Carlos Queiroz yesterday took control of Real Madrid with a pledge that will be music to the ears of both David Beckham and the man he threatens to displace, the Portuguese winger Luis Figo.
"People ask me if Beckham and Figo can play in the same team and my answer is one of them would only be on the bench if he is injured or out of form," he said. "Admittedly they more or less play in the same position but they are very different players technically and tactically.
"David is born to run, a footballer who never tires of working to make
himself stronger and fitter and I love that ethos."
After the club let their team captain Fernando Hierro go this week, Figo is poised to become the most powerful player at the club even ahead of Raul, the star striker who was damaged politically by his close friendship
with Hierro.
Figo was nurtured by Queiroz as one of the so-called golden generation of young Portuguese players and the final negotiations with the new coach,
who has signed a two-year contract, took place at Figo's house in the millionaire's playground of La Moraleja yesterday.
Figo is perhaps the one player now that Beckham cannot afford to fall out with, and it is likely to mean the former Manchester United winger being given a role as one of the two central midfield holding players by the former Manchester United coach with Figo roving wide on the right of a midfield three.
"Everybody knows that David's passing is fantastic, it is like he has got a remote control in his boot," Queiroz told a Portuguese newspaper this week. "He can hit passes from 10, 20, 40 yards and it makes no difference to him. Also he doesn't need very much space in which to operate.
"The thing I have learned about David is that he could easily have been a
professional athlete. He has tremendous resistance to fatigue, but in football terms Figo is the opposite. He can happily beat two or three opponents in order to find the best angle across and he has a psychological superiority over most players because his vision is so intelligent. But I view the two of them as great - footballers who go down as legendary in the modern era."
It now seems that Beckham was signed partly because Real want to adopt a
more committed approach and that Vicente del Bosque was sacked partly
because he was thought to have been too lax on discipline and fitness,
notwithstanding the fact that he had just won the league title.
The Real president Florentino Perez picked up the theme yesterday. "Carlos fits our desire for excellence at Madrid because he is passionately committed to great football, high levels of fitness, youth development and the betterment of already great footballers."
Inevitably the presence of a man who can speak his language and who understands Beckham, and the media-marketing madness which surrounds him, is an important factor in the next few months for the relentlessly
ambitious club.
"Of course we hope that the fact they know each other well and share a
language will result in some synergy on the pitch and off it," he said.
Queiroz added: "I can help David settle in and I will but he will have to
help himself too. He will have to learn Spanish, at least a few phrases,
and some Portuguese to humour me."
Beckham faces a daunting task on settling in. Real's philosophy has always
been to leave their players to sort out their own problems and though the
England captain was apologetic that the publicity surrounding his personal
tour of the Far East had overshadowed his new team-mates' efforts to
regain the Spanish title, he will immediately be dispatched back there in
another blaze of publicity when Real embark on a pre-season tour of China,
Japan and Singapore. It is not a policy guaranteed to make him popular
with his colleagues.
The champions believe that by carrying out their pre-season training in
Asia they will be able to earn up to £9 million, approximately half of the
original sum it cost to buy Beckham, even before he has kicked a ball
competitively.
Beckham, who is due a medical on July 1st, will have to report for duty in
the third week of July and will leave for China on the 24th.
After at least seven days of hard training there will be a friendly in
Beijing followed by games in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and then perhapsback to Tokyo again. At between £1.3 million and £2 million a game plus an stimate from adidas that Beckham's arrival would "add between 30 and 40 er cent to sales of Madrid strips" which are worth £48 and are already old out in Singapore, the club will get rich quick.
