HOW GOOD do you have to be to play for Real Madrid? A few years back, the very question would have sounded ridiculous. When Madrid were in their European pomp, a simple definition applied: if you played for the best club side in the world you were the best, numbered among a self-selecting elite.

These days Real are not what they were, yet what they are still counts as special. As the Spanish season winds down they still stand a very good chance of snatching La Liga. They lack the old authority; they rely on late come-backs and last-gasp finishes. But are they any good? Don't be silly.

So try another question. How good do you have to be to play for England? Pound for pound, man for man, result for result, not quite as good as you need to be to merit selection by Fabio Capello.

Put it this way: if Steve McClaren ever risked his first-choice team against Madrid's usual starting line-up, I'd know how to place my bet.

One factor unites these idle speculations, obviously enough. Last summer a tearful David Beckham carried the can for England's mediocre World Cup campaign.

This was unfair - just who did emerge with credit, after all? - but McClaren seized the chance to draw a line under the Sven-Goran Eriksson era.

If objective criteria had been applied a broader purge would have been in order. The name Lampard springs to mind, for one. In fact, there is a case for saying that Beckham did better in Germany - which is not to say he did well - than most of the younger members of England's "golden generation". Yet with 94 caps, and few thanks, he was gone, supposedly for good.

Like Capello, McClaren has learned how to repent at leisure. Yesterday, fresh from having dragged Real to the winning post against Recreativo Huelva, Beckham was back in the England squad for the forthcoming games with Brazil and Estonia. As in Madrid, so in London: the logic has proved unanswerable. Golden Balls has proved them all wrong.

Back in January, remember, Capello was insisting that Beckham's decision to go Hollywood had rendered him ineligible to wear the all-white of Real ever again. Apparently the decision to sign for LA Galaxy, and showboat in America's "major" soccer league, was not the mark of a serious professional.

Doubtless it also dented Madrid's merchandising plans. Yet within weeks Beckham was restored to the side.

Since then, save for a knee injury, he has proved himself essential to Capello, whose own position had seemed less than secure. Reports from Spain say, in fact, that Beckham is occupying a wing berth as well as he ever did. He may have rendered his decision to accept the Yankee dollar seem dubious, but he has made a fool of a veteran coach.

In McClaren's case, that work was done in the former England captain's absence.

Beckham is back in the squad for two simple reasons. First, he is playing well. Secondly, perhaps more importantly, the English national side is at serious risk of failing to achieve European qualification.

If anything, the malaise evident in Germany has deepened since McClaren took over. The idea may never be stated, but the feeling is that Beckham has been recalled to save the day, as so often before.

Bluntly, he has never been replaced. The fact may reflect badly on the English game, with McClaren as the quintessential blustering English coach, but neither Aaron Lennon nor Shaun Wright-Phillips have seized the opportunity.

Steven Gerrard has meanwhile been wasted plugging the gaps. It all makes McClaren's decision seem wilful.

What were the reasons, after all? Some allege that Beckham was too often physically ill-prepared for England duty. Others say that he had come to take selection for granted, thanks chiefly to Eriksson's irrational loyalty.

Others still, generally commentators who would not recognise a baby Bentley if one ran them over, reckon that Team Beckham, the glitz, glamour and packaging, was having a destabilising influence on the squad. Among his other sins, the captain is supposed to have invented the WAG.

Each theory has been tested in Beckham's absence. Young talent has been given its chance, the new McClaren broom has swept the dressing room. Yet England have been lousy, even shameful. The jeers of their fans have told the story.

Beckham, if selected, will not solve all McClaren's problems. The answers to those lie, first, with the over-promoted coach himself, a man whose only concrete achievement has been to confirm every doubt.

Like most supporters, the manager expresses bafflement over his under-performing stars. Unlike the support, he is paid handsomely to discover why players accustomed to contesting the final stages of the Champions League can approach Andorra with trepidation.

That may have something to do with the Premiership itself. Several of those who feel entitled to three lions on their shirts seem, upon examination, to be rather less stellar than their publicity suggests. They are not as good, in other words, as they think they are. This doesn't make them bad players, but it leaves them in need of urgent psychological adjustment.

That was Beckham's problem a year ago, after all. As the late George Best liked to point out, he has never been the complete player. The things he does well he does very well. But certain basic things - heading, tackling, accelerating - have never been his forte.

He compensates, sometimes spectacularly, but the boot Alex Ferguson lobbed at his head should have been aimed at his backside several years back.

McClaren would have been justified, last year, in retrieving the captain's armband, in omitting Beckham from the starting line-up now and then, and in substituting the player as necessary.

Dropping him from the squad entirely was obtuse, as events have amply demonstrated.

His return, like that of Michael Owen, might teach the coach a vital lesson. This: England does not have talent to burn.