David Beckham: My Side

by David Beckham (with Tom Watt)

  ‘David, I just wanted to let you know that we may have a slight problem for Turkey.’

  Mr Eriksson didn’t go into any great detail about the situation. He explained that he thought it was best I had an idea of what was going on just to make sure I didn’t get ambushed by it over the coming twenty-four hours. I appreciated that. He was calm about it and he certainly wasn’t asking me for advice. He just thought that, as captain, I needed to know.

  ‘The important thing, David, is that we handle what happens in the right way. It’s an important game.’

  A day later, the world knew as much as I did and more. I’m not sure it’s for me to try and find a way through the rights and wrongs of Rio Ferdinand missing a drugs test. Eventually, Rio’s case was dealt with by the FA – pretty harshly, I think – and he’s had to live with his punishment. Knowing Rio as well as I do – he’s an England team-mate and a former United team-mate, too – the one thing I would say is that I don’t have the slightest doubt in my mind that he made an honest mistake. Anyone who knows how Rio’s sometimes able to let things go in one ear and straight out the other would agree with me that his ban was all about setting some kind of example. It was far tougher a punishment than anything that might have fitted the ‘crime’.

  My own feelings about a mate aside, I understand that disciplinary matters – particularly anything relating to something as serious as the drug-testing of players – is for the FA to deal with in the way they think they need to for the good of football. If Rio’s case had already been sorted out back then, we’d have gone into the Turkey game sorry to be missing a really good player but without there being an argument about it from anyone. As it was, though, no decision had been made. Rio hadn’t been charged with anything and nobody even knew when – or if – he might be. It seemed to his team-mates as if Rio, who’s as popular with the England boys as he is at Old Trafford, was being hung out to dry.

  In a way, one of the reasons why the players reacted to the situation the way we did was probably down to how strong the sense of togetherness has been in the England camp since Sven took over as manager. When the story broke about Rio, United backed him. All of us knew that, in the same circumstances, we could have relied on the clubs we play for to do the same. They’d say: Until he’s charged and found guilty, we’ll stick behind our player and support him. The England dressing room, these days, feels like a club dressing room, which made the way our bosses at the FA handled the situation all the more difficult to understand. After the fuss died down, the then chief executive Mark Palios was honest enough to admit that there was a hole where the organisation’s policy should have been and I hope they’ll sort that problem out. At the time, it was us – Sven and the team as well as Rio – who were left up in the air ahead of one of the most important games any of us had ever been involved in.

  There was never any question of us not being in Istanbul to play Turkey. As soon as we met up together, though, all of us agreed that we needed to try and get our point across. If there was a problem for one of us, it was a problem for all of us and we felt we needed to face up to the situation as a team. We had meeting after meeting together about it. I remember, at the start of the week, standing up in front of the rest of the lads and explaining the situation as I saw it. I thought we needed to decide where we stood as a group.

  ‘Are we with Rio or are we with the FA over this?’

  Everybody wrote down how they felt on a piece of paper. Every single player said he thought we should be supporting our team-mate. I wasn’t happy about the situation – if nothing else, I hated those meetings – but, as a captain, I was secretly pleased that the team seemed so single-minded about how to react. All any of us wanted was to get out to Turkey and play but there was a point of principle that it wouldn’t have been right for us to duck away from.

  The argument went on into the middle of the week. Our last meeting about it as a team was on the Wednesday night, just three days ahead of the game. The suggestion that we might not play was only ever put to the FA in private, in the heat of the moment: we had to make it clear to the men in charge how strongly we felt. We knew – and I’m sure they knew – we’d never have let the country down by not going to Turkey. Why someone at the FA chose to make a private matter public I don’t know. It didn’t help them or us in circumstances where it shouldn’t have been about them and us anyway. Didn’t we all want the same thing? To make sure England qualified for Euro 2004?

  Of course we didn’t get what we wanted. In fact, the FA didn’t even allow us the compromise we suggested eventually which was that Rio would travel to Turkey as part of the squad even though he wasn’t going to take any part in the game. What we did achieve, though, was to get our point across to our bosses – and to England supporters – in the belief that it would be enough to make sure the same thing never happened again. In actual fact, something similar did come up a couple of months later when Alan Smith was called into a squad and then sent home again because he was waiting to hear if he was going to be charged over an incident at Elland Road during a Premiership game. Over the long term, though, I’m convinced the FA will get things straight and I’m sure that the points we made in the week before the Turkey game will have made a difference.

  While we were talking – and the headlines about it all were getting bigger and bigger – I can’t pretend that our preparations didn’t suffer. I remember Gary Neville saying, after one training session:

  ‘This is terrible, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be playing this game in a couple of days’ time.’

  Once we decided to put the row behind us, it felt straight away as if the whole business had actually helped us as a team. If we weren’t determined enough already, we now knew something else would be at stake on the Saturday night too. It was about beating Turkey, of course, but it was also about showing we could take our sense of togetherness out into the game and use it to make sure England got to Portugal. And that’s exactly what we did.

  When you think about everything else that had been going on, the level of concentration in the dressing room in Istanbul before kick-off was fantastic. Everybody had cleared their minds and I knew then that we were going to do what we needed to do. We needed a draw but we were there to win. And we should have. We deserved to. We had lots of chances in the first half and then, just after the half hour, we were awarded a penalty.

  Wayne Rooney played the ball through for Steven Gerrard who powered into the area, running at the defenders. It was Tugay who tripped him and the referee, Pierluigi Collina, pointed straight to the spot. I put the ball down, absolutely certain I was going to score, just like I had in the game against Turkey at the Stadium of Light. I wasn’t nervous. I trust myself. I know I strike the ball well enough that, from the penalty spot, I should score every time. That night, though, just as my right foot swung back to make contact with the ball, I felt my other foot slide away from underneath me.

  I’ve talked about it with other players and with the coaching staff since and there’s one point about my technique that may help to explain what happened twelve yards from goal at the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium that night. And would happen again at the Estadio Da Luz nine months later. When I strike the ball, I plant my standing foot down on the ground – a split second before – a lot harder than most other players. Almost always, that helps both my power and accuracy when it comes to passing and shooting. But it also means that, if there’s something not right – if the turf’s unstable or the pitch is uneven – I’ve got less margin for error. So, when my left foot gave way against Turkey, I didn’t just miss. I missed by miles.

  I didn’t have any time at all to feel angry with myself or disappointed for the team. The next moment, their centre-half, Alpay, who played for Aston Villa at the time, was in my face, screaming at me. I didn’t really know what he was on about. It might have been more understandable if it had been him who’d given the penalty away, I suppose. As it was, I just tried to ignore him and get on with the game. When
the ref blew for half-time, though, Alpay was back for more. As I walked off, he ran up behind me, said something insulting about my mum and then poked me in the face with his finger. I wasn’t happy and jogged down the tunnel to find out what his problem was. That was just the start of it.

  While I was arguing with Alpay, some of the other players – ours and Turkey’s – gathered round. We all moved up through the tunnel and into the area that led off to the dressing rooms. There was a lot of shouting and shoving going on and, at one point, one of the Turkish coaching staff spat at one of our lads, Emile Heskey, I think. That was what kicked it off. None of the England players who’d seen it was going to let it go and, for a few moments, something like a fight broke out. Supporters back home, I found out later, had been able to see it happening on TV for themselves.

  Once things had broken up, Signor Collina asked me to go into his dressing room with the Turkish captain. He listened while I explained what I thought had gone on and then said:

  ‘Look, I don’t care what’s happened. I’m telling you now that things need to be calmed down or we’re going to have a big problem in the second half.’

  I’d got the lid back on things by then anyway. I just made sure he knew I understood. I’ve got enormous respect for Collina as a person and as a referee. It’s a shame he’s had to retire. By the time the whistle blew for the restart, we’d got our attention back and focussed on the game: despite me missing the penalty, we were 45 minutes away from qualifying for Euro 2004. During the second half, we came under quite a bit more pressure. The whole defence played very well but I thought Sol Campbell and John Terry, who’d come in – amid all the fuss – to replace Rio, were absolutely outstanding.

  There were one or two near misses but I didn’t ever believe we were going to concede a goal and it was us who had one disallowed. I think it was Ashley Cole who sent the cross over from the left. I ran in from deep and headed it in past Rustu, their keeper. I was convinced it was a goal but I heard the whistle go to disallow it almost immediately. Everybody else was sure we’d scored too. I looked over towards the bench and Gary was hugging anybody he could lay his hands on. It was bizarre, a bit like when Sol Campbell had had his header disallowed against Argentina at France 98. Some England players were still celebrating while, in the meantime, Turkey had already taken the free-kick and were heading towards our penalty area.

  We survived that and everything else Turkey could manage and we held on for the 0–0 draw that we needed. Without anything having been planned beforehand, all the players – including the lads who’d been on the bench – got together in the middle of the pitch to celebrate, bouncing up and down in a huddle. It was a wonderful moment: I’ve got a picture of it framed on my wall at home. The team spirit, the togetherness in the dressing room and out on the pitch, I already knew we had: if anything, the problems leading up to that game in Istanbul had brought us all even closer as a group. And, together, we were off to Euro 2004.

  By the time club seasons had ended in May – mine in disappointment with Real Madrid – and England met up to prepare for the tournament, the night in Istanbul and what had preceded it already seemed like a very long time ago. That had been a week during which we’d been put under plenty of pressure, none of it really of our own making, and come through with our sense of unity not just intact but stronger than ever. In the six months since, though, I’d been through more of the same. But a lot worse. I’d had to face up to the same kind of challenge to my sense of myself in my own life and I’d had to deal with it without those team-mates around me. Football’s just a game. What Victoria and I had been through since Christmas definitely wasn’t.

  It goes against the grain with me to even have to mention it: what goes on at the heart of our life as a family is ours and no-one else’s business, after all. Why a whole sorry procession of spiteful stories about me turned up in the press and on TV during my first season in Madrid I can only guess at. Maybe they were all about the individuals involved making a bit of money at mine and my family’s expense. Maybe, though, there was more to them than that: sometimes it felt as if people were trying to break up my marriage. If that was what they were hoping to achieve, I hope they realise by now that they misjudged my relationship with Victoria completely. If anything, we’ve come through it stronger than ever. The storm around us has just made us hold each other – and Brooklyn and Romeo – closer. Maybe you don’t ever know how much you love someone – or how completely you trust them – until your bond is put to the test. I don’t think it’s ever right, though, for a marriage to take the hammering mine did on prime time television and on the front pages of newspapers.

  Victoria and I know each other – and believe in what we have together – in a way that no-one else ever will. You could say the same about any successful marriage, I suppose. We know it’ll never be possible for anybody else to force us apart. Even so, what went on wasn’t the kind of experience you can just shrug off or laugh about. It hurt us as individuals and as a family. The anger and frustration boil up inside you but you know, deep down, that retaliation is exactly what the people behind the stories are after. It’s a fight both you and they know you can’t win. In our working lives, neither Victoria nor I have ever shirked a scrap. This was different, though, because if you respond, any words, any actions – even straight denials – are then played out as the next set of headlines. It’s like trying to put out fires by splashing them with petrol.

  I understand how the business works: both Victoria and I have taken on careers in the public eye and we know what that means in terms of attention sometimes being focussed on us whether we like it or not. But those few months earlier this year put a strain on us as individuals and hurt us as a couple in ways nothing could have prepared us for. The stories themselves and – even worse – some people’s ignorant opinions about us as a family pitched up at every turn in our daily lives. I had plenty on my plate as a player at a new club, trying to find my feet in a new life. Maybe the pressure I was feeling anyway was enough to shake me off balance. For the first time in my career, what was going on away from the pitch started to have an effect on what was happening on it. For a spell, I was doing what I’d never done before: let problems and hurt elsewhere in my life follow me out into games.

  I don’t know about that phrase ‘going to hell in a handcart’, but when we reached Sardinia in the last week in May to begin our preparations for the Finals, almost the first thing I had to do as England captain was to go and meet the gentlemen of the press on a golf buggy. It’s a ridiculous enough feeling anyway, bouncing along in one of those things. Particularly if you’re not out on a golf course at the time. But that wasn’t why I was feeling as uncomfortable as I was while we wound our way through the hotel complex towards the room that had been set aside for media briefings.

  After everything that had been said and written about me and Victoria, I’d spent a few sleepless nights fretting about how I was going to face a confrontation I knew I couldn’t back down from. I’d been suspended when England played in Sweden at the end of March, which meant I hadn’t been forced to deal with the situation – and my emotions – at that point. Instead, Sardinia was the first time I knew I’d have to actually be in the same room as some of the same people who’d caused so much heartache for me and my family.

  I’m bursting proud to be captain of England and I’ve always understood that talking to our supporters – through the press – is an important part of the job. Important enough that I couldn’t do the job at all without standing up in front of the media. Hurt as I’d been, I understood I couldn’t turn round and say:

  ‘I don’t like what you’ve been doing to my family and I’m not going to talk to you.’

  What’s more, I’m the first person to recognise how fair most of the football writers have been with me over the years – at least since the fall-out from France 98. Their support early on had definitely helped me settle in as skipper of the England team and I knew that I shouldn’t
blame them as individuals for what went on elsewhere in the papers they worked for. But I didn’t see how I could just ignore all that had happened over the previous few months, especially as I knew there’d be questions about it slung at me even though we were all there, supposedly, to talk about Euro 2004. I’ve got to thank Mr Eriksson, Terry Byrne and Gary Neville for talking to me, listening and helping me find a way through my own thoughts.

  It had all been painful, but there had been a handful – three – pieces that had hurt more than most. Of all the broadcasters and newspapers who I knew were waiting to meet me that hot, sunny afternoon in Sardinia, there were three in particular who I felt had gone out of their way to damage my family and my reputation. They’d been even more spiteful and hadbehaved,inmymind, more unforgivably than the rest. I wanted to exclude those organisations from the press conference as a way of making it clear to them – and to their audiences – how difficult they’d made life for me.

  When the media heard about what I wanted to do, they went to the FA saying that they wouldn’t agree to it. Basically, their position was that if I refused to talk to three of them then the rest of them would boycott the media conferences as well. It would look as if the England captain had stopped England supporters finding out how the team’s preparations were going. It may sound strange, but – unhappy as I was – I understood their attitude and even respected the position they decided on. I guess the media thought of themselves as a team. And they were sticking together like one now.