David Beckham: My Side

by David Beckham (with Tom Watt)

  Naturally, I wasn’t thinking then about what might go wrong later on. I was happier playing than I’d been for a more than a year and some of what the team was doing going forward during games was amazing. I remember one weekend we beat Valladolid 7–2 at the Bernebeu, playing football that made me half wish I could have been up in the stands watching as well as out on the pitch doing my bit. For one of the goals, I sent a 50 yard diagonal ball across to Zizou and he volleyed it in past their keeper. I remember running across to celebrate with him in the Valladolid penalty area and laughing out loud all the way over: That’s unbelievable. This is all unbelievable! Then, on 1 November, we beat Bilbao 3–0 and went top of the league.

  For me personally, those first four or five months of the season were as enjoyable and as satisfying as any I can remember in my career. The crowd was behind me. It seemed I was part of the team already. I felt I belonged. I even stuck away a couple of decent free-kicks against Malaga in La Liga and Marseille in the Champions League. It was all rushing by, almost too quick and too exciting to take in. We were scoring goals, winning games and I heard people starting to talk about Real doing what United had done in ’99: winning the Treble. I’ve learnt never to look that far ahead – we hadn’t even reached Christmas – but, in early December, a trip to the Nou Camp did bring back memories of that Champions League Final against Bayern.

  The emotions around football don’t come much sweeter than the night we beat Barcelona away for the first time in twenty years. I’ve always loved playing in games that are special for supporters and special for the team. For Spain’s two biggest clubs, that means El Derbi. I remember there being a lot of talk before the match about the treatment I might get from Barc?a’s crowd after their President had done the deal with United to take me to the Nou Camp before I joined Real. I did get a couple of eggs chucked at me when we arrived at the ground but I didn’t really get too much stick during the game. I think the home crowd was still saving all that for Luis Figo. It didn’t stop him having a blinder, though, and we won 2–1. Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo scored and the celebrations at the end felt as if we’d just won a cup final: beating Barc?a means that much to the club.

  In the run-up to the winter break, I really did feel as though I’d found my feet; and found a rhythm to life at my new club. The match day routine around Real’s home games is simple enough and usually I’d be wishing the hours away before a Saturday or Sunday night. We’d train the day before and then have lunch together. I’d head back to the hotel – or to the house once we’d rented it – and that would be time I’d really miss being with my family. I’d be knocking around the place on my own until Victoria bought me a Sharpei – we called him Carlos, as in Roberto – to keep me company. He’s a lovely dog and great with Brooklyn and Romeo but, evenings in before a game, I’d be sat trying to relax by watching a video with Carlos alongside me on the settee. I’d look at him – the wrinkles drooping down, those big brown eyes – and I’d have to smile. You look just how I feel, mate. If I was lucky I might nod off for a bit before dinner and, after I’d eaten, I’d be getting to bed around ten.

  On the day of the game, all the players make their way to the Bernebeu for around twelve. It’s quite a change from the club suits at United or even our Ridgeway Rovers blazers. At Real, everybody can turn up in jeans and t-shirts – whatever we feel comfortable in – because, as soon as we get to the ground, we change into club tracksuits. We’ll usually have an hour or so out on the pitch: loosening up, stretching, perhaps going over something that the coach wants to concentrate on in that evening’s game. We all pile onto a team bus together to go back into town to the hotel the club uses before home fixtures to have lunch around two. Then, after a couple of hours to ourselves in our rooms, we’ll have a pre-match meal together before travelling up to the stadium for the game.

  I love the glamour and the excitement that comes with home games at the Santiago Bernebeu. Even at the weekend, the games kick-off late in the evening at 9 or 9.30. There’s that extra buzz in the air you get when playing under floodlights. As if the place doesn’t have enough atmosphere anyway: I think it’s the best stadium in the world. The crowd’s very different to an English crowd. Spanish people dress up for football in the way that we might dress up to go to the theatre or to a party. The supporters turn the evening at the game into a very big night out. They want to see Real win but they almost take that for granted. And they’re pretty quick at getting the white hankies out if we don’t. What the socios – the members – really want is style: to be entertained by Raul and Figo and Roberto Carlos and the rest of us. When a game kicks off and the place is full, flags waving and a wall of noise, the Bernebeu’s spectacular. You can’t help but rise to the occasion: we have to live up to the sense of expectation.

  I suppose there’s always been a tradition of doing things in style at Real Madrid and the modern-day version of that is the galacticos. Since he became President, Florentino Perez has always brought at least one big-name signing to the club each summer. Raul, of course, grew up at the Bernebeu and was already here when Senor Perez came into office. Figo, Zidane and Ronaldo followed. Although everybody else – supporters and the media – talks about the galacticos as the stars of the show, in the dressing room it’s not like that at all. Players are players and we all just get on with it. And we all seem to get on.

  The one thing that being described as a galactico does bring with it is heavy legs now and again. The President’s big signings are expected to play just about every game, unless they’re injured or suspended. I can understand that: it’s logical that the Board feels they and the fans should get their money’s worth. Maybe, though, that policy had something to do with why the team faded so badly during the second half of last season. If we’d had a slightly bigger squad – we never really replaced players who left, like Steve McManaman and Claude Makelele, or who went out on loan, like Fernando Morientes – the knocks and the bans we picked up after Christmas might not have cost us so dear. That said, given the choice, I’d always want to play. That’s how I’ve always been and I think if you asked the other lads they’d tell you the same.

  Lining up with those players and pulling on that white shirt: it was every bit as exciting as I could have imagined it would be. Days in the office were pretty special as well. There wasn’t a morning all season I wasn’t looking forward to getting into training. I’ve always enjoyed the preparation for games but, here at Real, there was so much learning to do. It’d be a dream for any player, wouldn’t it? I might have won league titles and a European Cup, I might have played for my country at World Cups. But working alongside people like Zidane, Ronaldo and the rest every day has been an education. I’d drive up to the Ciudad Deportiva each day with a smile on my face, knowing for certain that, over the next couple of hours, I’d be seeing other players do things that would amaze me.

  Tricks, control, attempts at goal from impossible angles: and they do it all in games too, of course. The very first week I was at Real, I saw Ronaldo get the ball off the floor and under control nine different ways in training: nine different tricks I’d never seen anybody do before. It wasn’t only that these players had the technique to pull the things off. I was just as impressed by them having the imagination and the daring to try them in the first place. And, of course, if your team-mates are having a go, you soon find that they’re inspiring you to push your own limits as well.

  The attitude of the players was very different to what I’d grown used to at United. It wasn’t complicated. If you score two goals, we’ll score four. And, until the tail end of the season, that’s what tended to happen more often than not. Obviously, at United, we were confident about our ability as a team and went into every game believing we’d win it. It was something different again at Real, though. I remember the Brazilian players laughing and joking when we were beating them in the World Cup quarter-final in 2002 and it felt like that same self-belief – We’ll always be able to out-attack the opposition – e
xisted in the Bernebeu dressing room too.

  It’s a very different approach to the game and you see it everywhere in Spain: in training, on street corners, on the beach. The Brazilians are the masters at it but I think that most foreign players seem to have been brought up in the same way, more or less. In training, we’d do our running, our weights and the rest but, really, sessions were all about stretching and fine-tuning your technique. As often as not, between routines or during a small-sided game, someone will come up with a trick, a way of doing something with the ball, that’s completely new. For the new boy, training at Real was about a lot more than simply getting ready for the weekend’s game.

  And I see it everywhere in Spain. Whatever age you’re talking about, it seems that young players here have an edge, in terms of technique, over their English counterparts. That’s not to say that it’s a case of: They’ve got it right and we’ve got it wrong. You see kids out here who’ll get a tap on the ankle in a game and that’ll be it: they’re off. In England, in the same situation, I know I’d have had someone like my dad or Eric Harrison, shouting: ‘Come on, get up! Don’t let the other team see you’re injured.’ It’s just a different mentality and I don’t think I’d say one’s better than the other necessarily. But I do know I’m very happy to be experiencing what I am here in Spain.

  The technical quality in La Liga is incredibly high. I can pick out individual players at other Spanish clubs who’ve impressed me, of course. José Antonio Reyes, when he was still at Sevilla, absolutely tore us apart when they beat us 4–1. Roberto Ayala, the Valencia centre-half, is a fantastic defender: I’m probably as tall as him but I remember going up for a high ball with him in the centre circle at the Bernebeu. As we jumped, I felt his knee in the back of my shoulder. With that kind of spring, no wonder he wins all his headers. And I think Joaquin, the winger at Real Betis, is a very good player. But what’s really impressed me is how good the standard is right through the league. Every player at every club has good touch and is comfortable with the ball. Nobody’s easy to play against because, if you lose possession, it’s always such hard work getting hold of it again.

  With so much else being new to me, the fact that I already knew the coach at Real probably helped me settle in. Talking to the other players, I got the impression that Carlos Queiroz had a very different approach to the man he followed into the Real job, Vicente del Bosque. I know all the lads who’d been here with him thought the world of del Bosque and I’d have liked the chance to work with him too. He won Champions Leagues and La Liga titles with Real, so he must have been doing something right, mustn’t he? Now, though, I’m already enjoying working for the man who replaced Carlos in his turn, José Antonio Camacho, who’s a legend at the Bernebeu because of what he achieved here as a player.

  I know that most supporters are as happy about the new boss as we are. Senor Camacho is a Real man, through and through. He’s got a great record at club and international level as a coach as well. His reputation at the Bernebeu and his standing with the home crowd were both built up over years. I think he played over 400 games for the club. I know I’ve got a long way to go before I can have that same kind of relationship with the madridistas. Even in my first few months, though, I was lucky enough to have my moments. One in particular I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

  We were at home to Deportivo La Coruna, the week after we’d won at the Nou Camp. The game finished 2–1 but it seemed to me it was a lot more comfortable than the scoreline suggested. Of course Depor have an old mate of mine in their line-up: Aldo Duscher, who broke my metatarsal at Old Trafford before the World Cup in 2002. That afternoon at the Bernebeu – and I’m still not really sure why – I had a falling out with another Argentinian, Lionel Scaloni. We went to ground together in a tackle on the halfway line and I tried to jump over him to get to the ball. Next thing I know, he’s come straight through the back of me. It looked like it was going to go off for a second or two but the ref came over to calm things down and asked us to shake hands. I held mine out but Scaloni wasn’t having any of it.

  At the end of the game, I was more worried about Duscher than my new mate. Twenty minutes from time, he’d asked me to swap shirts afterwards and I’d said I couldn’t: I’d already promised mine to a little boy I’d met beforehand. Duscher took it as a snub and wasn’t happy at all but, as the players left the pitch, it was Scaloni who came over and started having a go at me. The bloke definitely wanted a fight. And maybe when I was younger I’d have given him one. Now, though, I wasn’t going to back down but I wasn’t going to bite either. I put my hands behind my back, just stood my ground and smiled at him: I couldn’t do much else because I didn’t have a clue what he was saying.

  The seconds ticked by, very slowly indeed. It was a strange moment: he was screaming his head off at me but I slowly realised the huge crowd had gone all quiet while the two of us were standing nose to nose halfway to the touchline. Almost as soon as I was aware of the silence behind the racket Scaloni was making, I broke away from him. I jogged into the centre circle and clapped the Real fans. The reaction I got was unbelievable: they were cheering and chanting my name. It wasn’t just about the game; it was about what had been going on between me and Scaloni too. That was done now, without anything silly having happened, and all the rest of the players seemed to have made it down the tunnel. The Santiago Bernebeu had been left to me and the madridistas. The hairs went up on the back of my neck. ‘Beckham! Beckham!’ It felt like they were telling me: You’re one of us now.

  17

  It’s Christmas

  ‘You make your own luck in football: we weren’t making any.’

  It should have been enough. I think most players are the same: if your football’s going well, then everything else seems to fall into place in your life. That’s certainly how it had always been for me in the past. But now, even though we were top of La Liga and progressing in the Champions League, and even though I was playing what felt to me like the best football of my career – doing things in games I’d never done before – I was homesick for the first time I could remember since I’d headed off north as a teenager to start my professional career at Old Trafford.

  Obviously, spending time away from Victoria and the boys, living on my own in a hotel, I didn’t find easy. I’m a home-loving lad and always have been. When I went off to Barcelona as the prizewinner at the Bobby Charlton Soccer School, even though I loved every minute of what I was doing, I was desperate to get back to Mum and Dad and Chingford after the first week of the fortnight. Now, in Madrid, even when we had days or the odd week together as a family, I still found myself missing England. You don’t realise how important day-to-day surroundings – the places and people you know and even the sense of humour – are to you, I suppose, until you’re away from them all. I was enjoying so much of my life in Madrid and felt so fulfilled playing football for Real but, at the same time, it began to creep up on me just how much I missed the familiarity of life back home in England.

  Probably the most difficult thing was getting used to – no, not getting used to, having to put up with – the intensity of the media intrusion that’s been part of everyday life for me in Spain, and for Victoria, Brooklyn and Romeo too. I know back in England our own press have got a reputation for being dogged when it comes to chasing around after stories about the private lives of people who are in the public eye. And I know, first-hand, how ruthless they can be about it. Here, it was different and, if anything, even more difficult to deal with. Nothing I’d experienced before had prepared me for what was waiting for me in Madrid.

  I don’t think the club had foreseen it all either: they’d been sincere, I know, when they told me how happy they thought we’d be in the city, how much they thought we’d enjoy the Spanish way of life. But the attention of the chasing pack just never let up. There were only a handful of days during my first year at Real when I wasn’t followed around by three or four cars, full of cameramen and photographers, from the moment I left hom
e for training in the morning until I shut the front door and turned out the lights at night. Even on what should have been my own territory, I was aware they were parked up in the street outside the house or the hotel, waiting at the gates of the Ciudad Deportiva or tucked just out of sight down the road from any restaurant or shop where I’d stopped.

  I’m used to the attention that has come mine and Victoria’s way over the past few years but, in Madrid, the constant presence of what they call La Prensa Rosa – the Pink Press – wore me down as each week passed. It threatened, for a while, to wear us down as a family as well. Here in Spain, it seems there’s a fascination for the details, however boring they might be, of your everyday life and I found that hard to cope with when it was staring down a lens at me, and at us, day after day.

  I don’t really know if it was just me – or just me and my family – who had to deal with the kind of pressure we felt we were under. From talking to the club and to other players, I got the impression that most of the lads had had a taste of it but that what was happening to us was on a different scale altogether. I think the club itself was taken a bit by surprise. Real are a very professional organisation and, of course, they’ve got their methods for keeping things under control. It was obvious from the off, though, that whatever they did wasn’t working when it came to the Beckhams. I certainly wouldn’t blame the club for not being able to help me better in handling the situation. It all came as a surprise to me too.

  It wasn’t only the cars full of paparazzi. They were just the most obvious sign of what was going on. There are papers, magazines, shows, whole TV channels that are given over to this stuff, pretty well twenty-four hours a day. With so-called famous people as the only subject, they’ve got to have something to talk about and, if there isn’t a story, they’ll go ahead and make one up anyway. Some of it’s so ridiculous you just have to laugh. I remember going out for dinner one evening with my personal manager, Terry, and his wife, Jennie. I’ve known both of them for fifteen years now, long enough for me not to give us being seen together a second thought. The next day, one of the TV stations was running footage of the three of us and claiming that Jen was a mystery blonde, the secret woman in David Beckham’s life.