England should abandon Beckham say Chivers

Beckham needs another 10 caps to match Shilton's total but Chivers is hoping it doesn't happen.

He said: "I hope he doesn't break Peter Shilton's record. He doesn't deserve it. Not for playing five minutes a game.

"Shilts deserved it because he played nearly every minute of every game, same as Bobby Moore. I'd like to add the minutes up to see how many Beckham's played."

Last month Jimmy Greaves told The Wharf he thought free-kick specialist Beckham should be dropped from the England squad before next Summer's World Cup and Chivers agrees.

He said: "I think he's past his sell-by date. I can't see how he can possibly be taken when there are players like Lennon, Wright-Phillips, Theo Walcott, who are so much more dangerous. They go past people.

"Are we going to finish up like an American football team. You bring someone on just to take the kicks?"

Chivers, 64, is pleased with how Fabio Capello has done in getting England to the World Cup but he is pessimistic about the chances of success in South Africa.

He said: "He's done a good job so far, but if Rooney or one of the centre-backs, or Gerrard or Lampard - these key players - gets injured it'll be a hard job because we don't have that strength in depth.

"I don't think we will do it because you need that little extra something. We've been shown the Spanish have it. We've been shown the Brazilians always have it.

"The Germans, even when they get beaten 5-1, can get to the final. They've got a World Cup record second to none. They are as good as Brazil when it comes to the World Cup.

"You can't write off the Italians. Then there's Argentina. Who would bet against them with Messi and Tevez?

"Then you don't know how the referees are going to approach the game. If they are under strict orders to have no contact, or virtually no contact, you are going to see a lot of diving going on. Lots of yellow cards. That could be a disaster for England."

Capello is the second foreign manager, after Sven Goran Eriksson, to take the England job and Chivers feels it's an indictment of the Football Association for not encouraging former international players to stay involved in the England set up.

He said: "It's a shame the FA never kept some of the West Ham boys on as ambassadors. They would have been the best in the world.

"Bobby Moore should have been kept on, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst, they were obvious people to have on the committee at the FA, instead of people who have never played the game running our sport.

"It doesn't happen in Germany. They always bring people in. They won't need a foreign coach. They don't need to because they groom their old players to do it. Lothar Matthaus will be the next one. You wait and see, he'll be the next German manager."

Chivers' England career, in which he scored 13 goals in 24 appearances, came under Sir Alf Ramsey and ended with the infamous draw with Poland in 1973 that saw England fail to qualify for the World Cup in West Germany.

Missing the game's biggest tournament is a regret for Chivers but he still feels Ramsey got it right against the Poles, it was just bad luck.

He said: "If Alf thought we weren't going to do it he would have brought us off before. He never criticised us at all. We just couldn't believe we couldn't get the winning goal.

"It was good squad, with players like Colin Bell, Mike Channon, Allan Clarke, Roy MacFarland, Emlyn Hughes, Norman Hunter, Kevin Keegan, Trevor Brooking. It was a sad thing to miss out."

One thing those players did enjoy, which their modern counterparts don't, is an annual clash with the old enemy Scotland. The oldest international fixture in the world is rarely played these days but Chivers had some of his best moments in those games.

He said: "I used to rile them every time. I'm so pleased I never lost against them.

"Alan Ball used to wind them up in the press all the time and we'd have Billy Bremner winding the Scots up. We arrived at Hampden one day, and the coach starts rocking because Bally's giving the fans the old signs out of the window, just winding them up.

"What always happens is the little ones aggravate one another, we go out on the football field and the big ones have to sort it out, while they go unnoticed to hide behind the corner flag.

"But they were great times. It's a shame it wasn't able to continue."

Chivers was in Canary Wharf last week signing copies of his autobiography Big Chiv, an entertaining account of a long-lost era of English football.

He was viewed by many as the best centre-forward in Europe in the early 1970s, and his record of 174 goals in 355 games for Spurs speaks for itself.

He admires the talented players in the Premier League but rues the reliance on stamina above skill.

He said: "They are super-athletes now, that's the difference between now and our day. We were footballers and we were coached to be fitter.

"Now you get the foreign players and they are very big physically and they make them into footballers. But there are still players in the Premier League who cannot control the ball as well as they should do.

"We had a couple at Tottenham. The prime example was Didier Zokora. He could run all day but when it came to a little bit of skill and football ability, playing with other people, he was lacking.

"That's the difference. I'm not sure he scored a goal. Every time he got to the edge of the box and it came to the telling pass he couldn't do it.

"It showed in the League Cup final against Chelsea. We had ample time to go through them when we broke away but he couldn't give the final pass when he should have done. He wasn't good enough for that."

Chivers was at his peak against some of the toughest defenders the game has seen, hard men like Norman Hunter and Ron Harris. That - plus pitches that were frequently muddier than a field at Glastonbury - made it a more physical game than we see today. He would have loved to have had the protection modern forwards enjoy.

He said: "Steve Perryman says I would be a useful player these days because I didn't relish the physical side, but then we're talking about animals. Some really strong specimens.

"Norman 'Bites Yer Legs' Hunter, things like that, though I must say he wasn't the worst. The ones who were the worst were the ones who couldn't play football. They were just out and out thugs.

"There were quite a few centre-halves, John McGrath was one. He used to roll his shorts up and try and intimidate people. He wasn't a footballer. He was an out and out assassin as far as I was concerned. And I knew it was going to happen. There were quite a few players like that.

"They could hurt you, they were big lads. The Ron Harris's, the Norman Hunters, they didn't hurt me. Tommy Smith, believe it or not, didn't hurt me.

"Basically they were very strong, fair players, but they had little things, though you could forgive them that because they were trying to stop you. If they did that you knew they were frightened of you.

"But some of these big centre-halves they were just out to get you. I remember Jeff Blockley. He was choice, with that left foot he could chip a good centre forward.

"You knew it was going to happen in the first 15 minutes so you just held your breath."

Times have certainly changed. These days a player only has to fall over for a free-kick to be given and a yellow card to be shown. For Chivers it's gone a bit too far.

He said: "Yellow cards are being shown too often. You get one for the first offence sometimes, for an innocuous challenge. Let's face it, in our day it was a physical game, you expected to be a bit physical.

"But now you get yellow cards just because they've got their studs up. That's fine, I appreciate that, but the continentals give a yellow card because it's dangerously high when it's going into a tackle, but this is after the ball's gone away.

"In our day if you went down you were injured, nine times out of 10. These days you can knock the television and they fall over. Some of them are really fragile. You don't want to go too far.

"You are going to take all the physical contact out of football with these yellow cards.

"Referees are not consistent but I think they have a lot of pressure from above to clamp down but they are clamping down much too much now, they're spoiling the game.

"In the Spurs' game we lost to Man Utd, Harry Redknapp took Wilson Palacios off at half-time because he knew that if he left him on he'd get a second yellow and he'd be off.

"He had to substitute him. That's wrong. You're weakening your team because somebody's got a yellow card."

Chivers started his career at Southampton, his home town team, and also had stints at Norwich, Brighton and with Servette in Switzerland before hanging up his boots.

But it's Tottenham which he thinks of as his second home, having helped them win the League Cup twice and the UEFA Cup.

His involvement there as a matchday host keeps him abreast of the Premier League and he's tipping Chelsea to topple Manchester United as champions this season.

He said: "Chelsea are a very strong outfit, they don't seem to show as many weaknesses as other clubs.

"I look at Arsenal and they play wonderful football but people can still score against you. I'm not so sure about their defence. They are a little bit weak at the back.

"They don't have an out-and-out goalscorer, the whole show is run by the midfield, Van Persie and Fabregas, they are good players. They will do well, but probably in Europe rather than here.

"Liverpool are struggling. How can they come back and beat Man United 2-0. Maybe it doesn't say a lot for Man United. You can't lose a player like Ronaldo or Tevez and not suffer. I think it's up front they'll suffer. If they lost Rooney they will really struggle."

Like his former club and international colleague Martin Peters he is also baffled by the hatred that seems to have developed between supporters of Spurs and West Ham.

He said: "I can't understand that. We used to play very often on Boxing Day at West Ham and it was usually always a great football game, inevitably a 2-2 draw. I always remember those games.

"We used to have a drink with Bobby and Geoff Hurst underneath the stand and it was such a good feeling. But these days I must say the Tottenham v West Ham game is more heated than Tottenham v Arsenal, which is amazing.

"There's a lot of bad feeling under the surface. Is it because we had some of their players? It didn't used to be a problem. But there haven't been many going from Spurs to West Ham in recent years.

"But they've lost their best players. It's a sad state of affairs."

Unlike modern players, who earn astronomical sums from the game, Chivers had to continue working after he retired and ran a hotel for 18 years, a perfect line of work for a friendly and courteous man.

He feels the wealth in the game means the loyalty players once had for clubs is disappearing, which means fewer ex-players in the hospitality suites in future.

He said: "We're at the end of an era. There's no loyalty now. They won't need to come back. For us it's very welcome, it's like a mini-pension.

"Us players of that era are having to work. I can't think of one player who doesn't have to work. There might be very lucky ones but the majority have to work.

"We all say we wouldn't change when we played but if we're honest we're very envious of the modern players' money.

"But for the players, with the friendships and camaraderie we had as a team, nearly all our team, apart from dear Cyril Knowles and now Jimmy Neighbour, always try to get back together.

"A lot of us work at Tottenham - Pat Jennings, Martin Peters, Alan Mullery, Phil Beal, Ralph Coates, Paul Allen. They all come back and we're part of the club and we love it."

You can catch clips of Chivers in action on YouTube but footage of early 70s football is a far cry from the saturation coverage of the Premier League. Who would he compare himself to in the modern game?

He said: "I'd like to think that Drogba is the sort of player that I was. He can shoot with both feet, he can head the ball, he frightens defences because he's so strong and I'd like to think I was on those lines.

"People might say 'do me a favour, you weren't as good as he is' but that was how I played and my record of scoring goals shows that.

"People tell me I'd be worth a few bob these days but I don't want to know."

Big Chiv by Martin Chivers and Paolo Hewitt is out now, published by VSP.