The issues raised by the debate about the relative value of Beckham and Owen has direct application to the astounding career of Don Bradman.

There are four obvious possible ways of explaining the huge statistical gulf between Bradman's average and his nearest rivals and all have been invoked by those who would minimize his achievements.

(1) Introduce some sort of quality differential, e.g. the elegance of strokeplay (a favourite of advocates of Frank Wooley).
(2) Focus on a subset of innings to make that argument that on "bad wickets" he was no better than other great batsman.
(3) Reinterpret the numerator - i.e. runs scored - to dismiss many of Bradman's runs as "piling it on" or "scoring for scoring's sake", in a way that other greats did not e.g. Hobbs, who was said to give up his wicket to allow another batsman a chance on good wicket.
(4) Deflate the numerator by reference to the alleged (poor) quality of opposition bowling and/or the (high) quality of his team-mates, again, relative to other greats.

To these standard arguments I would add another, in which, I am particularly interested.

(5) Boost the rating of great all-rounders.

The latter involves inventing some sort of measure that equates the value of runs scored and wickets taken.

These all have their counterparts in other sports comparisons. In the case of football, the greatest difficulty, analogous to bowling vs batting, concerns scoring vs defence. This is dramatized by the relative greatness of goalkeepers vs all outplayers. That issue may be insoluble; it's probably just as well to only compare goalies against goalies and this is likely true for pure defenders, too.

Midfielders are a far more intriguing case. Many great scorers were also great midfielders. Pele is the obvious example but Kocsis and Puskas were inside forwards, who, in the "W" formation of their era were cast as goal-makers rather than scorers. While one of the tactical innovations of that great Hungarian team of the early 50s was to play Hidegkuti as a "deep" centre forward, Puskas and Kocsis were more than pure "strikers", in modern terminology. Just as a current note, the comparison between Beckham and his fellow Red, Paul Scholes, is perhaps more revealing of the the "lifestyle" dimension of the Beckham phenomemon than the comparison with Owen. Scholes has scored 114 goals over 431 games for an average of 0.26; for England he has scored 13 in 54 games at a 0.27 average. Has Beckham set up that many more goals than Scholes? His he a better ball-winner?

On another note: the Beeb seems to have corrected its Shearer stats now - 30 goals it is. This is part of a continuing fall from grace; once a paragon of "objectivity" and accuracy, across the board "Auntie" looks more and more like an old hag. While it corrected the Shearer error, it has a list of highest English scorers on its page reporting on the Slovakia game (in which Owen scored both goals in a shaky England win) that is not quite accurate. First let me provide a good source: .
Greaves' and Lofthouse's appearances and (for Greaves) goals include matches subsequently derated by the FIFA as not First-class matches. This is a bit nitpicky but of more importance is their omission of Geoff Hurst, who scored 24 goals in 49 games; not merely the hat-trick hero of England's sole World Cup Final triumph but an all-round great centre forward.

Quick points on three entries on the Beeb's table. Lofthouse and Mortensen scored collectively 54 goals in 58 games. As they would agree, I'm sure (I'm not sure if Morty is still alive but Nat is an archetypal Lancashire man - as honest as you get) a huge percentage of those were courtesy of the genius of Stan Matthews. Also scoring 30 goals, but in 76 games, we have the most underrated great player, bar none - Tom Finney, who played largely as Matthews wing partner but was a great scorer, too.

David Beckham is in the News again today in Canada; one of a handful of footballers that merit attention by North American sports media. Statistically Beckham's high profile is mysterious to say the least. He has scored 97 goals in 457 games, for an average of 0.21 goals per game; for England he has scored 11 goals in 61 games. As a contrast with a contemporary, Michael Owen has scored 20 in 47 England games, average 0.43. His overall record is 158 goals in 304 games, average 0.52. Owen commands some negligible fraction of the media attention accorded to Beckham. Even more notable is the career of Alan Shearer. There is confusion in his England stats; the BBC page gives him 37 goals but three other web sources give him only 30. Since he retired from England duty in 2002 with 63 caps under his belt he's pretty respectable either way. Overall, assuming the higher figure for England he's cracked in 355 goals in 660 games at a rate of 0.54 per game. Only Ian Rush (374/731) and Jimmy Greaves (400+/572+) have scored more top-flight goals among English players. (If anyone has reliable stats on Greaves' Italian career and his FA Cup goals that would let me remove the +'s - my guess is he scored about 450 in total).

The statistical issue raised by Beckham is two-fold: how to measure performance other than goalscoring; and, the lack of records on "assists".Beckham is a midfielder and he assists on many goals. Here a comparison with Bobby Charlton is instructive, who scored 296 goals over 857 games at a clip of 0.35, 49 (still the England record, the underrated Lineker got 48 in 80 games) for his country in 105 games at a 0.47 clip. It's true that for the early part of his career - maybe as much as 200 games - he played as a forward. That's still a whopping gap and Charlton would have assisted on about the same number of goals as Beckham. Moreover, I would guess that an even higher proportion of Charlton's goals were "highlight reel" quality than Beckham's and that's not to decry Beckham but to note Charlton's remarkable career. In his day, Charlton may even have been as famous World-wide as Beckham; certainly the way to get a free beer even in Iron-curtain countries in the 1970's was to say "Bobby Charlton". Unlike Beckham, Charlton's reputation was based on unparalleled skill not on lifestyle. This is not to dump on Beckham as a player; his right foot is indeed an instrument of torture to his teams' foes. Charlton could do the same with both feet.

The first topic - how to measure skills other than goalscoring - I will defer for a longer treatment, except to note that there's a strong case that Charlton was not England's best ever player. Stanley Matthews likely should receive that accolade. Yet he scored very few goals. If they had kept assists during his truly astonishing career - he played until he was 45 and came out of retirement after he was 50 to lead Stoke back to the First Division - he would have amassed a huge number. Yet even that would not capture what apparently enthralled the crowds. Rather it was his pure skill - at "dribbling" and plying his center forwards' with crosses - that set him apart.