Rice's stunning free-kicks aren’t the only way he can emulate Beckham

THE comparisons with David Beckham were obvious once Declan Rice bent in two long-range free-kicks to demolish the champions of Europe.

Arsenal’s £105million man had kept his dead-ball prowess pretty quiet during the first 405 games of his professional career.

But in his 406th, in a Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid, came an extraordinary one-two to surpass even old Goldenballs.

Rice should be emulating Beckham in more ways than one. He should be captaining England, for starters.

The idea that there are ‘no leaders’ and ‘no talkers’ in modern football is always overstated. And such sentiment certainly ignores Rice.

Thomas Tuchel was so convinced England lacked leadership that he controversially recalled the 34-year-old Jordan Henderson when he named his first squad as Three Lions boss last month.

But why hark back to Henderson when you’ve got Rice?

It has often been difficult to pin down Rice’s best position.

He emerged at West Ham as a teenage centre-half, has generally been used as a midfield anchorman by England but is more of a box-to-box, Bryan Robson ‘Captain Marvel’ type at Arsenal.

And never more so than on Tuesday night as the 15-time European champions were skewered.

But what has never been in any doubt is that Rice is a leader of men.

At West Ham, he learned that concept from Mark Noble, one of the Premier League’s finest captains and one-club men.

At 26, Rice possesses the force of personality, the team ethic and the ability to lead by example — the key characteristics of a great captain.

He is one of the most likeable men in the game, a hugely popular figure for club and country.

The former Irishman has certainly been on kissing terms with the Blarney Stone.

He speaks with candour and humour in the media, while in the dressing room he is both a setter of standards and a shoulder to cry on.

Oh, and what better way of showing leadership than by winning an argument with three of his team-mates to take a free-kick from the best part of 30 yards — then bending it round the Real wall, twice in the space of 12 minutes?

Rice is a more obvious captain than either Beckham, who skippered England 59 times, or the current long-serving incumbent Harry Kane.

Henderson, when his form earned him a place in the team, was England’s true captain — as we learned during the behind-closed-doors era when his hectoring of team-mates was all too apparent.

Kane is a leader by example but no rabble-rouser on the pitch or in the dressing room.

Rice, however, fits the bill.

When Gareth Southgate handed him the captaincy for the night to mark his 50th England cap against Belgium last year, Rice spoke with such passion and alacrity that it seemed only a matter of time before he succeeded Kane as the permanent skipper.

He lifted West Ham’s first major trophy in more than four decades in the 2023 Conference League final against Fiorentina — his final match before that ‘half price’ move to the Emirates.

And at Arsenal, Rice is also the most obvious man to wear the armband, too.

Martin Odegaard, who has been Mikel Arteta’s skipper for three seasons, is a quiet man who is struggling for form and might benefit from a lightening of the load.

Even during that historic victory over his former club Real, Odegaard struggled to make much of a personal impact.

The Norwegian has lost his rhythm, his instinctive ability to pick out the right pass, since an early-season injury.

Rice and Odegaard are the same age, but the Londoner is the man who so often urges Arsenal on, with words and deeds.

Odegaard and Saka both ceded to Rice during a lengthy conflab before the first of those two extraordinary free-kicks.

Here was a bloke who had never scored a direct free-kick in his 405 previous matches, managing to convince his team-mates that he could ping one in from 30 yards against Real Madrid.

And if that isn’t leadership ability, I don’t know what is.