MADRID: Beckham-mania and “sexed-up” dossiers. Not, at first sight, two concepts with much in common to concentrate the mind during a long, hot summer which brought only the briefest of footballing respite in Spain and the rest of Europe.
Real Madrid have little interest in the kind of dodgy dossier which has cowed a British political establishment caught up in the Iraq crisis – but they did a little “sexing up” of their own portfolio in July by adding David Beckham to an already star-studded squad from Manchester United.