‘Come on, David! Come on!’
I swung it into just the right area, a yard or two outside the six-yard box, towards the penalty spot. David James came out, didn’t hold it, and when the ball fell to Eric, a few feet outside the Liverpool area, he volleyed it straight back past James and into the goal. That moment was up there with any I’ve ever experienced, as intense as the feeling the night the goals went in to win the Treble in Barcelona. A surge of joy and adrenalin just rips through you when you see the ball settle in the back of the net. I think the whole team got to Eric inside a split second and it seemed like he lifted the lot of us off the ground and carried us back to the halfway line. It was the story of that whole fantastic season, right there.
When it came to walking up the steps to get the Cup, I made sure I was just in front of Gary Neville in the line. Eric held the trophy above his head, the roar went up from the United end, and I turned round and looked at Gary:
‘Can you believe this is happening to us?’
It was chaos in the dressing room afterwards. We’d won the Cup and, even better, we’d beaten Liverpool to do it. I don’t know if the boss or Brian Kidd or any of the players tried to say anything, either congratulations or summing the whole day up. You wouldn’t have heard a word of it anyway. The elation just took over. People were spraying bottles of champagne everywhere, diving into the huge Wembley bath, screaming, singing and laughing like lunatics.
We stayed over at the hotel that night, before going back to Manchester on the train in the morning. A big celebration dinner had been organised for everybody, win or lose. That whole weekend, the club had made sure our families had been involved. My girlfriend at the time, Helen, and my mum and dad were with us. It made the occasion even sweeter, if that was possible. Early in the evening, the wives and girlfriends were upstairs getting changed and the players had arranged to meet in the bar for a drink before we ate. I remember, just before leaving my room, the adrenalin of the afternoon wearing off and the heaviness creeping into my legs. It had been some day. Some season. By the time I got down, Dad was already there in the thick of it. He was absolutely in his element, sitting at a table, chatting with Eric Cantona and Steve Bruce. It was probably why he’d pushed me so hard, and towards Man United, through so many years. He’d wanted the chance to be doing exactly what he was doing right at that moment. I laughed out loud I was so happy. Dad told me later that Eric thought I was a good player and a good listener. Every time Dad tried to talk to me that evening he seemed like he was about to get overwhelmed by it all. It felt like I was giving him – and Mum – something back at long last.
In my time at United, there was never a moment for stopping and thinking back on what was happening. We were always pushing on towards the next game or a new season. And, as time passed, I came to realise that there was always something else, even more amazing, waiting round the corner to happen. After that first Double season I had a wonderful summer. I was a United player and it felt as if, in my eyes, in my mum and dad’s eyes and in the eyes of United supporters, we really had achieved something. Gary, Phil, Nicky, Scholesy and myself all had the first medals of a professional career to prove it. I went off on holiday to Sardinia and, to be honest, forgot all about football for a couple of weeks. There wasn’t a television in the bedroom and so I didn’t even see most of the Euro 96 tournament that everybody was glued to back home. I just swam, lay in the sun and ate pasta until it was coming out of my ears.
If any manager is going to make sure players don’t get distracted by dwelling on the past, it’s Alex Ferguson. We were back for training in what seemed like no time. And, all of a sudden, a new season was about to get underway. It was at Selhurst Park in 1996. We were playing Wimbledon and there was a real sense of anticipation in the dressing room and around the ground, which was absolutely packed with United supporters. Before the game, I was getting stick in the dressing room about my new boots. Over the summer, my sponsors adidas had sent me a pair of Predator boots for the first time, but unfortunately this particular pair had been made for Charlie Miller, a young Scottish player at Glasgow Rangers. The word ‘Charlie’ was stitched on the tongues of the boots and the other players spotted that straight away.
Once the game kicked off, it soon felt like we were picking up where we’d left off the previous May. The team played really well and the game was as good as over by half-time. Eric Cantona was substituted, so he was sitting, watching on the bench. Jordi Cruyff tried to chip the Wimbledon keeper, Neil Sullivan, from outside the box. And I’m sure I heard someone say that, if the shot had been on target, Jordi might have scored. A couple of minutes after that, Brian McClair rolled the ball in front of me just inside our own half, and I thought: why not? Shoot. I hit it and I remember looking up at the ball, which seemed to be heading out towards somewhere between the goal and the corner flag. The swerve I’d put on the shot, though, started to bring it back in and the thought flashed through my mind. This has got a chance here.
The ball was in the air for what seemed like ages, sailing towards the goal, before it dropped over Sullivan and into the net. The next moment, Brian McClair was jumping all over me. He’d been standing there, almost beside me, and along with everybody else in the ground had just watched the ball drift downfield.
Back in the dressing room after the game, someone told me what the manager had growled when I shot:
‘What does he think he’s trying now?’
Eric Cantona came up to me while I was getting changed and shook my hand:
‘What a goal,’ he said.
Believe me, that felt even better than scoring it. Someone from Match Of the Day wanted to speak to me but the boss said he didn’t want me talking to anyone. So I went straight out to get on the coach. Because the game was in London, Mum, Dad and Joanne were waiting for me. I’ve got a photo of the goal at home, of the ball just hanging against the clear, blue sky, and I can actually see my mum and dad in the crowd. I got to the steps of the coach and Dad hugged me:
‘I can’t believe you’ve just done that!’
That evening, I talked on the phone to Helen, who was at college down in Bristol:
‘Did you score a goal today? Everybody here’s talking about it, saying you’ve scored this great goal.’
People were coming up to me in the street all weekend and saying the same thing. I couldn’t have known it then, but that moment was the start of it all: the attention, the press coverage, the fame, that whole side of what’s happened to me since. It changed forever that afternoon in South London, with one swing of a new boot. The thrill I get playing football, my love of the game: those things will always be there. But there’s hardly anything else – for better or worse – that has been the same since. When my foot struck that ball, it kicked open the door to the rest of my life at the same time. In the game, it eventually dropped down out of the air and into the net. In the life of David Beckham, it feels like the ball is still up there. And I’m still watching it swerve and dip through a perfect, clear afternoon sky: watching and waiting to see where it’s going to come down to land.
5
The One with the Legs
‘I’m in Manchester but I’ll drive down. We could go out.’
My wife picked me out of a football sticker book. And I chose her off the telly.
Considering I grew up in Chingford and Victoria lived in Goff’s Oak – fifteen minutes’ drive away – it seems we travelled a very long way round before finding one another. We’d been to the same shops, eaten in the same restaurants, danced in the same clubs but never actually come face to face during twenty-odd North-east London years. Once we finally met, we had all that catching up to do. It felt straight away like we’d always been meant to be together. Maybe everything that had gone before was just about us getting ready for the real thing to happen.
It’s November 1996. I’m sitting in a hotel bedroom in Tbilisi, the night before a World Cup qualifier against Georgia. Gary Neville, my room-mate, is lying o
n the other bed in the room. Aside from the matches themselves, overseas trips, whether it’s with my club or with England, aren’t my favourite part of being a professional player. What do you see? What do you do? Eat, sleep and train; sit in rooms that all look the same as the last one. That particular hotel in Georgia, the only one up to international standards after the break-up of the old Soviet Union, was built in a square, with balconies piled up on each side overlooking an open area containing the lobby, bars and restaurant. All the bedroom doors faced across at each other, there was steel and glass everywhere. This place felt even more like a prison than most. Looking out of the window, I could see a half-built dual carriageway and a grey river oozing along beside it. It wasn’t the kind of view that made you think about going out for an evening stroll.
So Gary and I are just chatting. The television’s on in the corner, tuned to a music channel. On comes the new Spice Girls’ video, ‘Say You’ll Be There’. They’re dancing in the desert and Posh is wearing this black cat suit and looks like just about the most amazing woman I’ve ever set eyes on. I’d seen the Spice Girls before – who hadn’t – and whenever that blokes’ conversation came up about which one do you fancy, I always said:
‘The posh one. The one with the bob. The one with the legs.’
But that evening, in that claustrophobic hotel room, it dawned on me for the first time. Posh Spice was fantastic and I had to find a way to be with her. Where was my Lawrence of Arabia outfit? Who was going to lend me a camel?
‘She’s so beautiful. I just love everything about that girl, Gaz. You know, I’ve got to meet her.’
Gary probably thought I was getting a bit stir-crazy. We’d been through quite a lot together but that hadn’t included me falling in love with a pop star on the television. That’s what was going on: right at that moment, my heart was set on Victoria. I had to be with her. How could I make it happen, though? I was a young guy, with a career as a footballer that was just starting to go quite well. This beautiful, sexy woman who I was desperate to meet was a Spice Girl. At the time, Victoria and the Girls were everywhere: number one in the pop charts, on the cover of every magazine and on the front page of every newspaper, jetting all over the world. They were the biggest thing on the planet. There were pop stars and pop stars. And then there were the Spice Girls. Here was I, deciding I really needed to go out with one of them.
What was I supposed to do? Write to her?
‘Dear Posh Spice. You don’t know me but I have this very strong feeling that, if we could meet somehow, I think we’d get on really well. I don’t know what your schedule’s like but you can find me at Old Trafford every other Saturday.’
You hear stories about A-list celebrities who know how to arrange this sort of thing. Not me. I couldn’t exactly get My People to speak to Her People. I’m sure I wasn’t the only bloke in the world who was carrying a torch for ‘The One With The Bob’ at the time. It might have sounded crazy, but I was absolutely certain that meeting Posh Spice was something that simply had to happen, even though I didn’t have a clue as to how or where. I got my sister Joanne to dig out a copy of Smash Hits so I could at least find out a bit more about Victoria: her surname, for a start.
Just a month or so later, we were down in London to play Chelsea and, before the game, someone in the dressing room said that a couple of the Spice Girls were at Stamford Bridge.
Which ones? Is Posh here? Where are they sitting? Somehow or other, I kept the excitement to myself. Maybe this was the chance I’d been waiting for. Later, I found out that it was Victoria, along with Melanie Chisholm, who’d come to the game. As I went up to the Players’ Lounge, I was praying she would be there.
I met up with Mum and Dad. Victoria and Melanie were chatting in one corner. Their manager walked over and introduced himself:
‘Hello, David. I’m Simon Fuller. I look after the Spice Girls. I’d like you to meet Victoria.’
I could feel little beads of sweat starting to roll down my forehead. Suddenly it was very hot indeed in that lounge. She came over. I didn’t have a speech ready, so all I could manage was:
‘Hello, I’m David.’
Victoria seemed pretty relaxed. I think she and Mel had had a glass of wine or two. In the game I’d scored with a volley, which I hoped might have impressed her, until I found out she hadn’t been wearing her glasses. The truth was Victoria didn’t really have a clue what had been going on during the match. She was looking at me and, I guessed, didn’t have the faintest idea who I was. Man United? Chelsea? Were you even playing today? Later, someone reminded her that she’d picked my picture out of an album of football stickers when the Girls had been doing a photo shoot in team strips a few days before. Knowing nothing about football, she’d been the only one who hadn’t made up her mind whose kit to wear. Looking at those pictures had been part of trying to decide which team she was going to pretend to support. Right then, though, that picture wasn’t doing me any good at all.
‘I’m Victoria.’
And that was that. I couldn’t think what to say next. Simon Fuller rattled on for a bit about the game: I can’t say I remember a word of it. She went back into her corner with Melanie. I went back to where my mum and dad were standing. I looked across the room at Victoria. Stared, in fact: I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And I could see Victoria was looking back at me. I should be trying to get her number, at least trying to say something else to her. But I didn’t. She left. I left. That was it; I’d blown my big chance. I got back on the coach and it was all I could do not to start banging my head against the back of the seat in front in frustration.
During the course of the following week, once I’d got over feeling sorry for myself, I found out a little more about the Girl of my dreams. Despite the missed opportunity, meeting her had only made me more certain about her. I saw the piece in 90 Minutes magazine featuring the Spice Girls in their football kit, Victoria in a United strip and a caption saying she liked the look of David Beckham. I didn’t know how these things worked; that the quote from her might have just been made up. No: made up was what I was. And for the next home game, there she was at Old Trafford.
This time, it had been the full works. Victoria had been wined and dined before the match by Martin Edwards, the United Chairman. She and Melanie had gone out on the pitch to do the half-time scores. And now she was in the players’ lounge after the game, in the middle of another glass of champagne. I walked in and went over to say hello to Mum and Dad. And, because we’d met before – briefly, nervously – it was easier this time to say hello to Victoria. She looked fantastic in tight combat trousers and a little khaki top, cut quite low; an unbelievable figure. I remember hoping she wouldn’t get the wrong idea about me and her cleavage: there was a tiny blemish, like a freckle, at the top of her breastbone that I just couldn’t stop staring at.
Deciding what to say next wasn’t exactly obvious. This is it. You’re the one. That was in my head. But you can’t really make that sort of declaration to someone you’ve only ever said three words to, especially with your mum and dad and your team-mates within earshot. Joanne was there and she and Victoria seemed to be doing better on the small talk than I was. My sister, at least, had some idea of how I was feeling. I did the bloke thing and went off to the bar to get in a round of drinks. The next moment, Victoria was there beside me. It wasn’t like we knew what we wanted to say. How do you start? What’s it like being a pop star? What’s it like playing football for a living? But I think we both knew that we needed to be speaking to each other and once we started talking – at last – neither of us wanted to stop. Next time I was aware of where I was, I was looking around the room and thinking: Where’s everybody gone?
Mum and Dad were still there. Oh, no. Not a Spice Girl they were probably muttering to themselves. And one or two other people were just sort of lingering, as if they were waiting to see what was going to happen. I remember Victoria going off to the ladies and me having this big now-or-never moment with myself.
When she came back, I gabbled out an invitation to dinner. I didn’t have any sort of plan. I hadn’t thought about where we might go. It was just instinctive: I didn’t want her to leave. Victoria said she had to go back to London, as the Spice Girls were flying off to America on the Monday. But she asked me for my phone number. Without missing a beat, I did the reckoning up. What? So you can forget you’ve got it? Or lose it? Or decide not to call?
‘No, Victoria. I’ll take your number.’
She scrabbled around in her bag and pulled out her boarding card from the flight up to Manchester that morning. She wrote down her mobile number, then scratched that out and gave me her number at home at her parents’ instead. I still have that precious little slip of card. It was like treasure and I was never likely to lose it. But as soon as I got home, I wrote the number down on about half a dozen other bits of paper and left them in different rooms, just in case.
It usually takes me ages to get off to sleep the night after a game: the adrenalin’s still pumping five or six hours later. That particular night, I was buzzing with having met Victoria properly too. I must have slept because I remember waking up late. At about eleven, I picked up The Number and dialled. The voice at the other end sounded just like her but, because I couldn’t be sure, I decided to be polite as I could:
‘Is Victoria there?’
Just as well I hadn’t ploughed straight in. It was her sister, Louise.
‘No. She’s at the gym. Who is this? I’ll get her to give you a call.’
Everybody’s been a teenager. A teenager in love. And I’m sure there are plenty of people, like me, who were still getting a bit melodramatic about it all well into their twenties. She’s out at the gym? Well, that’s it then: that’s the brush off, isn’t it? Getting her sister to answer the phone and say she’s out. I didn’t actually go and lie down and beat the floor with my fists, but that’s what it felt like. I knew Victoria and me had to happen. But maybe she didn’t and now it wasn’t going to. I just sat on the bed, staring at the phone. Half an hour? An hour? It felt like a week. And then the thing rang.
David Beckham: My Side Page 9
