesh enabled me to see what he was doing without the ball. He never slacked. He was never lazy. He gave as good as he got and never shirked a physical challenge either. He's exactly the kind of player that made everyone around him better.

This video though, Leester, Paul Shoals, and Zidayn.
 
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Stacks said:
who were these more gifted but lazy?
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It wasn't my argument but I'll attempt an answer: Anthony Martial

Could we reasonably argue that Martial was a more talented footballer at 21 than Beckham? I think so. Some might disagree, but it's pretty obvious that Martial came to OT with extraordinary talent and was a natural gifted athlete as well.

But whatever one thinks about that claim, there is no absolutely no question whatsoever that Beckham was a very hard worker and that Martial is, well, a lazy feck. Maybe he's got mental problems, but whatever the root of his problems are, he's the poster boy of the lazy modern footballer.
 
Great player, Should of won the Ballon D'or in 99. In that great team he was vital in all the big games leading to the treble, and that was after the world cup red card and all the crap he had to cope with from the media and opposition fans.
Gutted when he left but still a United legend
 
Probably the last footballing celebrity, until that trend was overtaken by celebrity footballers.

Becks was class, I was gutted when he left.
 
lex talionis said:
It wasn't my argument but I'll attempt an answer: Anthony Martial

Could we reasonably argue that Martial was a more talented footballer at 21 than Beckham? I think so. Some might disagree, but it's pretty obvious that Martial came to OT with extraordinary talent and was a natural gifted athlete as well.

But whatever one thinks about that claim, there is no absolutely no question whatsoever that Beckham was a very hard worker and that Martial is, well, a lazy feck. Maybe he's got mental problems, but whatever the root of his problems are, he's the poster boy of the lazy modern footballer.
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Nah. Beckham could do everything better than Martial except dribble. The art of manipulation and the technical side of the game they were world's apart. Crazy assessment.
 
Sorry to bump thread felt needless to create new one.

other day on talk sport the argument was beckham or salah. It’s is basically asking socks or gloves two completely different players. Becks was never a winger he had probably one the best right foots ever, he had unmatched workrate. He faced more hate than probably any player will ever received. He was in the spotlight more than any player ever - I watched his whole career and believe he is very underrated - it’s as if people think because of his status he should be messi. But what becks was good at he was amazing at and when under pressure was nearly no one better.

not knocking salah he has been amazing but football has major changed now. Becks would probably be a right back nowadays similar to Trent. But if anyone gimme and option of becks or salah. I would take becks every day of the week. If it wasn’t for him Yorke cole ruud and teddy mightened have been as successful.
 
berbasloth4 said:
not knocking salah he has been amazing but football has major changed now. Becks would probably be a right back nowadays similar to Trent. But if anyone gimme and option of becks or salah. I would take becks every day of the week. If it wasn’t for him Yorke cole ruud and teddy mightened have been as successful.
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I reckon in this era he'd be more of a creative midfielder in the De Bruyne ilk.

I agree it is painful having to listen to people compare Salah's numbers to Beckham's as if they had the same role on the pitch. I remember seeing people drum up the same debate with Mane vs Giggs a couple of years ago. It doesn't really warrant a response unless they're a child with limited football knowledge.
 
Gabriel Djemba-Bebe said:
I reckon in this era he'd be more of a creative midfielder in the De Bruyne ilk.

I agree it is painful having to listen to people compare Salah's numbers to Beckham's as if they had the same role on the pitch. I remember seeing people drum up the same debate with Mane vs Giggs a couple of years ago. It doesn't really warrant a response unless they're a child with limited football knowledge.
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tbh I don’t think he would been clever enough to play like kdb. Stats are spoiling people fews and opinions. It’s simple watch a game of football and see who’s better not clips or highlight reels watch matches
 
berbasloth4 said:
tbh I don’t think he would been clever enough to play like kdb. Stats are spoiling people fews and opinions. It’s simple watch a game of football and see who’s better not clips or highlight reels watch matches
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I'm not going off stats at all. Nor have I ever been someone to judge a player off highlight reels. I'm going off when I watched Beckham be consistently brilliant for United year in year out.
 
berbasloth4 said:
tbh I don’t think he would been clever enough to play like kdb. Stats are spoiling people fews and opinions. It’s simple watch a game of football and see who’s better not clips or highlight reels watch matches
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What? KDB isn't some football savant that some people think he is.

He can be as frustrating as Bruno with the ball.
 
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