Brooklyn kicks off Sven's holiday

He stepped on to the England coach looking for all the world as if he were the team mascot. Which, in a sense, he is.

As the World Cup squad arrived in Dubai for the start of their Middle Eastern rest cure, first on to the waiting coach was not skipper David Beckham or even Sven-Goran Eriksson.

Instead it was young Brooklyn, holding his parents' hands, and looking rather self-assured for a three-year-old being greeted by the popping of photographers' flashbulbs after a sevenanda-half hour flight from London.

But if you are Brooklyn Beckham you are probably used to that kind of thing.

Until a short while ago no one thought Victoria Beckham would be going to Dubai. She was too pregnant. Brooklyn would hardly be going without her, and there were even doubts over whether Beckham himself would be flying out to the Gulf.

But the captain was clearly desperate to join his team, and the Beckhams are nothing if not a close-knit family, and so today they - and the rest of the team, with wives or girlfriends and children - were enjoying the start of five days of rest and recuperation in the sun.

Brooklyn's presence shows that for Eriksson the Dubai exercise is about more than acclimatising the team to the heat they face in Japan: it is about bonding, and Eriksson getting to know the players and their families. And if Posh and Brooklyn had not been there, the Jumeirah Beach Club would have felt a rather emptier place today.

So when the team emerged from the airport in their Burton suits, it looked more like an over-sized family outing - the Beckhams with Brooklyn, David Seaman and his wife carrying two rather sleepy children, Gareth Southgate with his. Oh yes, and Sven was there with a very chirpy-looking Nancy Dell'Olio, which in itself could be seen as a small triumph for family values.