David Beckham hasn’t done much for Paris Saint-Germain during his short stint with the team, but he has had a profound effect on one academic. Namely, one man, Andy Martin, a professor of French philosophy at Cambridge University, who has a Tumblr where he imagines the inner monologue of Beckham as he encounters the world of French existentialism. Nearing the end of his thirties and the tapering down of his career, “Goldenballs” is ripe for the Gitane-scented lures of self-doubt and a sense of fundamental meaninglessness.

Martin has him musing things like:

They’re flashing images of me right out there. Instantly. On a giant screen. It’s me all right – the suit’s looking good (thanks VB!). And yet, I dunno, it’s just the surface. Is that all I am – a montage of images? Shorts and shoes?

and

We were spinning around the Arc de Triomphe on our way back to base. The Arch of Triumph. All those battles, won and lost. Fallen heroes. “No one goes on for ever, is that what you’re saying? Yeah, I know that feeling all right. Although I would like to point out that I am still available, if England need me. And I think they do.”

Sideplots involve debates between Beckham and David Ginola over who has better hair, running appeals to Roy Hodgson for another chance on the national team, Beckham’s inspiration for a new fragrance name, “Existence,” and one entry entirely devoted to a L’Étranger parody (“The sky was blue and the sun was beating down. Just then a guy who looked like Messi came towards me”). Beckham trains by running up the Eiffel Tower, hangs out in Café de Flore, the haunt of Sartre and Beauvoir, poses next to the gargoyles on Notre Dame, and generally soaks up the Parisian atmosphere. But the cracks are beginning to show: is he still a footballeur? Has he always been a footballeur? What does it mean to be a footballeur once one ceases to play le foot?

These are the questions that plague the previously unflappable Becks, who also turns out to be pretty handy with the French language, especially epithets (“that sac à merde Patrick Barclay”). And he still knows how to make the masses happy, even if the masses are mid-manifestation:

“Bonjour!” I yelled out, standing up. “Maillots Beckham. Totalement gratuits!” I started chucking out shirts till the box was empty. Like I was sprinkling stardust. The masses were swarming all over them.

“I promise you, Franck,” I said, as we sped away along the boulevard, “I won’t rest until everyone in the land has a Beckham no 32 shirt in the wardrobe.”