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David Beckham: World Cup
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Following Kevin Keegan's resignation as England manager in October 2000, Beckham was promoted to team captain by the caretaker manager Peter Taylor, and then kept the role under new manager Sven-Göran Eriksson. He helped England to qualify for the 2002 World Cup Finals, with their performances including an impressive 5–1 victory over Germany in Munich. The final step in Beckham's conversion from villain to hero happened in England's 2–2 draw against Greece on 7 October 2001. England needed to win or draw the match in order to qualify for the World Cup, but were losing 2–1 with little time remaining. Beckham ensured England's qualification by equalising with a curling last-minute free kick. Shortly afterwards, he was voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2001.
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The occasion was the 1998 World Cup, in the run-up to which Beckham had played well but had been accused by coach Glenn Hoddle of not focusing on the tournament. After he was benched in two matches against Colombia's team, his temper flared in a second-round match against Britain's archrival Argentina, a nation with which Britain had gone to war in the Falkland Islands not long before. Given a red card penalty and sent out of the game following a kicking foul against Argentine player Diego Simeone, who had smashed into Beckham's back, Beckham left the British team short-manned. Britain lost the game on a penalty kick and was eliminated from the tournament, with the blame, as he himself admitted, resting mostly at Beckham's feet. One particularly merciless tabloid newspaper termed him an idiot in its headline.
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David then went on to become the only player to make the starting line up in every qualifying game for the 1998 World Cup in France... this competition finished in disaster for David. Having been left out of the first two games of the tournament, he set out to prove himself in the third match, against Columbia, scoring one of his now famous free-kicks. In the next game, against Argentina, David suffered the first sending-off of his professional career. Having been tackled from behind by the Argentinean midfielder Diego Simeone, Beckham impulsively kicked out at Simeone in retaliation. His dismissal from the match left England to play with ten men for the rest of a game in which they were only beaten in a penalty shoot-out. Almost the entire country blamed David for England being knocked out of the World Cup that year and so he faced abuse and criticism wherever he went, but over time, through his footballing abilities, he won back the crowd and regained his place in the nation's heart.
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Having stepped down as captain after the World Cup, Beckham was dropped completely from the England national team selected by new coach Steve McClaren on 11 August 2006. McClaren claimed that he was "looking to go in a different direction" with the team, and that Beckham "wasn't included within that". McClaren said Beckham could be recalled in future. Shaun Wright-Phillips, Kieran Richardson and the World Cup alternative to Beckham, Aaron Lennon, were all included, although McClaren eventually opted to employ Steven Gerrard in that role.
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Beckham was the first England player ever to collect two red cards and the first England captain to be sent off. Beckham's most notorious red card was during the 1998 FIFA World Cup: after Argentina's Diego Simeone had fouled him, Beckham lashed out with his leg and the Argentine fell. England went on to lose the game on penalties.
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In October 2005, while playing in the World Cup Qualifying match against Austria, Beckham became the first England captain to be sent off, and the first player to be sent off twice while playing for England. Nonetheless, England held on to win the match 1-0 and later qualified for the 2006 tournament due to results elsewhere. Four days later they beat Poland 2-1 to top the qualifying group.
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