‘We’d like to give you two, two and two.’
I looked over to Dad, who was in another world. He’d been looking forward to this moment even longer than I had. I could see that he hadn’t taken in what Alex had just said. I knew, though, I’d just heard what I’d been wanting to hear: two, two and two, equalling the six years I’d been offered at White Hart Lane. I didn’t need to wait for the details.
‘I want to sign.’
And out came that pen. How long had it taken? A minute? It didn’t matter. I’d been ready, waiting to say those words, for the best part of ten years.
3
Home from Home
‘You may have signed for Man United, but you haven’t done anything yet.’
‘You know I’m Man United, but I don’t want that to put pressure on you. If you decide to sign for somebody else, I won’t be upset.’
Dad had always made that clear to me. Of course, I’d always known he was lying about the last bit. So the day I signed at Old Trafford was as fantastic for him as it was for me. By the time we left Mr Ferguson’s office, Mum was in tears. She was happy for me but she knew it meant that, sooner rather than later, I was going to be leaving home. She’d put so much love and so many hours into a kid who was mad about football; and the moment we’d got to our destination was also the moment she was going to have to get used to the idea of her boy heading north to start a career.
She did a fair bit of crying in the months between me signing up and starting my YTS at United. But I knew, deep down, she was as proud of me as my dad was. Not letting my parents down meant everything to me. They never made me feel like I owed them for the support they’d given me, but I felt I had to do all I could to make sure they didn’t end up disappointed. Think about it: if I let them down, it would mean I’d let myself down as well. It’s never been a case of me having to match up to their expectations. It’s just that I’ve taken my parents’ expectations of me and made them the starting point for what I expect of myself. Even now, when my own family and career mean I don’t see as much of them, I think I still judge myself by the standards I learnt from Mum and Dad.
What could have been more exciting than that day? Everybody shaking hands, me in my blazer and club tie, a United player; or, at least, a lad from Chingford who’d just taken the first step towards becoming a United player. Out in the corridor, Dad and I met up with the United captain, Bryan Robson. We’d spent hours in front of the television watching videos of this man, our absolute all-time hero. Dad had tried to hammer his qualities into me: courage, commitment, energy, vision and the ability to inspire players around him.
I’d met Bryan before, but this was the boss introducing me to him as United’s latest signing:
‘Congratulations, David. You’ll find out for yourself but, I’d say, you couldn’t be joining a better club.’
I don’t remember us driving back to London at all. At least Dad didn’t forget we were on a busy motorway. I couldn’t have thought about anything else that evening, and I didn’t want to. I’d just lived through the happiest day of my life.
Although I’d done the adding up in my head and got the answer I wanted, that first contract at Old Trafford wasn’t actually for six years but for four. It was against regulations, anyway, for a boy signing schoolboy forms to have full professional terms set out there and then: I was only thirteen, after all, and so much could change before I turned eighteen. The rules were there to protect youngsters from getting trapped somewhere they didn’t want to be; not that there was any chance of that happening to me. United told me that, if everything went well, I could expect to sign as a professional in four and a half years’ time.
In a really important way, I think that bit of uncertainty was best for me and for all the other lads who joined the club at the same time. I knew I was wanted. But I also knew that I had to prove myself over the next four years. If I’d known all along that achieving the ambition of becoming a professional player at United was already settled – down on a piece of paper in black and white – who knows if it wouldn’t have taken the edge off my determination to take the chance I’d been given? I think that extra hunger has had a lot to do with my success and the team’s success in the years since: all the boys who’ve come through at the club will know what I mean. The day I signed didn’t feel like the day I’d made it. The hard work was just starting. I wanted a challenge and Manchester United was the biggest challenge there was.
I knew I was in good hands. Even before I signed at United I had the feeling I was joining a family. It’s about there being really good people everywhere at the club. I don’t just mean the ones everybody would know about like the manager or the players, but people like Kath Phipps, who still works on Reception at Old Trafford. I can still remember, when I was just a boy, every time I went up to a United game she’d be there. She’d lean across her desk and give me a little kiss and the programme she’d saved for me. Later on, Kath used to help me with answering my mail. She’s part of United and she was with me right through my career there.
Whenever I came up to Manchester to train or to be at a game, I’d be looked after by Joe and Connie Brown, who had an office at the ground. They would take me – and Mum and Dad, if they were with me – around Old Trafford, take us for a meal, show us down to the dressing rooms and introduce us to the players and staff. Joe and Connie made me feel really welcome. Joe was Youth Development Officer at United. He was responsible for young players’ expenses and travel arrangements but that job stretched to him and Connie taking care of just about everything when youngsters from outside Manchester and their families spent time at the club.
Then, when it came to the football, there was Nobby Stiles. I worked with Nobby after I joined the club, too, but I first met him during the weeks when I came up to train in the school holidays. He was the coach I remember most clearly working with back then. Nobby was really hard, just like he was as a player, but I think he cared more about the youngsters he worked with than anything else in the world. Dad knew all about Nobby as a player, of course, for United and as a World Cup winner with England: he and Dad got on really well, even though every now and again Nobby would have to catch himself about his language when he was getting carried away during one of our games:
‘Excuse me, Mr Beckham. Excuse me, Mrs Beckham.’
Not that Dad was too worried about that:
‘No problem, Nobby. You carry on.’
Nobby was great with us and he was great with our parents as well. He knew mums and dads needed to be involved, not treated as if they were in the way. If you watched videos or heard stories about him as a player, you’d never believe how gentle he was with the boys, or how polite he was with the parents. No-one took liberties with Nobby, mind. For all that he didn’t look a big man and used to wear these huge glasses when he was coaching, he still had something about him you respected straight away. Fifteen years later, he would still come straight up and give me a big hug like nothing’s changed since. Kath, Joe and Connie, Nobby Stiles: they all had jobs to do but they also made United a place that felt like home.
I could have moved up the year after I signed schoolboy forms, in August 1989, and finished my last two years of school in Manchester but, in the end, we decided I’d stay in London until I started full-time as a YTS trainee at United. That meant I could be at home, with my friends and family, while I turned fourteen and fifteen. And I could keep playing for Ridgeway Rovers, which by then had become a team called Brimsdown: we were the same players more or less, just the name had changed. United were happy for boys to get on with their lives and play for their Sunday League teams until they moved to the city. Malcolm Fidgeon would come and watch me play for Brimsdown and, as long as I was enjoying my football and playing regularly, that was enough. The time for United to take all the responsibility was still a couple of years’ away.
I used to go up to Manchester two or three times a year to train during the holidays. In the summer, I’d be up there fo
r the whole six weeks. I loved it and didn’t want to do anything else with my time off school but play and train and be at United. Those summers were fantastic. Boys could come up for a week or two weeks. Me, I wanted to be there for as long as they’d let me. There would be thirty or so of us together at a time, all looked after by Malcolm and the rest of the coaching staff, in halls of residence. I’d think about the place where I’d stayed in Barcelona; that lovely old house with the mountains rising up behind us. This was a bit different: a concrete block in Salford, stuck on top of a hill and freezing cold whatever the weather was like outside. You shared a room with another young player, the facilities were basic but at least there was a snooker table and a table tennis table for us to use in the evenings.
Not that where we were staying made much difference to me. We’d go to United’s second training ground at Lyttleton Road every day and train morning and afternoon. Then, in the evenings, we’d live it up: trips to the pictures, fish and chip nights, all the glamorous stuff. I met other boys who had signed at the same time as me, like John O’Kane, who I spent a lot of time with back then. John was from Nottingham. He was a massive prospect at United all through our first years there together, a really good player. As a person, he was very relaxed. Maybe it was because he was so laid back that it didn’t really work out for him at United. He ended up leaving to go to Everton, the season we went on to do the Treble, and is playing for Blackpool now.
Lads would come from everywhere for those holiday sessions. Keith Gillespie, who’s now at Leicester, came over from Ireland. He was a lovely lad, and I used to get on really well with him. Colin Murdock, who’s just moved from Preston to Hibs, came down from Scotland. We were all miles from home, in the same boat, and that made it easier for us all to get on, even if, in the back of our minds, we knew we were in competition with each other as well. The football was what mattered above everything and it was a new experience, training day in day out and being introduced to more technical coaching. It couldn’t have been more different from Sunday League. All the time I was with Ridgeway, I’d tried to imagine what it would be like and this was it: football was my job. I didn’t have to do anything else.
I had two years to get ready for moving up to Manchester permanently. I’d had plenty of trips away with Ridgeway and representative sides when I was younger, too. But neither of those things made it any easier when it came time to leave home. Of course I was excited and it was never a case of having second thoughts but, even so, it wasn’t easy to go. I was very nervous about what lay ahead of me. Mum and Dad said they’d be up every weekend to see me play, that they wouldn’t miss a game, and I knew they’d keep to their word. Promises count for a lot in the life of a family. Nowadays, I wouldn’t dare forget if I’ve told Brooklyn I’ll get him something or do something for him: he’ll remember even if I don’t. Back then, I knew I could rely on my parents to be there when I needed them.
Being away for a week or a month is completely different to moving away from home for good: I was fifteen and a half. Where you end up staying in digs as a young player is so important, especially when you think about how much else you’re going to have to find out about when you begin your working life, full-time, at a big club like Man United. Every club has a list of landladies they use and I’ve often wondered whether it’s just chance who you end up with, or whether they try to fix boys up in places they know will be right for them. Looking back, I think I was pretty lucky although it was a while before I found myself somewhere that really felt like home.
My first digs were with a Scottish couple who lived in Bury New Road, next to the fire station. They were lovely people and very good to me and the other boys who were there. Being young lads away from home for the first time, there was a bit of backchat and mucking about that went on: late-night kitchen raids for snacks, that kind of thing. We had fun. When I left, it was because of a strange incident that was completely out of keeping with the rest of my time there. I’d gone down the road to the garage to get some chocolate and forgotten my key. I got back and knocked on the door, which was answered by the husband, Pete. He asked me where my key was and, when I said I thought I’d left it upstairs, he gave me a little clip round the ear. I wasn’t too happy about it and I remember, that evening, my Dad was on the phone to him. I was on the other side of the room and I could hear Dad shouting down the line. That was the end of that arrangement.
I moved down to a place on Lower Broughton Road, with a landlady named Eve Cody. I got on really well with her son, Johnny, and was very happy there for almost a year. I shared a room with John O’Kane, who I already knew quite well from the holiday sessions at United when we’d still been living at home. I have to admit that, around that time, John and I used to struggle to get to training on time. It wasn’t that we’d be out late at night; we were just both lads who loved our sleep. And we were lodging further away than some of the others like Keith Gillespie and Robbie Savage, who were almost next door to the Cliff. It’s not surprising, I suppose, that early on there was a bond between us lads who were staying in digs, as opposed to the Manchester boys who were all still living at home.
After a while, the club changed us round and it was then that I moved in with Ann and Tommy Kay and, as friendly as the other places had been, I wished I could have been there from the start. It was made for me. I was still homesick but Annie and Tom were like a second mum and dad, so loving and caring. The food was great as well. The house was almost directly opposite the training ground, so I could roll out of bed and walk to work in a couple of minutes. Just what you need when you’re a teenager who can’t get up in the morning.
I shared a room with a lad named Craig Dean, who had to retire before he really got a chance to do anything, because of an injury to his spine. After a few months, Ann gave me Mark Hughes’ old room, which looked out over the playing fields next door to the Cliff. I loved that room. It was the kind of size that meant, somehow, it felt like your mum and dad’s room: big fitted wardrobes with a dressing table and mirror to match and a proper double bed pressed up to the wall in the far corner. I brought along the stereo my dad had bought me before I moved to Manchester and went out and bought a nice television. I thought I had everything I could possibly need. I was really happy. The Kays made me feel like I was part of the family. Ann and Tom had one son of their own, Dave, and they made me feel like another. I know Ann has kept a box of old coins and things I left behind when I moved out and got a place of my own, and I’ve always tried to make sure I visit now and again.
I was lucky, as well, when I first moved up to Manchester that I met a girl named Deana who I went out with for the best part of three years. I wasn’t chasing round like a lot of teenagers away from home for the first time. The romance with Deana was something that helped me feel settled: my first real relationship. We had a lot of fun together, whether it was going out or just being alone in each other’s company. It was also a time for finding out the things that were trickier.
After training one afternoon, I went off to the snooker club with Gary Neville, Keith Gillespie and John O’Kane even though the original plan had been for Deana and I to meet up. I had my back to the door of the club and was leaning across the table to make my shot. Suddenly I glanced up and saw the colour draining out of John’s cheeks. He was looking back over my head; I turned round to see Deana in the doorway behind me. The two of us went out into the car park so I could make my apologies, and that would have been that except, for some reason, I made the mistake of looking up at the first floor window of the club. Gary, Keith and John were standing there. I couldn’t hear them but I could see their shoulders jigging up and down, the three of them giggling at the spot of bother I’d got myself in. I couldn’t help myself: I started giggling too. I couldn’t blame Deana at all for turning the rest of that day into a very long, very sorrowful one in the life of one teenage boy.
I have so many good memories of my times with Deana and also with her family. They were so welcoming: it
was as if I just had to turn up on the doorstep and the next thing I knew we’d be in the kitchen; the kettle would be on, and there’d be something to eat on the way. It was very warm. Without making a big thing of it, Deana’s mum and dad made me feel like I was part of the family. Her dad, Ray, was a Liverpool season ticket holder and I went to watch games at Anfield with him from time to time. Away from my own dad, I suppose I hooked onto Ray. He sometimes took me down to the pub. A couple of halves, of course, and I’d be rolling a bit. We’d wander back to the house together for some dinner. This was me really finding out about life as a man: out getting tipsy with my girlfriend’s dad. It was a lovely time in my life and I’ll always be grateful to Deana that she’s never spoiled it. I know she’s been offered money since by the papers to tell stories about me and always turned them down flat. I know that’s because of the kind of person she is and I hope, as well, it’s something to do with her getting a good feeling, like I do, when she remembers us being together.
Life in Manchester away from football was just part of what was totally new to me. There was this group of local lads for a start. Gary and Philip Neville, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes were all from around Manchester, so they’d been training at United since they’d signed schoolboy forms, although they hadn’t been at the holiday sessions I’d attended over the previous couple of years. I wasn’t aware of it at the time but I think, to start with, they weren’t sure about me at all: Gary says they had me down as a right flash little cockney. I can understand why. It wasn’t because I was loud or anything but, when we were getting handed out our kit, I’d always end up with the nicest tracksuit and the best-fitting boots. I happened to get on really well with the kit man, Norman Davies, and he just looked after me. I’d known Norman for a long time already from going to the games as a kid and, maybe, this was my reward for helping him clear up dressing rooms for the first team at places like Upton Park all those years ago.
David Beckham: My Side Page 4