Beckham's appearance at Shanghai stadium sparks stampede that leaves seven injured

David Beckham's appearance at a China university set off a stampede by fans that made the soccer player's publicity tour look like a Justin Bieber mall trip.

Beckham — who is being paid to make weekly trips to promote the sport as China's Global Ambassador for Football — had to cancel yesterday's visit after fans stormed the gates of the Tongji University soccer stadium in Shanghai to catch a glimpse of the retired English soccer star.

Seven people were injured as a wall of security guards and police officers were trampled by the group of over 1,000 students and youngsters. 

The whole scenario seems bizarre considering the fact that the 38-year-old, married father-of-four retired in March and the worldwide Beckham craze fizzled out about a decade ago.

Beckham is being paid a small fortune for his three separate week-long tours to lend his clean-cut image to the Chinese league, which is riddled with corruption and foul play.

At Thursday's scrum, one female police officer was carried away with blood streaming from a face wound while another male officer was pictured lying on the ground unconscious with a bloody head wound.

Several delirious fans had to be restrained. In all, five security staff and two fans were injured and taken to hospital.

The event was immediately cancelled.

David Beckham takes a great fall in China while demonstrating free-kick

David Beckham took demonstrating how to take the perfect free-kick on the tail-end of his five-day tour of China a little too seriously yesterday.

Beckham — dressed more for a GQ runway that a soccer pitch — was a little red-faced after he slipped while showing off one of his trademark free-kicks in front of a group of young Chinese soccer players.

Wearing a dress shirt, tie and black leather shoes, the soccer ambassador lined up to swing his signature leg move in front of the adoring footballers from the Wuhan Zall club when things took a turn for the worse.  Becks lost his balance, slipped and ended up flat on his tail-end in front of his stunned fans.

The former England captain got up smiling and seemed to take the Bent up like Beckham fall in good spirits.

Beckham was in China on a five-day tour through the cities of Beijing, Qingdao and Wuhan to promote soccer in a country recently rocked by a professional soccer-fixing scandal.  He has vowed to make the Chinese Football Association one of the most popular leagues in the world.

"It is something that we are very passionate about changing the mentality of the league and bringing youngsters through and making this league as popular as some of the big leagues in the world." Beckham said. "I've always been a fan of Chinese football because I think the players are very talented and they are very passionate.

"When you see the excitement throughout this country when the team has done well you see how important it is to people. I am excited to make a difference."

I'm sure the Chinese fans will look past Beckham's tumble and remember his message.  That and his underwear ads.