Beckham peace move may bring end to boot row

Visit of Juventus to Old Trafford is overshadowed as England captain responds to Ferguson's account of dressing-room incident

David Beckham last night pulled back from the brink of a potentially irrevocable split with Sir Alex Ferguson, stressing the "harmony" within the Manchester United camp after a day in which the Old Trafford manager and the England captain looked to be on collision course over the facial injury which Ferguson inadvertently inflicted on Beckham.

In his second statement of the evening, after an unapologetic Ferguson had held the stage in the afternoon, Beckham struck a placatory note which had been pointedly absent from his first. "I want to assure all United fans that there is complete harmony and focus as we prepare for the Juventus game," he said. "The dressing-room incident was just one of those things ­ it's all in the past now."

Earlier, following Ferguson's attempt to kick into touch the tensions he created by kicking a boot into Beckham's face after last Saturday's FA Cup defeat by Arsenal, Beckham had demonstrated a marked reluctance to let the matter drop. His first statement, issued by his management company, SFX, revealed that a doctor had to be called to staunch bleeding two hours after the match.

In what sounded like a calculated riposte to Ferguson's efforts to play down the incident, Beckham's first official utterance on the subject had been unusually graphic and less-than-conciliatory. It also appeared, at least partially, to contradict the United manager's description of the wound above Beckham's left eyebrow as a "graze" that did not require stitches.

Starkly, it read: "David did not want stitches at first, but two hours after the game, blood was still dripping from the wound. The club doctor visited David's house and fixed two steri-strips to stop the bleeding."

The tone and detail suggested Beckham was unhappy with the impression created by Ferguson's statement earlier at the end of a press briefing at about tonight's visit by Juventus in the Champions' League. In it, the Scot took what was possibly a swipe at Beckham ­ or maybe those close to him ­ for allowing a behind-closed-doors episode to become as public as a soap-opera storyline.

"Regarding Saturday's game, I have to say what I've said over my 29 years as a manager, which is that whatever happens in the dressing-room is sacrosanct," Ferguson said. "No way could I ever betray the trust of players in taking anything out of the dressing-room, whatever benefit it may be. It never works that way. Loyalty has to be 100 per cent ­ it can never be any less.

"Having said that, it has obviously created publicity. My only reaction is that it was a freakish incident. If I tried to do it [hit Beckham's face] a hundred times, or a million times, it couldn't happen again. If it did, I'd still be playing. And contrary to a lot of reports, David didn't have any stitches in his head. It was a graze, which the doctor dealt with."

Ferguson then announced he had no more to say before thanking his audience and striding, ruddy-faced and unrepentant, towards the exit. No questions were allowed, though as he went he was asked several journalists whether he had apologised to Beckham. He did not reply. A source close to Beckham said last night that the player "feels an apology would not go amiss", though he does not intend to pursue one.

In the meantime, exactly who breached dressing-room protocol ­ "betrayed the trust" in Ferguson's terms ­ remains unclear. What is certain is that it is not in his nature to rest until the source of the leak is found.