The news that Victoria Beckham is pregnant has caused concern among football fans. Husband David has had the names of all his previous children tattooed on his body and the fear is that unless Posh (still remorselessly sucking in her cheeks like somebody who has just squeezed lemon juice on a paper cut, the love) settles on a short name such as Bo or Q, the right-sided midfielder may have to have an extra arm grafted on to him for skin-art love‑tribute purposes by the top Hollywood body sculptor Dr Horsley Loveratt, the man behind Vin Diesel's neck.

Whatever, it is a sad irony that just as the English David Beckham appears on the verge of returning to London the Swiss David Beckham, Valon Behrami, looks to be on the point of going back to Italy. The fact that Behrami's team‑mate Radoslav Kovac, briefly hailed as the Beckham of Bohemia after taking up with the woman who finished second in the 2003 Miss Czech Republic beauty pageant, is also on the way out of London leaves a glitzy, metrosexual footballer-shaped void in the capital many will feel only the original can fill right up to the edges. I tend to agree, though that is not to denigrate the achievements of the Beckhams of the Aegean, Demis Nikolaidis and his pop‑star wife, Despina Vandi.

Vandi recorded a song to celebrate the couple's wedding and – or so I imagine – clapped in delight as it streaked up the charts to the No1 spot. In Lebanon. Demis and Despina featured on the Discovery Channel's thrilling Europe's Richest People series, so they are clearly no lightweights in the world of chihuahua-hide toilet-seat covers.

That we have so many Beckhams is the result of an eldritch football tradition. For example, back in the 1960s Peter Marinello was the Scottish George Best. Three decades on Ryan Giggs was the Welsh George Best and, briefly, Alan Moore was the Irish Ryan Giggs – the title of Irish George Best having already been snapped up, by George Best.

Note that there was never an English George Best. The same has been true of the Maradonas. These proliferated throughout the 80s and 90s. We had Turkey's Emre Belozoglu (the Maradona of the Bosphorus), Albania's Edvin Murati (the Maradona of the Balkans), Romania's Gheorghe Hagi (the Maradona of the Carpathians) and Saeed al-Owairan of Saudi Arabia (the Maradona of the Desert). For a while some of us nursed the hope that West Ham's Suffolk-born winger Stuart Slater – small, skilful, as one-footed as Long John Silver – might be dubbed "the Maradona of the Fens", but alas the fateful combination of an achilles injury and a move to the SPL put paid to such wistful dreaming.

Of course, it would never have happened. That is not – as some of you are probably thinking – because England has never produced players with the requisite flair and genius. No, it is because the English are never compared to foreigners. Foreigners are compared to us. That is why – despite all points of commonality – Peter Crouch will never be called the Jan Koller of the Cheshire Plain. Perhaps it is time that changed.

Many older readers will see Beckham merely as "the new Kevin Keegan". Keegan was, some believe, the first footballer to embrace modern celebrity culture and become "a brand". The bubble-permed prattler endorsed non-sporting products, cut records and even had an agent, the splendidly named Vic Huglin. Back in 1972, while Keegan burbled away in the background ("If you could graft a new pair of legs on to Ian St John, what a player he'd be!"), Huglin told a reporter from the Observer: "This boy is great. He could be anything from 1974's trendy top model to a third partner for Morecambe & Wise." None of it came to pass, of course. Instead of Keegan singing a duet with the French crooner Slasher Distillery while the Young Generation cavorted in white polo necks, his TV appearances mostly involved him sitting in the punditry chair spouting a stream of semi-consciousness, like a toddler projectile vomiting alphabetti spaghetti.

While no one could doubt that the man given to such matchless comments as "the way the Germans play reminds me of a concertina" was an original, the truth is Keegan wasn't the first player to realise his worth in the commercial marketplace. That honour falls not to an Englishman, or even to someone from the British Isles, but to a butcher's son from Baden-Württemberg, Uli Hoeness.

The balding forward was hardly a glamorous or even a particularly popular figure, but he didn't let that stand between him and cash. When he signed for Bayern Munich he got a car thrown in with the deal. When he got married in 1972 he sold exclusive pictures of his wedding for DM25,000. Uli's father owned a butcher's shop. Uli owned the sausage factory. "It's amazing how Uli develops ideas and makes them into a business," said the usually terminally unimpressed Paul Breitner. "His career radiates the cold glory of a computer," commented the magazine Kicker.

Behrami may be the Swiss Beckham. But is clear that Becks himself is just the British Uli Hoeness, albeit with more tattoos, obviously.