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.