diego maradona was good volleyball player 
zidane was def better than beckham but beckham was a worldclass player.
in a team sport even an excellent player can not carry the weight of the team on his own shoulder
there are plenty of beckham detractors but England’s qualification would not be on track had it not benefitted from contributions from beckham, and even in their failings in previous worldcup, if there was one player that had an impact it was beckham.
all someone has to do is look at stats on assists and goals and not give in to anti beckham media stories when they and mcclaren needed to find a bogeyman, later mcclaren showed himself to be useless, and fabio brought in beckham to help with the england teams qualifiers.
what zidane and beckham have in common aside from being great players was that both were booted out of important matches in worldcup and increasing the odds that their teams would lose. beckham kicked a dude and zidane headbutted a dude.