THERE is no close season in football any more. Last night's game at Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium may, officially, have been the last kick of the 2002-03 season, but the build up to it was overshadowed by the Beckham soap opera - a soap opera that will now dominate the summer and that will have twists in it that even the scriptwriters of Coronation Street have yet to imagine.

Sir Alex Ferguson dead under the patio? Anything is possible.

There are, though, a couple of points to be made that go beyond football.

Firstly, David Beckham and his wife Victoria have unashamedly courted fame - and the fortune that goes with it.

They have been on a tour of the United States - a country where soccer is a game girls play and the Spice Girls were no more than a mild distraction - purely in an attempt to cash in on their Continental fame.

Mr Beckham's wildly, and constantly, changing hairstyles are also another marketing ploy. With one snip of the stylist's scissors, he renders every poster of himself obsolete, so forcing his fans to buy the new ones. Newspapers have even given him free publicity by analysing every hair of the new style.

But he is now in danger of pricing himself out of the market. Because of his public relations success, there are just five clubs in the world who could afford to meet his financial expectations. He doesn't want to go to Barcelona because they're not good enough; he can't stay at Manchester United; Real Madrid might not want him because they're awash with superstars...

Suddenly, the most coveted talent in the globe has made himself so expensive that he could be forced to play for a club he doesn't care about or left to kick his heels in the reserves.

As his mother undoubtedly told him, money cannot buy happiness.

Secondly, Mr Beckham has complained about being a "pawn" in a big business deal.

He comes from a wealthy group of young men who mostly can't be bothered to salute Nelson Mandela and largely aren't concerned with young fans in Hurworth.

Yet he, like the rest of us, turns out to be just a small cog in a global financial machine. A Spanish company bids for his services and, whether he likes it or not, he is to be sold - and the only winners are Manchester United shareholders whose price rose to a 12-month high yesterday.

Most of us have felt the ill-winds of globalisation, either through job losses or through pension cuts. Now, reassuringly, it is the turn of someone as talented and wealthy as David Beckham to bend before those market forces.