![\"posh'n'becks\"](\"http:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/poshnbecks.jpg\")
Their contrasting careers and personalities tell us something of import about the profound changes to sport, celebrity and masculinity that occurred over the decades spanning these two notable football lives.<\/p>\nTwo of the most recognisable figures of the global game, Sir Alex Ferguson and David Beckham, OBE, announced their retirements within the space of a week. \u00a0The former\u2019s was major news only for the legions of association football (soccer) fans around the world, and especially for supporters of its most glamorous club, Manchester United. \u00a0The latter\u2019s was registered even by those with little or no interest in football.<\/p>\n
Their contrasting careers and personalities tell us something of import about the profound changes to sport, celebrity and masculinity that occurred over the decades spanning these two notable football lives.<\/p>\n
Those changes are inscribed in the very faces of \u2018Fergie\u2019 and \u2018Becks\u2019.\u00a0 The redoubtable Ferguson\u2019s visage bears all the marks of \u2018old school\u2019 footballing men.\u00a0 A craggy Scot in the mould of the legendary Bill Shankly of Liverpool FC, he was normally seen during matches scowling through slanted eyes, furiously masticating a strip of gum, bibulous features becoming ruddier, constantly infuriated by a hostile, vindictive world.<\/p>\n
Ferguson\u2019s dealings with the media were grand projections of this uncompromising demeanour \u2013 when he spoke to them at all, and caught reluctantly in the TV camera\u2019s glare, he was wary and curt, and often acerbic and contemptuous.\u00a0 It was characteristic that he did not hold a media conference to announce his impending retirement.\u00a0 Even when he celebrated victory, Sir Alex seemed still to be settling nameless scores, relishing his \u2018alpha\u2019 triumph over inferior pretenders.<\/p>\n
Ferguson was an old time football insider, keeping a generally low profile outside the game apart from a predictably fractious share of some horseflesh.\u00a0 He was disdainful of outside distractions, and especially of \u2018new\u2019 football men whose attention to style contrasted so obviously with his own determinedly gruff presentation of traditional masculinity.\u00a0 Which is where David Beckham comes in.<\/p>\n
Tutored by Ferguson from his teenage years onwards, Beckham was not to acquire his mentor\u2019s aggressive mannerisms.\u00a0 Blessed with androgynous boy band good looks, his halting high voice set him apart from the machismo displayed by many of male football\u2019s managers, players, owners, board members and fans of the early nineties and preceding decades.<\/p>\n
Beckham\u2019s shyness and infamous initial inarticulacy came across as vulnerability.\u00a0 He was never to be the kind of meat-and-potatoes British footballer with whom Ferguson was instinctively more familiar and comfortable.\u00a0 The founding of the English Premier League in 1992 corresponded with Beckham\u2019s senior professional debut.<\/p>\n
The flood of BSkyB subscription television money that followed transformed English football\u2019s labour force \u2013 within a few years, the majority of managers and players were from overseas, especially continental Europe, the prior object of much Little Englander footballing antagonism.\u00a0 Sir Alex was now able \u2013 indeed, required \u2013 to recruit the best multinational football talent available.<\/p>\n
The British tabloids were wrong-footed by this new cohort of multi-lingual footballers in better suits, several of them suspiciously lacking interest in the heavy drinking teammate bonding rituals of yore.\u00a0 Beckham began to resemble and, indeed, to symbolise the new footballer look, improving his speech and running through an extensive repertoire of designer styles.\u00a0 The term \u2018metrosexual\u2019, coined in 1994 by the English journalist Mark Simpson, appeared to be made for him.<\/p>\n
When Beckham dated and then married Spice Girls singer Victoria Adams, and the \u2018Posh\u2019n\u2019Becks\u2019 brand was formed, football, though still important, became only one component of what was now Beckham\u2019s full-blown celebrity.\u00a0 He, his personal management and spouse understood that 21st century sport could not be confined to training ground routines and big match days, becoming the springboard for much more beyond.<\/span><\/p>\n Although also a major beneficiary of the inflated capital and media attention \u2013 and top end players \u2013 flowing from the intensive commodification of football, its attendant frippery and foppery sat ill with the dour intensity of Sir Alex.\u00a0 This resentment helped propel the loose football boot that accidentally cut Beckham\u2019s eyebrow in one of Ferguson\u2019s notorious \u2018hair dryer\u2019 displays of player abuse.<\/p>\n The incident comprehensively captured the gap between their iterations of masculinity as Beckham publicly bore the scars, assisted by an Alice band for maximum visibility.\u00a0 Soon he had left Manchester for Madrid, then Los Angeles, and finally Paris, and a very different global celebrity and sometime footballer existence unfolded.<\/p>\n Ellis Cashmore, in his academic profile\u00a0Beckham<\/i>, argues that \u201cMasculinity will never be the same after David Beckham\u201d.\u00a0 This does not mean that he introduced compulsory metrosexuality to football but, like David Bowie in popular music before him, David Beckham helped open up new, less constricting possibilities for the appearance and performance of being a man.\u00a0 Crucially, he did it in the most popular male contact sport in the world.<\/p>\n When Beckham announced his impending retirement, he did it in controlled media space, with scrupulously sculpted hair and beard, tattoos hidden beneath immaculate suit and tie.\u00a0 Ferguson sent out a message and was soon sighted in his conventional match-day overcoat, gesticulating and barking orders in the dying days of his manager role as if nothing had changed. \u00a0For the Sir Alex persona nothing would or could.\u00a0 Beckham, by contrast, had already wrung enough changes of look for several life times.\u00a0 Separated by a generation, the very different figures cut by Fergie and Becks provide, from the world of football, a glimpse of a much wider process of masculinity in transition.<\/p>\n This article was originally published by Western Sydney University<\/a>.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 David Rowe 2013<\/strong> Two of the most recognisable figures of the global game, Sir Alex Ferguson and David Beckham, OBE, announced their retirements within the space of a week. \u00a0The former\u2019s was major news only for the legions of association football (soccer) fans around the world, and especially for supporters of its most glamorous club, Manchester United. \u00a0The 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\nEmail:\u00a0d.rowe@uws.edu.au<\/a>
\nTwitter: @rowe_david
\nWebsite:\u00a0http:\/\/www.uws.edu.au\/ics\/people\/researchers\/david_rowe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"