BECKS-CHELSEA LINK RESURFACES
Mar. 12, 2004 3:20 a.m.
Rumors linking Chelsea with a summer bid for David Beckham intensified this week with the news that the Real Madrid midfielder is struggling to settle in Spain.
Newspaper reports on Friday claim the 28-year-old has not renewed his lease on the Spanish house he has been renting and will also not retain the services of his translator for next season.
Beckham has been staying in Spain alone while his wife Victoria and the couple's two sons Brooklyn and Romeo remained in England at the family's Hertfordshire mansion.
Brooklyn has also enrolled at a school in England and not an elite English speaking school in Spain where a place was understood to have been reserved for him.
All this has been taken as evidence that the midfielder, who made the switch from Manchester United to Madrid in a £25million deal last summer, will leave Spain at the end of the season.
Real boss Carlos Quieroz recently refused to state with any certainty whether the midfielder will still be at the Bernabeu next season, insisting he appreciated how difficult it is for one to settle in a foreign country.
Beckham's contract with the Spanish giants runs until 2007 and his first season has so far been largely successful.
However, a Real Madrid source is quoted as saying that the club would not stand in the England captain's way if he wanted to leave ahead of schedule.
"What Beckham has contributed in his time here is greatly appreciated," a senior source at Real told the Daily Mail.
"And while we do not want to lose him we would understand if he felt it was impossible for him to stay."
Beckham had an a troubled relationship with former manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who disapproved of the player's lifestyle and regarded his wife Victoria a bad influence.
Mrs Beckham's friends are quoted as saying that a move to Real Madrid was nothing more a way of escaping from Old Trafford.
"She was desperate to get David away from Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United," and old friend of Victoria's quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
"Real Madrid was fine. But it was only a stopgap in her mind. She'd like him to be at Chelsea by this summer."