Golden Baltics?

Sometime ago I commented on the triumphant return of both Saurav Ganguly and David Beckham from their respective wildernesses. In recent times, Beckham's return has been nothing short of awesome.

Steve Maclaren (or MacClown as he is called in the Brit media!) had to do an immense U-turn to get Becks back into the team for the games against Brazil and Estonia. In both games, Becks was huge and proved exactly what England had been missing. Of course, MacClown had to spoil it all by bigging himself up as the 'mastermind' who decided that Becks should be recalled. Conveniently forgetting that he was also the 'mastermind' who decided to drop him from the England setup in the first place!

Dropping Becks had been nothing but a political statement from Maclaren as he tried to distance himself from the Sven-era. The problem, of course, is that he made the wrong choice then of dropping Becks instead of Frank Lampard. Lamps has rarely been a huge performer in the international stage and even his form in the last season has not been what you would expect from a former top-three finisher in the European Player of the year selection, but Maclaren has never selected a team based on form! His strategy seems to be to only pick players from the top clubs. So, Kieran Richardson, Alan Smith and Jermain Jenas are constantly in the England squad inspite of being no-shows for their clubs. On the other hand, top English performers like Joey Barton, Scott Parker etc do not get into the first team in spite of excellent form. Its weird!

Anyway, coming back to Golden Balls, or Golden Baltics as one newspaper called him after the Estonia game. Becks's return has been so complete that never-before-heard-nor-done things like a manager, Capello, who once claimed Becks would never play again for Real Madrid, is now making statements implying that its all his fault and they should have never let Becks agree a contract with LA Galaxy. The Real board are making noises trying to prove to the supporters that they are doing everything they can to keep Becks at Real, inspite of the fact that they have already sold him to the American club. Of course, at this point in the transfer, its all just an attempt to save face for the board. They should have done this about 6 months ago! Nevertheless, the Real management has been left completely egg-faced with all this. Especially, if they manage to lose the Primera Liga next week, the supporters will let them know how they feel about the shabby way they handled Beck's contract.

Speaking of the Primera Liga, what a mind-blowing weekend it was!! And it could well be another roller-coaster this weekend too. Barcelona may well have handed the league to Real though.