David Beckham: My Side

by David Beckham (with Tom Watt)

  By the time I’d gone down the tunnel with the rest of the team, the moment had gone as far as I was concerned. I was lucky that Kevin Keegan had been only a few paces behind me as we came off the pitch. He’d heard every word that had been screamed in my direction. He didn’t mention it straight away in the changing room. The more important thing was to talk about the game we’d just played and to start getting heads back up for the next one, against Germany, in Charleroi. I got changed and followed a couple of the other lads onto the coach. I phoned Victoria. She was telling me what had happened to her and Tony, getting in and getting out of the ground. I don’t think I’d even had time to tell her what had been shouted at me when Paul Ince came up the aisle:

  ‘Did you stick a finger up at the crowd?’

  I just nodded.

  ‘They got a photo of it. One of the press boys has just told me the picture will be in the papers tomorrow.’

  By the time we got back to our hotel, Kevin had found out what was going to happen too. He’d been asked about it in the press conference after the game. We were sitting down to dinner when he came up to me:

  ‘David, I heard everything. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Don’t take any notice of anything you read in the papers. I heard exactly what was said. Don’t worry. I’ll back you.’

  He said exactly the same to anyone else who asked. He told the press – and, perhaps, the representatives of the FA who’d have been concerned about repercussions – that he knew the full story and was completely behind me. It was Kevin who gave people an idea of just how far the abuse had gone, how personal and how spiteful it had been; the idea of anybody thinking that stuff about someone, never mind shouting it at them, was horrible. In that kind of situation, no player could have asked for better support from a manager. Kevin Keegan was ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with me. That’s exactly what Alex Ferguson would have done in the same circumstances. I think both Kevin and the gaffer understand how much it means to players to know their manager, whatever happens in private, is going to stick up for them when it comes to facing the media.

  In Eindhoven, it wasn’t that Kevin felt he should back me because I was one of his players. I got the impression he’d been really shocked and upset by what he’d heard coming from the crowd. And, as it turned out, I don’t think he was the only one. Of course there was a big fuss in the next day’s papers and, of course, there were people saying some of the same things they’d said about me after what had happened in Saint-Etienne: he’s an idiot, a disgrace and he should never play for his country again. But it was different this time. I had the England manager behind me and people had a better idea why I’d reacted the way I did. In Eindhoven, I’d been goaded not by an Argentinian midfield player but by people wearing St George’s crosses and England replica shirts. Perhaps people, now, could understand why I’d reacted even if what I’d done hadn’t been right. I’d been pushed – for two years now – and I’d snapped. I think there were writers and supporters alike who decided that I’d been pushed far enough and deserved the backing Kevin was giving me. Almost straight away, I could sense a change in the media and the public’s attitude towards me.

  I know, sometimes, your memory plays tricks. Things don’t always happen as quickly or as dramatically as you remember them. But, after Eindhoven, I know for a fact that things changed almost overnight. What happened when we came out to warm up before the Germany game I’ll never forget. Since being sent off against Argentina, England fans hadn’t needed much prompting to turn against me. Playing my club football for United didn’t help. Especially in the old days at Wembley, all the United lads had got used to the stick. Some supporters used to boo when Gary or Phil Neville’s names were announced in the team. The abuse we’d get at away games for our club used to carry on when we turned out for our country. That all changed, for me at least, in Charleroi.

  Five days after we’d lost to Portugal, we were playing Germany in a tiny stadium in a tiny Belgian town. I know there were crowd problems in the main square but we were kept away from all that and the important thing for us was the atmosphere inside the ground. It felt like a little league ground, with the crowd right next to the pitch and the noise was fantastic, most of it from the England fans. The place was already packed when we came out to warm up about 35 minutes before kick-off. It was an amazing moment for me. I jogged down towards our supporters and, for the first time ever, I heard them singing:

  ‘One David Beckham. There’s only one David Beckham…’

  It sends a shiver down my spine remembering it now. At the time, I couldn’t believe I was hearing it. Like I say, I’m an England supporter as well as an England player: our fans chanting my name meant the world to me. Just like the crowd at Old Trafford had helped me put Saint-Etienne behind me, those supporters in Charleroi made me forget all about what had happened after the Portugal game the previous Monday. It made such a difference, knowing our own crowd – the people who pay good money to come out to major tournaments and follow the England team – were on my side. From that afternoon on, I believe attitudes towards me changed. I’ll never know how important Kevin’s backing was, but I really believe that events in Eindhoven finally helped people realise what I had been through after two years of abuse.

  I felt fantastic going back down to the changing room to get ready for kick-off. When we came back out, I’d have run through a brick wall for my country. And, to be honest, that’s what the Germany game felt like we were having to do: it was hard, really hard. The ninety-odd minutes were absolutely terrible as a game of football. But considering we hadn’t beaten them in a competitive game since 1966, the result more than made up for that: England 1 Germany 0.

  I’d set up our two goals against Portugal and was feeling pretty confident about my game. Just after half-time in Charleroi, we got a free-kick a couple of yards inside Germany’s half. Gary Neville came running up to me:

  ‘Take a quick one. Come on.’

  You can’t knock the bloke. Gary’s always up for it, wanting to be involved, but just then I didn’t want to just tap the ball to him and get back into open play.

  ‘Gary, just go away.’

  I don’t think he was all that happy about me sending the free-kick long but I went ahead and did it anyway. It swung enough in the air to miss two German defenders and Alan Shearer ran on to it at the far post and stuck it in. It turned out to be the winning goal. In the middle of the celebrations, Gary came up alongside me:

  ‘Great cross, Becks.’

  Like it had been his idea all along. Gary drives you mad sometimes but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather train or play football with. He’s got a perfect attitude to the game. Once the final whistle had gone, we were all out celebrating on the pitch while the supporters were going crazy: we’d beaten Germany and won our first game of the tournament. I remember Gary, though, coming up to me and putting things into focus:

  ‘We should get off the pitch. We haven’t done anything yet. We haven’t even qualified out of this group.’

  And he was right. We still had Romania to play. We just needed a draw against them to go through from the group, but everybody knows now how that game turned out. Romania were a good, technical side, even without Gheorghe Hagi who was suspended, but they weren’t that good. We should never have got ourselves into a position where they could put us out. After going a goal down, we got ourselves 2–1 up and should have gone on to win the game from there. After they equalised, it felt like we didn’t have the belief in ourselves to get back at them. We were hanging on for the draw. All it took then was one misjudgement, right at the end, to put Romania into the quarter-finals instead of us.

  I was standing near the halfway line when Phil Neville slid in on their player and the penalty was given. It was a strange moment. Unreal: it felt like it shouldn’t have been happening, like it was part of another game, not the one we’d been playing for the last ninety minutes. I felt so bad for Phil. He’d had a good game that afternoon and
a good tournament. When the final whistle went, I found myself thinking about him straight away. I know what’s going to happen, what’s going to be said about you now.

  I went over and put an arm round him. There’s nothing I could have said or done, though, to stop him getting shouldered with the blame for us losing to Romania and going out of the competition. The stick he got wasn’t as fierce as I’d had after France 98 but it was enough. More than enough. No wonder England players sometimes go into big games wondering if they’re going to make the big mistake and get ripped apart for it afterwards. Like I’ve said, for the England team to really move on, we need to get over that way of thinking.

  That afternoon in Charleroi, around the ground and back in the changing rooms afterwards, there was this sense of disbelief. After the high of beating Germany on the same ground just a few days before, to follow it with the result against Romania was devastating. The win the previous Saturday had lifted everybody’s expectations – the fans’, the media’s and the players’ themselves – and, in a split second, all that had gone. It was hard to take. You can’t help but dream along with the England supporters, even if the manager and team-mates like Gary Neville try to bring you back down to earth. We felt crushed, like the fans, to be going back home so soon.

  The minutes in the dressing room afterwards and then the first days in England are a blur to me now. I remember thinking back, during that time, to 1999 and how the Bayern Munich players must have felt after United won the European Cup. It’s not like the opposition have taken the lead and are beating you two-or three-nil, controlling the game. One minute everything’s there in front of you, the next it’s snatched away. It happens so quickly and you’ve no time to do anything about it. It just kills you. I saw it on the faces of the Bayern players the night United won in Barcelona. I have so much respect for them: they came back from that disappointment and won the trophy a couple of years later. To react the way they did shows the kind of strength of character the England players needed to find after Euro 2000.

  It wasn’t just the players who took criticism when we got back to England. The manager had to face a lot of it too, which at least took some of the pressure off Phil Neville. Given the way Kevin’s teams, including England, play the game, I suppose it was bound to happen. It was the same when he was in charge at Newcastle: people love to watch his sides play but, when things don’t work out, it’s easy to say Kevin takes too many risks and doesn’t put enough time into working on defending. I don’t need to say again, though, how highly I think of him as a manager and as a man. The players knew, deep down, that what had happened in Belgium was our responsibility, however much anybody else wanted to point the finger at Kevin.

  In international football, there’s never time to go back to scratch and work out new ideas. As soon as one tournament finishes, you move on to try to qualify for the next one. In the autumn of 2000 we had our first games on the way to the 2002 World Cup. Of all teams, our first competitive fixture was against the Germans again, this time at Wembley. After we’d beaten them in Charleroi, many observers had said they were the worst German team ever; maybe they assumed that we’d just need to turn up to beat them a second time. So despite what had happened over the summer, expectations were right up there again. That October the day had an extra edge because it was the last game we were going to play at Wembley before the place got pulled down.

  There was so much build-up, so much looking back over the stadium’s history, especially to the best afternoon of them all in 1966. Wembley was packed, of course, and when we went out to warm up you had the feeling everyone had come for a party, never mind a World Cup qualifier. Actually, the game was awful, as frustrating as any I’ve ever played in. Germany got an early goal when a free-kick from Dietmar Hamann skidded away from Dave Seaman and then they just sat there and bottled the game up; the pitch didn’t help but we never really built up any momentum. They had lots of players behind the ball and probably looked more likely to score another goal on the break than we did to get an equaliser. I picked up a knock on my knee and I had to be substituted just before the end.

  I went and sat on the bench, huddled up against the rain, and listened to the atmosphere around Wembley getting more and more sour. When the whistle went and we’d lost 1–0, the last the old Wembley heard from England supporters was them booing us off. To lose the last game at Wembley – and to lose it to Germany – was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in football. I walked down the touchline towards the changing rooms just a few yards ahead of Kevin Keegan. I could hear the abuse he was getting from fans near enough to the running track to make themselves heard. It wasn’t personal, what was being shouted at him. Instead, they were telling Kevin what they thought of him as England manager. Second-hand stuff, lifted from the back pages, saying he didn’t have a clue – which was really harsh and insulting towards a man who’d achieved so much during thirty-odd years in football. It hadn’t taken long for everybody to forget that Kevin had been first choice, by a mile, to take over when Glenn Hoddle resigned.

  I was surprised at what happened when we got down into the changing rooms but, because I’d been listening to what those supporters had been saying, I had an idea why Kevin made up his mind so quickly about what he should do. I could understand him, after taking that stick, wondering if it was worth it. Even so, what actually happened in the hour after that Germany game came as a huge shock. We hadn’t even started changing. Most of us were just getting something to drink. Kevin walked in and stood in the middle of the room. Then he told us he was leaving:

  ‘I have to be honest with you. And honest with myself. I’ve gone as far as I can with this. I’m calling it a day. You’ve got good times ahead of you. You’re very good players.’

  I know it was an instant decision because even his assistant Arthur Cox, who knew Kevin better than any of us, didn’t know what was coming. He was the first to speak up:

  ‘No, Kevin. Don’t do this.’

  I remember my reaction:

  ‘Kevin, we want you as England manager.’

  It was all falling apart and now we were losing Kevin Keegan. Personally, I didn’t feel let down. I wouldn’t have said a bad word about one of the best managers I’ve ever worked with. Kevin felt he knew what he had to do and he’d made up his mind completely. He told us he was going to step down. Then he told Adam Crozier, the FA Chief Executive. And then he told the press. What a way to finish things off: all the great things that had happened at Wembley, and all the good times we’d had with Kevin, ended with the rain tipping down, people angry and upset and the England team looking for another new coach. I look back now to that miserable afternoon and think: Why couldn’t we have changed our minds and had one more game there? One more chance to give Wembley the send off it should have had?

  As it turned out, with the delays to the new National Stadium, we could have done that. Instead, you just have to hope that us losing to Germany isn’t the only memory of Wembley that people are left with. Better to remember the great FA Cup Finals and Euro 96 and winning the World Cup back in 1966. From a football point of view, of course, if we’d been told before the game in October 2000 that we were going to lose to Germany that afternoon but then go on to beat them like we did in Munich a few months later, every single one of the players would have settled for that. A lot had to happen to the England team first, though, before that particular dream could come true.

  Really important international players, leaders and captains like Alan Shearer and Tony Adams, had come to the end of their England careers, or were just about to. There was a group of lads, including my generation of United players, who now had the experience of two major tournaments – and two major disappointments – behind us. Following us, there were lots of talented young players waiting for their chance. When Kevin left, everybody seemed to agree about what needed to be done to get England going again. Before Sven-Goran Eriksson was appointed, Howard Wilkinson looked after the team for a couple of gam
es and then Peter Taylor came in as caretaker manager for a friendly away to Italy. Everybody was saying:

  ‘Shake things up. Go with the young players.’

  Maybe Peter knew he wasn’t going to be in the firing line that comes with doing the England job full-time. More likely, that’s just what he’s like as a coach: he was the one who had the bottle to change the international team around, to recognise what needed to be done and then to go ahead and do it whatever the doubters said. All the young players who’ve come in since should remember that it was Peter who was the first to take the chance with a new generation of players. It wasn’t that he gave out a lot of new caps. What he did was give the younger lads the opportunity to come together as a team. Sven’s been a huge influence but Peter got things started. Personally, I owe him, too. And always will: Peter Taylor gave me the England captain’s armband for the very first time.

  I’d only ever skippered a side once in my career. During my first year at Old Trafford, I was captain of the youth team that won the Milk Cup in Northern Ireland. Lack of experience never stopped anyone dreaming, though. Once I’d established myself as an England player, I’d started to have ambitions – which, of course, I kept to myself – to make the next step, which would be the greatest honour of all. I’ve always believed that you should set yourself the highest of goals. I got as far as having a meeting with Kevin Keegan after Alan Shearer announced his international retirement. I wanted the England manager to know that I believed I could take on the job as captain. Kevin didn’t say yes or no. But he did say he thought I would make an England skipper one day.