And Beckham was a freak of nature with his FKs.
His career conversion rate is around 10%, might be slightly less, which was helped by a spike playing in MLS (13%, presumably worse standard of goalkeeping). This puts him in the good-very good category, but not really up there with the better free-kick takers. As a comparison before Ronaldo arrived Dybala was scoring them at about 20% conversion. But also difficulty comes into play here.
This chart here since 14/15 gives away the better free-kick takers. Ronaldo is simply not one of them. Dybala, Coutinho, Mata, Maddison, these are all good shorter-range modern free-kick takers. Coutinho, Boschilia et al in the longer range. If I had to put Beckham somewhere in regards to difficulty of kicks taken and conversion then for me he would be around Fekir or Naldo's area on the chart. He took them from further out than Dybala typically does, but Beckham was not very good too close to the edge of the area because his technique was very deliberate and needed time to come down. He was best 30 yards out where he had space to whip it across the keeper and get it down with speed.
Beckham was famous for free-kicks for the following reasons;
- Celebrity status
- Unique, deliberate and attractive technique
- When he scored them they often looked fantastic
- Some were very important and famous (especially 2001 WCQ vs Greece)
- He had a film named after his kicking technique shortly afterwards
The Greece one is seen as his free-kick masterpiece, it's where his reputation took off. I, like a huge swathe of the English population, watched the game and saw Beckham miss multiple good free-kicks (it was either 6 or 7), to the point where when he stepped up to take the kick with England losing 2-1 in the 92nd minute I was kind of hoping someone else would take it. I think Sheringham wanted to, but Beckham would never let anyone else take them. The rest is history, greatest free-kick taker ever.
For me, David Beckham is the embodiment of "taker of great free-kicks" against "great free-kick taker". But his reputation demanded that when he stepped up to take one against your team you were genuinely fearful, because you knew it would be largely unstoppable if he got it right. The downside to them is that he didn't have a lot of variation - most were whipped in at speed across the keeper from both sides. Occasionally he'd pull out a lower curled effort, but not so much success.