Better Beckham

The most amazing aspect of the closing ceremony at Beijing for me? The David Beckham interview on BBC.
When Becks first arrived several years ago he was a shy, awkward, boy-band teenager. Then, following the Simeone debacle, he became more morose and his interviews had a tinge of anger to them against the media, probably correctly. Soon, perversely, he courted the media with his tattoos and silly clothes and all the Hollywood razzmatazz.
On Sunday he was expressive. He was smiling. He was - dare I say it -interesting. Sure, there were still more "y'knows" than were comfortable for seven interviews, let alone one, but he was actually comfortable with what he was saying.
It got me wondering whether the Hollywood razzmatazz, the connections his wife has with people who are paid to be expressive, the moves to Madrid and LA, the ambassadorial roles he has...have made him a more rounded person than the freak show we thought.
It bought to mind two other footballer interviews I've seen with England internationals in the past two weeks, one very experienced, the other in the embryonic stages of his career.
Steven Gerrard scored a fabulous winner against Middlesbrough at the weekend, the sort of right-footed screamer that's become his trademark. His teammate Jamie Carragher scored for the first time since the Watergate Scandal and Liverpool won.
The interview afterwards was the broadcasting equivalent of mogadon. The one-tone, emotionless, unexciting, cliched, negative interview that is a blight on the sport. The interviewer tried feeding him - "And your teammate Jamie Carragher scored for the first time in three years, what did you say to him?" Guess what SG's answer was:
a) I said why the hell don't you do it more often, rather than humping balls into the Mersey more often than the goal?
b)The bastard was briefly one up on me in the goalscorer charts so I had to club one in myself to shut him up.
c) I said it was more poetry than football, his velvet foot brushing through the spheroid object, leather and leather repelling, pushing away from each other like Montague and Capulet, the ball swerving into the ropes like a seagull flying into a trawler net, the kop rampant, the Brough fallen.
c) Yeah it was an important goal but the most important thing is that we picked up three points etc etc etc crap.
Gerrard has always resisted move, even to other clubs in England, and his total lack of confidence in front of a microphone is a function of this. If I never hear him speak again I wouldn't care, and I defy anyone to say they actually enjoy listening to interviews like that. Why do sports journalists do it?
Gabby Agbonlahor was even worse. He scored the first hat trick of the season for Villa last week, and his interview was so dull that it literally lasted about three seconds. It was almost grumpy, it was so bad. It was verging on contemptuous.
There is no other sport where the practitioners are so limited in their linguistic gifts. That is a combination of factors but more and more I realise how important changing circumstances, and practice, and trying to communicate, must be.
Beckham, despite probably not being as good a footballer as Gerrard (and maybe even Agbonlahor now), will have a career after football. A spectacular one. And he will fit into it, because he has worked on it as much as his football. Gerrard - and I should say Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, Terry, Giggs etc etc etc - will not. Good for him.