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The wrong man won With four titles, Beckham deserved award over Rivaldo
Posted: Monday December 20, 1999 03:19 PM
If it weren't for the fact David Beckham has won four major soccer championships this year, helped England reach the Euro 2000 finals, is married to Posh Spice, has a delightful baby son, drives a fleet of high-priced, super-charged cars and is a Manchester United millionaire, he might feel hard done by. Barcelona's brilliant Brazilian Rivaldo has been named European Footballer of the Year, beating Beckham into second. Leading up to the announcement of the award on Monday, most media reports suggested Beckham would win. Rivaldo would more likely collect the FIFA World Footballer of the Year at the start of 2000. But now Rivaldo is set to collect a prestigious double, just like his Brazilian teammate Ronaldo has done before him. I have no problem with Rivaldo winning the FIFA award; after all, he was instrumental in leading Brazil to the Copa America title this year with a tournament-leading five goals. But what on earth does the South American championship have to do with Europe? All he achieved on that continent was a second-straight Spanish title and a pleasing total of 24 goals from 37 games. But Barcelona went out of Europe's most prestigious club competition, the Champions League, at the group phase. Manchester United, with Beckham to the fore, came through Barcelona's group and went on to win the coveted title to complete an unprecedented treble. United also won the English Premier League and FA Cup. More recently, United became the first British club to lay claim to the title of world club champions. That's a four-time triumph never before seen. Beckham was pivotal to that success. And while Beckham will be playing in the inaugural FIFA Club World Championship in Brazil in January, Rivaldo will be frantically trying to help Barcelona drag themselves back into Spanish title contention after a couple of months of ineffective domestic form from him and the Catalan giants.
And yet the journalists who vote in the France Football poll had Rivaldo 65 points ahead of Beckham in the voting. If what the Brazilian did in the Copa America came into their thinking, then they are wrong and misguided. The European Footballer of the Year was only open to European players until 1994, but since 1995 has been open to the best player of any nationality playing in a European league. But surely that's as far as the boundaries should be stretched. What any footballer achieves in an African, Asian, Australasian, CONCACAF and South American competition should be completely irrelevant in European voting. If not, then perhaps Beckham should make the top three in the South American footballer of the year voting on the basis that he rubbed shoulders with a few Brazilians in the Toyota Cup victory over Palmeiras. And as it was played in Tokyo, perhaps Beckham might get a few votes in the Asian Footballer of the Year award as well. Rivaldo is unquestionably a fabulous talent. But even he was quoted in Manchester United's official club magazine recently as saying Beckham should be named Europe's best, pointing out that after all United's amazing success this year it would be wrong for the European Footballer of the Year to come from any other club. He changed his tune in Germany's Kicker magazine on Monday, saying he would've voted for himself "because I consider Rivaldo to be the best player." Well, he's won it now, so he can say whatever he wants. I don't know exactly how he defines "best player," but clearly his description doesn't include winning four major club crowns in a year of world and European club dominance. Beckham's would -- and that's why he should have won. Phil Jones is a co-host of "World Sport," the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International.
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