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Barney Ronay The Guardian

Take David Beckham. Please.

People used to go away; now they don’t. Take David Beckham, back giving interviews last week, before England’s latest World Cup memory could even begin decomposing. In his vampirish semi-retirement, still England’s most famous footballer, this Vegas Beckham symbolizes the failure of English football, the machinery of craven celebrity that constructed him, and “above all, a sense of congealment, of a handsomely branded stasis…and these things, you feel, aren’t about to go away just yet either.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)

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Read of the Day: The Balls of John Terry

If Chelsea win the Premier League, would that deny us our need for sporting triumphs that indicate superior character? By one light, Chelsea have simply endured, are the “equivalent of zombie movie survivors…who laid in slightly more tins of rhubarb and shotgun cartridges than everyone else.” But their resilience really flows from their often-half-naked captain, the one man for whom a title will “represent a compelling personal tale of defiance.” With an unpalatable yet “strangely apposite twist,” history “will force us to admire his balls.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)