That was a couple of years back. Now Fabio Capello is the new England manager - and the first significant move of his reign came last week, when he left Beckham out of his inaugral squad.

There, however, the similarities end. Capello is one of the best football coaches in the world. McClaren, on the other hand, might not even be the best coach in his local village.

And his banishment of Beckham in the autumn of 2006 seemed like a petulant, ill-judged and ill-advised move.

Yes, everyone is well aware of the baggage the superstar brings with him - McClaren more than most, having been previous England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant when most of Becks' 99 caps were handed out.

And McClaren was clearly attempting to send a message – "I'll do things my way" – right from the beginning of his reign.

The problem for him was, it didn't exactly come over that way. Beckham may be many things, but at the time he was still easily one of the top two dozen England players, an experienced professional – and not deserving of such a crass demotion.

A year later, with McClaren getting increasingly desperate and the European Championships slipping away, he brought Beckham back.

A player who was deemed not good enough when he was playing regularly for Real Madrid, suddenly became good enough for selection when he was in the throes of joining a Mickey Mouse league in the States. No, you couldn't make it up.

McClaren's mercifully brief reign has since been consigned to the dustbin of history, and now the job belongs to a man who doesn't speak an lot of English but is possessed with an awful lot of sense.

Capello, Italian, vastly experienced, a proven winner - and someone totally bereft of sentimentality towards so-called superstars - had no hesitation whatsoever in choosing a squad without Beckham in it.

Many believed that the former captain would get the nod because tomorrow night's friendly against Switzerland at Wembley would bring him to that magical 100 caps - a milestone few English players have achieved.

He could then retire gracefully from international football.

And, as there was no real import to the Switzerland game itself, no harm would be done.

But Capello is not like that. To him, it's simple logistics - for a game of football, you choose not only the best players but the fittest. Beckham is nowhere near fit at the moment. End of story.

It will of course have occurred to Capello that, as tomorrow's game is his first in charge of the England set-up, the entire occasion could well have been submerged in pre-match Beckham hype.



And he'd have been right about that. As mentioned in this column several times down the years, I regard Becks as one of the nicest blokes you could meet in football.

He is also, unfortunately, one of the most voracious publicity junkies the game has ever seen.

And, with that in mind, tomorrow night would have been his perfect setting, the ideal stage. The circus was heading for town; sadly for him, it got diverted.

We shouldn't really be surprised, though; after all, this is the second time inside nine months that Capello has ruthlessly derailed that particular bandwagon.

It happened, remember, when Real Madrid had to beat Mallorca to pip arch-rivals Barcelona to the Spanish championship.

That was to be Beckham's last game for the club, it was at a heaving Bernabeu stadium, new mates Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were there to see it; the stage was well and truly set.

Unfortunately Real weren't playing very well against their unfancied opponents, and even went a goal down. Time was running out.

So what did the Madrid coach - one Fabio Capello - do? Hauled off Beckham and replaced him with Juan Antonio Reyes - who scored twice to turn the game on its head and deliver the long-awaited (by Madrid standards anyway) title.

The hype-meisters at Sky Sports chose to ignore that inconvenient truth, and continued to bill it as one of the greatest days in Beckham's illustrious career; later in the year, a documentary about the 32-year-old ran highlights of the game - none of which included Becks' substitution, nor the two goals his replacement scored.

There is an obvious irony here; like many others, I'm giving newspaper inches to a man I'm criticising - for craving newspaper inches in the first place.

But I have a funny feeling that the columns written in various publications over the past week had an air of finality about them.

There does appear to be a curtain being brought down here, on the career of a man who was a very good player, but never a world class one.

His contribution to the success of ManYoo in the Nineties was immense; he wasn't the new George Best, but he was certainly the new Steve Coppell - and any genuine United fan will know what a compliment that is.

In both United's and England's colours his passing and of course free kick delivery were often exceptional, and he scored vital goals in crucial games for both club and country.

But his impact at the highest level - ie, in major tournaments such as the World Cup and European Championships - was decidedly minimal.

Indeed, you could argue that in two different World Cup tournaments he had a direct involvement in England's elimination - getting sent off against Argentina in 1998, and inexplicably jumping out of a crucial tackle against Brazil four years later.

And, when it came to needing wise old heads in the penalty shootout against Portugal in the Euro 2004 quarter-final, he was the one who blazed his spot-kick yards off target.

The question being asked over the past week was: will Beckham ever get the chance to win his 100th cap?

Perhaps it should have been this: how on earth did he make it to 99 in the first place?