David Beckham: My Side

by David Beckham (with Tom Watt)

  It was only some time later, when I saw pictures of the crowd, that I perhaps appreciated how intense it was at Upton Park that day. I’ve got one particular photo at home that still spooks me: I’m taking a corner and you can see the expressions on people’s faces in the crowd behind me. You can almost feel the aggression; it’s caught there in the picture. And it’s not: you’re a crap footballer who cost us the World Cup and who should never play for England again. It’s way past that, way past anything to do with football. The looks on those faces said it all:

  ‘If we could, we’d have you, Beckham.’

  That hatred makes you wonder what football’s worth, if it provokes those sorts of emotions. If you snapped out of your concentration on the game and became aware of moments like that, what would you do? Walk off the pitch? I just don’t understand it at all. Lucky for me, I felt whatever was coming my way I could take on the chin. When we came off at the end of the match, after a 0– 0 draw, I felt a shudder of relief. I’d probably imagined far worse leading up to the day and it seemed the reality of it hadn’t been that difficult to get through after all. The stick from the fans, in the wake of France 98, didn’t stop after that afternoon at West Ham; but it being a problem for me as a Manchester United player probably did.

  It started with me not sure about whether I’d make it through to the following May in one piece. It ended up being the most incredible season any of us – maybe any footballer playing in this country – will ever experience. I don’t know if United will ever win the Treble again, or whether anybody else will. But, either way, it’ll never be done the way we did it: whichever team comes after will have to write their own script because only that group of United players could have made the story unfold the way it did. And, for me, the adventures that season had their own personal twist, which took the events of the spring and summer of 1999 out there into make believe. Just when people were starting to imagine what might be possible for the football team, Brooklyn arrived in Victoria’s life and mine. And just a couple of months after United’s unbelievable night at the Nou Camp – the night the impossible happened – I, David Robert Joseph Beckham, took my vows and married the girl of my dreams.

  Down the years, there are certain teams that Man United have learned to measure themselves against in European competition. We were in the same Champions League Group as two of them in 1998, and they were amazing games: we drew 3–3 twice with Barcelona and 1–1 and 2–2 with Bayern Munich before Christmas. Although we didn’t win any of those games, it showed we could compete against the best around at the time. Outside Old Trafford, people started getting the idea that this might be United’s year. We never thought about it, not that early on anyway. But self-belief isn’t something that you need to be talking about for it to happen.

  We played some great football in the Premiership that season. Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole couldn’t stop scoring goals: they had an understanding between them right from the start. I remember beating Everton 4–1 at Goodison and Leicester 6–2 at Filbert Street. Then we went to the City Ground and hammered Forest 8–1; it was Steve McClaren’s first game as team coach after Brian Kidd had moved on to take over as manager at Blackburn. That was some afternoon: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer came on as a sub and scored four goals in about ten minutes. Steve looked round the dressing room at us afterwards, new man in the job and not quite sure what to say. He got it about right:

  ‘Not bad, lads. Is it like this every week?’

  Obviously, things were going really well already when Steve came in to replace Kiddo. And in that first season with United, he did well not to disrupt what the boss and Brian already had in place. He just concentrated on keeping the momentum going. I think Steve is one of the very best coaches in the country; and maybe he had more to do with us finishing up with the Treble than people give him credit for. My generation had got to know the likes of Eric Harrison and Brian Kidd really well and we were worried about how the gaffer would find someone good enough to follow those two. There had been rumours about Steve coming from Derby to join us. In fact, I remember a game against them at Old Trafford just before he did: Steve was with Jim Smith on the Derby bench. He never stopped talking to his players; or to everybody else within earshot. I can still see him, perched on the edge of the visitor’s dugout with his notebook. He was scribbling like mad at the same time as chattering away non-stop. I played wide on that side of the pitch for one half and could hear everything. Blimey, mate. Do you ever shut up?

  A couple of days later, Steve was introduced to us as our new first-team coach. When you’ve had as much help with your game as I have, ever since the earliest days with Ridgeway Rovers, it’s not right to talk about ‘better coaching’ or ‘the best coach’. What I’d say for sure, though, is that Steve McClaren brought very different – and very much his own – qualities to the job. His technical ability, his organisation, his passing on of information on the training pitch, were all absolutely outstanding. He had a really open mind, too. If Steve heard about something new, he’d try it. If it worked, we’d use it. If not, nothing had been lost by having a go. When he arrived at Old Trafford in February 1999, he won the players’ respect very quickly indeed.

  United are a competitive team, even in training. Players have a go at each other, and at the coaching staff. We fly into tackles. Now and again, the gaffer will have to cut short a session because things are getting too heated. That’s how it’s always been at the club, from the youth team up. It’s an edge: that desperation to win, never mind that it’s only the five-a-sides at training on a Friday morning. Steve took that on and he understood, as well, that our style was all about possession of the ball and made sure that was what training focused on. He made us laugh, too. In his fantasy moments, Steve McClaren is a very stylish player indeed: back then, he thought he was Glenn Hoddle, spraying his passes around the training pitches at Carrington. We were already on a roll when Steve arrived but he kept the lads going all the way to the Nou Camp, even if it wasn’t until the following season that he really made his own mark.

  United have taken some criticism over the club’s attitude to the FA Cup in recent seasons, particularly for not defending it in 2001 when we were asked to compete in FIFA’s new World Club Championship out in Brazil. All I can say is that the gaffer along with every United player loves the competition, not least because it was so important the season we won the Treble. The third round tie against Liverpool was one of the biggest games of that 1998/ 99 season. Liverpool scored through Michael Owen almost from the kick-off and then we battered them for the next eighty minutes without making a really good goalscoring chance. The atmosphere was as good as I ever played in at Old Trafford. Maybe the fact that it was a cup game and Liverpool had more supporters there than they would for a Premiership fixture had something to do with it. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer came on as a sub. He always seemed to come on as a sub that season. And we equalised almost at once. Then Ole got the winner right on full-time and the place went berserk: for once the drama had been as intense as the rivalry. And United had won.

  Cup football has an edge. The Champions League starts to get much more exciting, for the supporters and for the players, at the knockout stage. In 1999, we were drawn against Inter Milan in the quarter-finals. It would have been a big game anyway but, beforehand, all the hype was about the fact that it would be the first meeting between David Beckham and Diego Simeone, who played his club football for Inter, since the World Cup and Saint-Etienne. Never mind who was going to win, half the pre-match build-up seemed to be about who would and who wouldn’t be shaking a particular opponent’s hand before kick-off at Old Trafford in the first leg.

  As far as I was concerned, all that really mattered was the game. The only thing I made up my mind about in advance was that I’d try to get Simeone’s shirt afterwards. It’s framed at home now, along with all the others from great players I’ve played against during my career. I had something else on my mind, too, that evening: the one thing in the world that
might have seemed more important than the football match I was getting ready to play. Victoria was due to give birth to our baby any day. I was sitting in the players’ lounge at Old Trafford, waiting to go into our team meeting, when the mobile rang. Victoria’s number came up on the screen. This is it. It’s happening. It turned out Victoria had called to tell me she’d had a twinge but that things were okay. She was fine and wished me good luck and I went into the team meeting with a clear head.

  Before Champions League games, you go along the line of opposition players before kick-off, shaking hands. I still remember the explosion of flashbulbs that went off at the moment Simeone and I came face to face. During the match itself, we didn’t see all that much of each other, bar a moment when we almost collided and he caught my ankle. I’ll never know whether he meant it or not. The important thing was I didn’t react. It turned into a great night for us. In the first half, I sent in two crosses that Dwight Yorke put away and the final score was 2–0. Inter were a really difficult team to play against and that result was just right. I was a happy man by the time I spoke to Victoria on the phone again. She laughed when I told her I’d got Simeone’s shirt and that he’d given me a peck on the cheek as we came off the pitch at the end. We agreed I’d head down to London after training the following day.

  That win, a good night’s sleep and a stretch in the morning – it suddenly felt like I was starting to move on from the sending off and everything that had come with it. Whether anybody else would, of course, wasn’t up to me. It wouldn’t be until the summer of 2002 that I’d be able, finally, to put what happened in Saint-Etienne behind me forever. But having played well against Inter – and with Simeone’s shirt on the back seat of the car – I headed down the M6 at lunchtime without a care in the world. I’d be with the mum-to-be in a couple of hours.

  I remember I was munching on a Lion bar when the phone call came. I nearly choked on the thing.

  ‘David? It’s Victoria. The doctor says he wants me to go into hospital and have the baby tonight.’

  I’ve had a lot of things happen during my football career that not many other people have had the chance to experience. Every father, though, knows what I felt like the moment Victoria told me what was about to happen. The excitement, fear and happiness – this was the biggest thing that was ever going to take place in my life – left me feeling like I was going to be sick. I threw away the chocolate bar and held onto the steering wheel hard until I stopped shaking. I couldn’t get down to London fast enough.

  When I got to her parents’ house in Goff’s Oak, Victoria was in the bath. The pains had turned into something else. She knew what it meant. She looked up at me:

  ‘David, I’m really nervous.’

  You’re not the only one. I didn’t know what to say. We got everything ready and headed for the hospital, the Portland, in London. Victoria was going to have an elective caesarean: the doctor had decided it was the safest thing for her and for the baby. Everything happened so quickly. We barely had time to put Victoria’s bag down in her room before we were taken up to this small room beside the operating theatre where she got fitted up with a drip and had her epidural. I think those were the tensest few minutes of all. There was a little panic about getting me gowned up: I ended up wearing a pair of those blue hospital trousers that were at least five sizes too big. Maybe it was better to be worrying and giggling about that than thinking too hard about what was waiting on the other side of those double doors.

  Victoria was rolled through on a trolley and then transferred to the bed in the operating theatre. I followed her through. I squeezed her hand and told her I loved her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked me. ‘I can’t feel anything, you know.’

  Which was good because, by then, they’d already made the incision. I’d never been in an environment as weird and alien as that room: I just tried to concentrate on Victoria and put where I was out of my mind. She looked up:

  ‘I’m really hungry. Do you think you’ll be able to get me some smoked salmon?’

  She’d been wolfing down the stuff all through the pregnancy – and I’m sure that’s why Brooklyn has always preferred fish to red meat – but I hadn’t expected her to get that kind of craving just then. I was waiting, watching. I could feel my heart beating away in my chest. And, all of a sudden, the mum was feeling peckish. The very next moment, our baby was there, held by a nurse in the air. I could see him; Victoria couldn’t at first. Because it was a caesarean, they had to put Brooklyn on a table and run a little tube into his mouth and nose to clear his airways. The nurse bundled him up in a towel, as tight as you like, and passed him over to me. Because Victoria was still being stitched up at that point, I got to hold him first. I know it sounds selfish but it was such a privilege, such an amazing feeling. I’ve experienced it twice now, and nothing in my life, on a football pitch or anywhere else, comes close to the intensity of that moment: the thrill and the awe, holding your son in your arms for the very first time. I carried Brooklyn the few steps over to his mum and laid his head on the pillow next to hers: the two most precious people in the whole world, looking so much alike and so beautiful, too. That picture will be in my mind’s eye forever.

  I’d always wanted to have children. Maybe it was growing up with a baby sister in the house. Maybe I’ve just got that paternal thing from my mum and dad, I don’t know. I can remember, when I broke into the United team, feeling jealous of the older players on the odd days during a season when they could bring their children in to training, to sit on the touchlines and watch Dad play. I wanted that really badly. And, I’ll be honest, I always wanted a son. Two sons, in fact: as much as I loved Joanne, I know – and she knows, we laugh about it – I always wanted a baby brother, too. That afternoon at the Portland, gazing down at Victoria nuzzled up against our newborn son, I knew that, whatever else had happened or was going to happen in my life, I’d been blessed.

  I remember Victoria turning to me as I cradled Brooklyn in my arms:

  ‘Whatever you do, please don’t leave him.’

  We’d had threats made to us since the summer and, again, just before Brooklyn was born. We’d talked about it all beforehand, how we were going to handle the security, and I went with the nurse when she took Brooklyn to get him bathed and all cleaned up and ready, even though it meant leaving Victoria. All our family came round to the hospital that evening. It was like having all the people you love most wrapped around you. Then, that night, I stayed. There wasn’t another bed in the room; Victoria was in the hospital bed, because she still had the pipes and monitors connected from the operation, and Brooklyn was in his cot. I slept on the floor with a towel for a cushion and my head pressed up against the door, so it couldn’t be opened. Maybe we were a little nervous, but you can’t ever know. All I was sure of was how happy I was: just me, Victoria and Brooklyn, breathing, sleeping together in that little room, through until morning.

  Almost the first phone call I’d made was to Alex Ferguson, just to let him know there was another lad named Beckham about, and he was great. He’s got sons of his own and I think he understood just how I was feeling. After the congratulations, he told me not to bother coming up to Manchester to train: just to stay with Brooklyn and Victoria and come back the day before the next game. I played against Chelsea on the Saturday and then drove back to London. At first, Brooklyn had trouble keeping his milk down. That evening, Victoria got him dressed up in this little green and white outfit and I arrived just in time to see his latest meal come up all over his clothes and the bed. It was like a special welcome for me, to the real fun of being a dad.

  The day Victoria and Brooklyn came home was mad and, to be honest, I don’t remember it as a good experience at all. We had an idea what things might be like outside the Portland. You looked out of the window and someone had hung this huge banner across the shops opposite, which said: ‘BROOKLYN THIS WAY’. We made arrangements with the hospital and with the police, who both did everything they could to h
elp: a back way in for the car, curtains hung in the windows all around the back seats, everything we could think of to make trying to get past this army of press and photographers and well-wishers a bit less scary and upsetting for a baby boy, just a couple of days old, and his very tired mum. It turned into something like a military operation and, of course, when it came to doing my bit, I was all over the place. I’d never strapped in a baby’s car seat. Snarling the straps, putting the thing in the wrong way round, trying to line up the buckles: in the end, the midwife had to do it for me.

  We got settled in the car and then had to draw the curtains, which meant that – apart from hundreds of flashes from the cameras – we didn’t really see the fuss that was going on until we got home and watched it on television. We whizzed out the gate: left, then right, then right again onto the Marylebone Road. The press had positioned cars along the route, to hold us up so the snappers could get their pictures. The police, though, saw what was happening, which was dangerous for us and everybody else, and they closed off the main road to traffic for a couple of minutes so that we could get away. Frank, our driver, was great; he put his foot down and, about forty minutes later, we were where we wanted to be: snug, safe and having a cup of tea in Tony and Jackie’s front room. We practically lived at the Adams’ house until we bought our own place down south a few years ago. And where better for a new mum to rest up than her family home?

  The grandparents were smooching over the baby and, for a few minutes, Victoria and I were alone, sipping our tea and looking at one another. I’m sure it’s a moment that hits every new mum and dad. This is about as real as life gets, and nobody can tell you what you have to do. You take a deep breath. Right. What happens now?