Carol Ann Duffy immortalizes Beckham’s Achilles heel injury in a poem that compares the former England captain to the classical warrior. In Achilles, tributes to Beckham’s ability with a football are mixed with references to the classical myth in which the warrior is let down by his one weakness—his heel—during the Trojan War. Duffy told the BBC: “He (Beckham) is almost a mythical figure himself, in popular culture. The most tragic image was him being unable to walk and crying on the side of the pitch. It’s fascinating that the injury takes its name from Achilles. The whole point of Greek myths is the combination of triumph and tragedy that we follow in them.” Achilles, greatest of warriors, was dipped in the River Styx to make him invulnerable, but he was held by the ankle, making it the only chink in his armour. The poem, the latest offering from the populist-minded Poet Laureate, follows her poem on the MPs’ expenses scandal and a tribute to the men who fought in the Great War, following the deaths of the last two surviving British soldiers.