MADRID -- The most popular athlete in the world likes wearing sarongs and going to the hairdresser.

It isn't Anna Kournikova, and it sure isn't Michael Jordan. But if it were possible to somehow genetically mix the two, throw in Johnny Depp's cheekbones and Jimmy Stewart's temperament -- well, then you'd have something resembling David Beckham.

David who? David Beckham who -- as every 13-year-old outside the United States, and anybody here who saw "Bend It Like Beckham" knows -- is the new star of the Real Madrid soccer team.

Beckham has no equivalent in the U.S. He's not just an extraordinary athlete, nor is he just fabulous looking. He's humble, he's a family man, a working class boy from East London who is married to the former girl group singer Posh Spice (real name, Victoria Adams).

Which still doesn't explain why he's worshiped from Toledo to Tokyo by millions of fans. Women certainly like his looks, but it's the boys who study his latest hairstyle as carefully as they do his soccer stats. And although he is British, his appeal transcends national borders.

"Everybody is interested in Beckham now in Spain -- it doesn't matter if you like futbol or not," said Lourdes Garzon, features editor at the Spanish edition of Marie Claire. "He is a new kind of celebrity." The fashionistas of the world have dubbed Beckham a metrosexual, a newly coined phrase for a straight guy who is into fashionable clothes, elaborate hairstyles and unrestrained shopping. Beckham freely admits he is in touch with his feminine side. Not a sentiment you'd expect to hear from Tiger Woods or Cal Ripken.

So in case you were worried this is an article about sports, it's not. In an effort to unlock the secret of Beckham's allure, I recently attended his fourth match with his new team, Real Madrid. As you may or may not know, Beckham recently fled (well, he was paid $41 million) his native Britain and his beloved Manchester United soccer team for Real Madrid, unquestionably the best team in the world now. Real Madrid (that's pronounced Re-Al, meaning "royal") already sports an unprecedented array of the world's top players -- Brazil's Ronaldo and France's Zinedine Zidane, among them -- and Beckham, while nearly in their league, wasn't brought in for his passing ability.

Real Madrid claims 100 million fans worldwide, and at some $85 a pop, Beckham T-shirts are expected to bring in $160 million over the next three years. His sponsorships are in a different stratosphere from any other soccer player, though still modest by the American standards of Jordan and Woods. (Still, this is Europe, where there is universal health insurance, so players don't need to be paid as much.) For the fans, Beckham's appeal has nothing to do with merchandising. Futbol, as it's called here, is less commercial than a Little League game. First of all, Real Madrid plays in Bernabeu Stadium, named after the legendary manager of the team, not a bankrupt airline or an indicted energy consortium. The advertising in the 80,000-person park is discreet. At halftime everybody chows on tinfoil-wrapped sandwiches they brought from home. As the players step onto the field, Beckham-mania ripples through the crowd. Everybody is watching the newcomer. The distinctly non-Spanish word "Beckham" crackles throughout the bleachers. If his play does not stand out, his hair certainly does -- a blond mane done up in a samurai topknot. The Englishman changes his hair almost as much as Hillary Rodham Clinton used to. He has also been through cornrows, a shaved head and a mohawk. Everything except an Afro.

As Real Madrid hypes itself up to engage Marseille, Beckham gives several of his teammates a manly peck on the cheek. I guess it is the European equivalent of linebackers patting each other on the butt, but somehow a kiss seems more intimate.

Beckham's charisma is apparent even to a soccer neophyte like myself. During the game a player tangles with Beckham and crashes to the ground. Beckham thrusts out his hand to help him up, no hint of emotion, James Bond on the soccer field.

"Beckham has made futbol sexy for women," said Silvana Carretero, a young Madrilena who works in public relations. The women in her office have now put up Beckham posters, she said. She couldn't come up with the words for his greatness, so I suggested Nietzschean Ubermensch. She thought that sounded fine.

Triple the photographers

Since Beckham arrived the number of photographers on the field has tripled, according to my escort and soccer interpreter Charlie, a novelist who moonlights as a sports columnist for a British weekly paper. Beckham's effect on the crowd is visceral. Even the normally laconic Charlie, a towering Londoner, emitted schoolboyish shrieks of "C'mon Dave!"

The so-serious Spanish football press was initially skeptical of the Brit, dismissing him as pretty-boy, good for nothing but selling Tshirts. But his aggression, determination to win and physical prowess on the field won them over.

Unlike U.S. sports, soccer is a game for Venus, not Mars. Thus, Beckham is admired for his humbleness on the field as much as in his private life. Soccer is a game of cooperation, where passes and coordination with the rest of the team count as much as individual goals.

Not a playboy sports star

Marie Claire recently put Beckham on its cover. He is the opposite of the playboy sports star, Garzon says. Beckham is seen as an attentive father, she says, and he is always telling everybody how much he loves his wife. In his recent $1 million autobiography, he talked about her party organizing skills as much as his football.

"He is like the new man we would all like to have at home," Garzon says. Other Spanish stars, like filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, are more intellectual. But the British soccer star's appeal is "is emotional, physical and sexual," she says. "Not intellectual, but he doesn't need it."

It occurs to me that Beckham will never generate the hype in the United States that he has in the rest of the world. We like our sports superstars unimpeachably macho, men of raw, unrestrained appetite, prone to trouble and excess: Babe Ruth, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant. There's no precedent for a player who attends fashion shows because he is interested in the clothes, not the models. A traditional Espanola, Silvana agrees. She thinks Beckham is "a bit soft."

After all, she says, "what can I think about a man who dresses better than his wife?"