David Beckham was bombed out of his beloved Manchester United by Sir Alex Ferguson, leaving Old Trafford with a flying boot to the head and his tail between his legs.
Three years later, Steve McClaren took over as England boss and announced that Beckham was finished as an international footballer.
When Beckham turned on the charm as an ambassador for the FA’s 2018 World Cup bid, the bigwigs at the shindigs enjoyed basking in the glow of Goldenballs. Then they handed England the sum total of two votes, one cast by the FA’s own man.
And when Beckham craved a glorious swansong in the Great Britain team at the London Olympics, coach Stuart Pearce refused to pick him, despite intense pressure from Games organisers and government ministers.
For while the world’s media were fawning over Beckham at Thursday’s Paris Saint-Germain unveiling, football men tend to take a more realistic view.
Ask them about Beckham – who has signed a four-month deal but doesn’t even start training with PSG until February 13 – and they respond with a wry smile and a shake of the head.
They know he is benign, handsome, can whip in a cross and deliver a platitude. They just can’t work out why he is virtually the most famous human being on the planet.
On the other hand, no football man has ever bombed out Ashley Cole.
Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Sven Goran Eriksson, Fabio Capello, Guus Hiddink and Big Phil Scolari all swore by him.
Carlo Ancelotti wouldn’t have a bad word said about him, even when Cole shot a work experience kid with an air rifle.
Roy Hodgson never considered dropping him when he called the FA a bunch of tw*ts on Twitter. Because Cole, not Beckham or even Wayne Rooney, is England’s one undoubted world-class footballer of the 21st century. Yet when he wins his 100th cap against Brazil on Wednesday, there will be no fanfare. No ceremonial captain-for-the-night honour. And not a lot of love from the Wembley crowd either.
The FA will twist Cole’s arm to give a press conference but as he hates us all, we’ll be lucky if we’re spoonfed a few anodyne quotes from their in-house media department.
Cole knows he doesn’t need good PR because those football men will always recognise that he is a damned good footballer. Hodgson admits Cole has a fight on his hands against Leighton Baines in the build-up to next year’s World Cup – should England qualify – but as the Everton left-back is a Footballer of the Year front-runner it would be rude for the England boss not to talk him up.
Still, at 32, Cole remains the most likely candidate to surpass Beckham’s record of 115 caps for an outfield player – a total boosted by a farewell tour of substitute appearances under Fabio Capello, after McClaren panicked and recalled him a year into his reign.
Yet Beckham and Cole, two Cockney boys, both spotted by major clubs at an early age, both decorated with medals, who both married girl-band songstresses and dominated front pages as well as back, could not be further apart in the popularity stakes.
Beckham may have been a fine footballer and is almost certainly a lovely bloke. But first and foremost, he is the patron saint of the celebrity age.
When he turned up to train with Arsenal, even millionaire Gunners players were snapped alongside him in awestruck poses, as if Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa of Calcutta had dropped by to dribble around cones.
Cole, by contrast, is Dick Dastardly in a No.3 shirt, Lucifer on the overlap. And it’s been that way since his divorce from Cheryl.
So lacking is he in image-consciousness that he revealed he almost swerved off the road with rage on hearing Arsenal would pay him only £55,000 per week.
Meanwhile, Beckham, who forged a worldwide brand with his wife Victoria, is donating his entire £3.4million PSG wages to a children’s charity.
We’ve been waiting years for the Beckham knighthood. Let’s just skip that and hand him a sainthood now.
It’s just possible, of course, that Cole does a lot of work for charity but genuinely doesn’t like to talk about it.
Because while it is assumed that, deep down, every man wants to be liked, Cole seems an exception to the rule.
Perhaps, as we bemoan the dominance of style over substance in this reality TV age, we should show a little grudging admiration for the man.
A man who has won the European Cup, Premier League titles with two clubs, a record seven FA Cups and who is likely to become the first Englishman to play at four World Cups.
But then again, it’s not really about the football, as Beckham discovered several years ago.
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