Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
David Beckham will return to TV screens next month, but he won’t be in a football kit or apron.
The retired midfielder is the new host of Beckham & Friends, in which he will preview the late stages of the Champions League, European football’s top competition, with a variety of celebrity guests rumoured to include Gordon Ramsay and Tom Cruise.
The Paramount+ series will be anchored by Kate Scott, who also hosts UCL Today, and was trailed by a clip of Beckham interviewing the Arsenal legend Thierry Henry, a pundit on Scott’s show.
This cross-pollination is telling given the jocular world of UCL Today, artfully explored in the Athletic, in which football coverage sometimes feels secondary to its role as a freewheeling meme factory.
There is talk that Beckham wants to be the next Gary Lineker, the retiring host of Match of the Day, but that show operates in a different universe.
