Free Kick: Chelsea may bring Beckham back home

Quite a week in prospect. European Championship Cup football again.

A probable F.A. decision on the Rio Ferdinand affair, which could means long ban at the worst, a heavy fine at the least.

More developments no doubt in the never ending saga of David Beckham and relatively Posh Spice. She has tried, according to reports, to prise him away from his agents, to join her own, but those agents insist he still has two years on his contract and it could be a messy and expensive business.

Meanwhile, Chelsea are reported to be ready to pay the earth to bring Beckham back to England and given his wife's petulant insistence on pursuing her own doomed singing career, even to the extent of recording rap tracks, her evident reluctance still to move to Madrid, it just could happen.

The word is that Beckham has established a remarkable ascendancy over the England coach Sven Goran Eriksson, that Beckham seemed to be calling the shots at the Sopwell House hotel in St Albans at the time of the threatened mutiny over Ferdinand's exclusion from the England squad for Turkey.

Still foolish

That threat went off embarrassingly at half cock though Gary Neville is still foolishly shouting the odds about it. At present the FA are looking into the records of Ferdinand's mobile phone which he swears was switched off when he abruptly quit Old Trafford, instead of staying for a drug test.

Certainly an offence in itself, but not quit tied up by FIFA who, though very interested in his case, have yet formally to embrace the Copenhagen agreement among sports authorities which makes ducking a test such serious offence.

So Manchester United are threatening to sue the FA if Ferdinand be suspended.

Blessing in disguise

Beckham should have stayed silent after England's draw, and qualification for the quarterfinals, in Istanbul, against a woefully inadequate Turkish team. But he just had to come out and "dedicate" the success to Ferdinand.

Whose absence, one reiterates, was probably a blessing given his recent poor form and the fact that Chelsea's John Terry so competently took his place.

Tomorrow Manchester United face Rangers at Ibrox in the European Cup, the Glaswegians now being managed by Alex McLeish. It hasn't helped Rangers to lose one of their pitifully few Scottish stars in the shape of their captain and midfielder, Barry Ferguson, who's gone to Blackburn Rovers.

Their team could hardly be more cosmopolitan, with midfielders Ronald de Boer of Holland, Emerson (no, not the Roma one who missed the 2002 World Cup finals by hurting himself keeping goal in training) of Brazil, Christian Nerlinger of Germany.

United, who win only 1-0 at struggling Leeds last Saturday through a goal by Roy Keane could have the game's salient player in their own Scotsman, the young blond right winger, Darren Fletcher.

I'll be that night at Stamford Bridge to see two Italian managers clash: Claudio Ranieri of Chelsea, Roberto Mancini of Lazio.