David Beckham knows a must-have fashion accessory when he sees one. Now he has stolen the front pages again, this time not with a sarong or butterfly stitches but with a green and gold scarf. Looks good against the black shirt, no?

So he's lining up with the Manchester United supporters who wear the scarf as a statement of their dislike of the club's owners, the Glazers. There's no other reason for wearing it, as everybody in football knows.

Beckham said: 'I'm a Manchester United fan. When I saw the scarf I put it round my neck. It's the old colours ... and that's all I know.' A bit disingenuous, methinks. If he is a United fan there is no way in the world he could be unaware that the scarf has a significance beyond antiquity.

All the same, I don't think Beckham wore it as an anti-Glazer statement. People don't wear images of Che Guevara because they agree with Guevara's notion that: 'The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.' No, people wear the Guevara image because it is cool and because it expresses a certain kind of fashion solidarity.

Beckham wore the Newton Heath scarf to be in the swing of things. It was a gesture of solidarity with the fans who gave him such a cheer when he returned to his former club. In a surreal second half on Wednesday, in the second leg of the Champions League round-of-16 tie at home to AC Milan, United were so far ahead that their supporters had nothing to do except cheer Beckham 'Fergie, Fergie sign him up' and shout bad words about the Glazers.

So with his sense of timing and his gift for gesture, Beckham took a green and gold scarf, knowing that picture editors around the world would lap it up. It was a gesture of sycophancy towards the people who had been cheering him; if you wish to take a more generous line, it was a gesture of thanks. But its meaning was to do with Beckham, not the Glazers: 'I'm like you, a real fan.'