FOOTBALL superstar David Beckham visited the Philippines today to give comfort to survivors of the Asian countryâs deadliest-ever typhoon – although not everyone was sure who he was.
Hundreds of survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan rushed out of their tent shelters in the central city of Tacloban to welcome the global celebrity, who is nevertheless unfamiliar to many citizens of the Philippines, where basketball rather than soccer is king.
âHeâs so handsome. I heard he plays for the Azkals,â gushed mother-of-four Darilyn Bascug, referring to the Philippinesâ national football team.
Shortly after Beckhamâs arrival, another woman from the area approached an AFP reporter and asked timidly: âIs that man a celebrity?â
Wearing a black T-shirt with the logo of the United Nations Childrenâs Fund, the 38-year-old ex-England international visited a tent city for several hundred families who lost their homes when giant waves unleashed by Haiyan crashed into Taclobanâs coast.
Beckham spent more than an hour inside a UNICEF tent set up as a nursery, where he played with dozens of young typhoon survivors.
The father-of-four stopped to greet babies and children staying in a shanty home, made of scrap corrugated iron and wood.
âVery happy, very happy to visit everybody,â Beckham told reporters.
âOh, my God,â a young woman screamed as she reached out to grab his hand.
He also visited a warehouse for relief goods donated by the UN in the nearby town of Palo.
Beckham, who ended his illustrious career last year, is on his second visit to the Philippines in his role as a âgoodwill ambassadorâ for UNICEF.
The star, who was travelling with heavy security, flew by private plane today to Tacloban, one of the areas worst-hit by Haiyan.
Zafrin Chowhdury, communications chief for UNICEF in the Philippines, told AFP Beckham was making a two-day visit to help out in the international humanitarian effort.
âHis focus is meeting the children, meeting the families,â she said.
The typhoon, one of the strongest ever to hit land, left about 8,000 people dead or missing across the central Philippines in November last year.
It also left more than four million people homeless as it tore up 171 towns and cities with winds of up to 315 kilometres (195 miles) an hour.
Weeks after the disaster, Beckham and his wife Victoria, formerly of the Spice Girls, donated 20 boxes of clothes and shoes to the British Red Cross that were auctioned off to raise money for the victims.
Beckham last visited the Philippines in Dec 2011, where he played a seven-a-side football match with young Filipinos at a government-run centre for abused or abandoned children.
