David Beckham has been stealing some column space with people still lauding his performance in England's 3-0 victory over Belarus. Paul Hayward of the Guardian writes that Beckham has found himself the perfect role to suit his vast experience: super-sub.

"Sporting a commemorative facial shag- pile that could wreck sales for the razor firm he has endorsed, Beckham spent Wednesday night at Wembley easing further into the role of world's most famous substitute.

We enter a new phase in which anonymous is the new ubiquitous. To expect Beckham to become a backbencher in England's celebrity parliament was, of course, a daft idea. The only way he could become a support act was by lending that role a freshly manufactured grandeur. And he has succeeded, if the reception he received against Belarus is a guide. A master of reinvention, he is no longer hailed as the wizard, but as a monument to patriotism and perseverance.

This harmless sideshow will not consume England's efforts to reach the final of a major tournament for the first time since 1966, because Capello will not allow it to, and because the match-winning impetus has shifted to Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. To the England coach – a product of Serie A, where top footballers play on into their dotage – a veteran Beckham brings an indispensable virtue to the last third of high-pressure games: control, tactical cunning and the capacity to plant doubt in the minds of tired opponents with his crossing and dead-ball prowess."

And Matt Dickinson, chief sports correspondent at the Times, adds his voice to those demanding that Capello gives Beckham a ticket on the plane to South Africa, so that we can all enjoy a good old Becks love-in at next year's World Cup finals.

"So what if David Beckham’s international career has become a series of cameo roles — great, if they are superbly executed.

His place on the plane would owe nothing to his status (which is diminished in any case to foot soldier under Fabio Capello), or to him having something to prove (although his motivation will be huge).

The common mistake is to rank his chances against Theo Walcott, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Aaron Lennon. Two of those three flyers will travel — and Beckham has no more chance of usurping the chosen pair (most likely Walcott plus one) than he does of beating them over a 30-yard sprint.

The argument needs to be broader, more intelligent on the ball, like Beckham himself."

Elsewhere, there's an interesting look at the qualification of North Korea in the Daily Telegraph, with Ian Chadband examining how the country could fare at their first World Cup finals since Pak Doo-Ik's famous winner against Italy in 1966.

"Kim Jong-Hun demanded no questions about politics, only sport. What a shame then that we didn't at that point know about the Sven-Goran Eriksson rumours because at least we could have asked the North Korean coach what he thought about his job being half-inched by the playboy of the western world?

After watching his side's goalless draw [against the Republic of Congo] during which they were lucky to get nil, Hun declared his callow crew planned to "surprise the world" in South Africa next year just like their fabled 1966 predecessors.

Not on this evidence, they won't; the "surprising the world" bit would have been emblazoning Democratic People's Republic of Korea on the back of a Western coach at a time when the world is increasingly fuelled with suspicion about Kim Jong-il's closed, totalitarian regime with its rocket-launching and testing of nuclear bombs.

The players trooped off the team bus without a smile on sight and you just wondered how much pressure these young pioneers must be enduring, considering that when they were kids their country refused to play in both the World Cup and matches abroad because Pyongyang was so shamed by the propaganda own goal of losing to Japan and South Korea in qualifiers for the 1994 World Cup. The scrutiny will only be a thousand times more glaring in South Africa."