If the soccer star David Beckham leaves England, along with his exotic hairstyles, his feuds with his boss, his multitude of endorsements, his fancy sarongs and his slinky fashion plate of a wife, what will there be left for people here to discuss?
"He's grabbed the interest of the nation," said Philip Warburton, 67, a retired minister who was visiting the Manchester United football grounds, where Beckham plays, on Wednesday afternoon. "He's a talking point wherever you go. I've talked about him halfway up the Eiffel Tower, in Sri Lanka, in Greece. If you say you're from England, they say `David Beckham.'"
Not for long, perhaps. In a move that has sent waves of grief, outrage and inchoate anxiety across England, Manchester United announced on Monday that it had conditionally agreed to send its star player to Barcelona for a reported US$50 million transfer fee.
While the deal is contingent on too many factors to be considered anything more than an opening salvo in a complicated chess game involving a number of teams, it is clear that Manchester is committed to getting rid of the flamboyant Beckham, 28, who has played there since he was a teenager.
Now the country, and particularly Manchester, are facing the bleak prospect of a Beckham-free future.
"The city would be gutted if he left," said Gemma Edwards, 20, a sales assistant in downtown Manchester, growing misty-eyed as she recalled her one face-to-face meeting with Beckham, in which she tried to block his car but he drove away without giving her an autograph. "It would be devastating.
It wouldn't be the same team if he went."
This is Beckham country. But the public's obsession with Manchester's most famous resident extends far beyond the city's borders, to all of England, and Beckham's nimbleness on the soccer field is only a small part of his considerable allure.
hot news
In a tabloid-saturated nation hungry for celebrities with outsized, newspaper-selling personas, Beckham's smallest move qualifies as front-page news. Anything is fair game: from the frothiest utterances of his wife, the former Posh Spice; to whether Beckham's new hair band makes him look like a wuss (sadly, yes); to whether he needed actual stitches -- or just an ostentatious Band-Aid -- after a soccer shoe petulantly kicked by his coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, unfortunately struck him in the face several months ago.
Andrew Eves, 34, who runs a mail-order soccer-shirt business, said that Beckham had single-handedly revolutionized men's style in Britain.
"I bet you can count the amount of men wearing sarongs on one finger," Eves said.
"But each to his own. I mean, if you think that 10 years ago in England men didn't even wear deodorant, and now there's a whole new market devoted to men's grooming."
In downtown Manchester, where Beckham and his wife, Victoria, are well-known habitues of upscale stores like Armani and Vivienne Westwood, Gemma Davidson, a sales assistant in one of the fancier shops, said that she found Beckham "extremely good looking" and an asset to the city.
"He's a beautiful man," she said. Not only that, but he loves shopping, is dripping with cash, and is never rude, which makes him a most desirable customer. "It's very easy to sell to them," Davidson said of the Beckhams.
Hong Kong-based cricket team Hung See this weekend found success in their matches in Taiwan, even if none of the results went their way. Hung See played the Chairman’s XI on Saturday morning, the Daredevils that afternoon and PCCT yesterday, with all three home teams winning. The team for Chinese players at the Happy Valley-based Craigengower Cricket Club sends teams on tour to “spread the game of cricket.” This weekend was Hung See’s second trip to Taiwan after visiting Tainan in 2016. “The club has been traveling to all parts of the world since 1982 and the annual tradition continues [with the Taiwan
The San Francisco Giants signed 18-year-old Taiwanese pitcher Yang Nien-hsi (陽念希) to a contract worth a total of US$500,000 (NT $16.39 million). At a press event in Taipei on Wednesday, Jan. 22, the Giants’ Pacific Rim Area scout Evan Hsueh (薛奕煌) presented Yang with a Giants jersey to celebrate the signing. The deal consisted of a contract worth US$450,000 plus a US$50,000 scholarship bonus. Yang, who stands at 188 centimeters tall and weighs 85 kilograms, is of Indigenous Amis descent. With his fastest pitch clocking in at 150 kilometers per hour, Yang had been on Hsueh’s radar since playing in the HuaNan Cup
Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei yesterday advanced to the semi-finals of the women’s doubles at the Australian Open, while Coco Gauff’s dreams of a first women’s singles title in Melbourne were crushed in the quarter-finals by Paula Badosa. World No. 2 Alexander Zverev was ruffled by a stray feather in his men’s singles quarter-final, but he refocused to beat 12th seed Tommy Paul and reach the semi-finals. Third seeds Hsieh and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Elena-Gabriela Ruse of Romania and Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine 6-2, 5-7, 7-5 in 2 hours, 20 minutes to advance the semi-finals. Hsieh and Ostapenko converted eight of 14 break
HARD TO SAY GOODBYE: After Coco Gauff dispatched Belinda Bencic in the fourth round, she wrote ‘RIP TikTok USA’ and drew a broken heart on a television camera lens Defending champion Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan yesterday advanced to the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles at the Australian Open, while compatriot Chan Hao-ching on Saturday dominated her opponents in the second round, as world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka swept into the quarter-finals. Third seeds Hsieh and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia toppled Hungary’s Timea Babos and Nicole Melichar-Martinez of the US 6-4, 6-3, hitting 24 winners and converting three of seven break points in 1 hour, 18 minutes at 1573 Arena. Although rivals at last year’s Australian Open — where Hsieh and Belgium’s Elise Mertens beat Ostapenko and Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok 6-1, 7-5
RSS