Brilliance afield

Beckham's bends are an example of a rare athletic genius

The United States has no team athlete who can match what David Beckham is to England. The whole world, save apostate America, knows, of course, that the handsome and ever-controversial Beckham is a soccer player. He's not only captain of the England side, but among the richest athletes in that sceptred isle and husband of a former Spice Girl.

For 10 years now, Beckham's main job has been to be the star of Manchester United, which is generally considered to be the premier soccer franchise in the world. Of greater interest, Beckham may now be leaving Man U. All of Europe was agog last week as Manchester United faced off against Real Madrid in the quarterfinals of the Champions League -- especially since it is Real Madrid where Beckham is rumored to be headed.

Then, to add to the drama, the Man U coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, a father figure who has grown weary of Beckham, benched the midfielder for the home game at dear Old Trafford. Imagine Phil Jackson sitting Kobe Bryant at the Staples Center. When Beckham finally got onto the pitch after 64 minutes, he promptly scored two goals to lead Manchester to victory -- even if it was not enough to overcome Real Madrid's earlier, more substantial win in Spain.

All the more dramatic, Beckham's first goal was on a free kick. Is it fair to say that, for all time -- not even Babe Ruth and his home run -- there has never been an athlete so identified with a single play as has Beckham with his free kick? That, for us provincials, is when the kicker gets a ball spotted while the defenders make up a human wall before him, blocking transit to the goal. Beckham, though, as he did against Real Madrid, is able to lift the ball over the wall, but with a twist that brings it down, perfectly, unbelievably, beyond the goalie's outstretched hands. So well known is this ploy that there is even a movie out now about teenage girls playing soccer called Bend It Like Beckham.

Beckham's amazing ability has led engineers in Europe and Japan to study his efforts. The conclusion is, simply, that he is a genius, with an innate sense of physics. He has, says one software company, figured out how to balance the kick angle, kick speed, spin and direction, in order to get the "optimal turbulent-laminar transition trajectory." That is, Beckham knows how to get the bloody ball over the wall, then dip it past the goalie. The trajectory Beckham's brain calculates in seconds from instinct, would, the engineers say, take computers hours to figure out.

What fascinates everybody even more is that Beckham was a poor student who left school at 16, and who, at least before he won Posh Spice's heart, was snickered at for his everyday attempts to deal in the Queen's English.

It's always been apparent to me, though, that there is some sort of acumen that few athletes possess, no less than there are other ordinary people who can uniquely paint or sing or perform heart transplants. I've met all sorts of quarterbacks, pitchers and point guards who show no real intelligence away from the field, but who are blessed with some special sense in the arena. The game they are in is somehow, to them, in slow motion. They can visualize movement ahead -- a geometric prescience. Whatever else they cannot divine in this world, they are indeed specific geniuses. No athlete, though, may ever have been so brilliant at one thing as David Beckham is at bending it.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.

 

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