The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times

David Beckham chooses money over morals in World Cup ambassador role

By Matt Lawton

15 Nov 2022 · 4 min read

Brand Beckham is taking a battering, writes Matt Lawson of the Times. The ex-England captain's championing of Qatar has gone down badly in the media. His fans don't appear to mind, though.

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"I love being in the middle of nowhere,” David Beckham declares as he looks out from beneath a Bedouin tent across the Qatari landscape. Here in Qatar, Beckham has even been asked to sell sand in the desert.

It is among a number of heavily scripted lines the former England captain delivers in a video that features on the Qatar Airways flights transporting tens of thousands of people to Doha for the World Cup. “It’s one of the best spice markets I’ve ever been to,” says the man who married a Spice Girl, before suggesting that “the modern and the traditional fuse to create something really special” in this Gulf state.

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