Beckham ready to start coaching role

Posted Friday, June 04, 2010 by The Independent

Off the dusty R565 road, the England team bus finally swung through the gates of the Royal Bafokeng sports campus yesterday and into the site that they will call home for as long as they last in the World Cup finals. For one member of the party – squad member No 24 – it will have been a bittersweet moment as the bus pulled up and the staff came out to meet the players.

David Beckham is at his fourth World Cup finals although not in the playing capacity that he would have hoped for when, almost four years ago, he tearfully resigned the England captaincy in a marquee somewhere in the Black Forest. He was, nevertheless, on the flight to Johannesburg yesterday morning and there are a few in the squad who are curious as to how this experiment works out.

When Capello took over the England team in January 2008 and left Beckham out of his first squad to play Switzerland the following month it would have been hard to imagine that he would be generous enough to take him as a mascot to the tournament more than two years later. England have four masseurs, a video technician, a chef and two kitmen, but it is Beckham's role that will stir the most interest.