We’d just kept coming in for training, turning up for games and were all on the kind of high which has you half-expecting things to go wrong at any minute. In the United first team? Winning the Premiership? There had to be a catch. But there wasn’t. Instead, it got better and better. We weren’t just on our way to winning the League. How many FA Cup Finals had I been to at Wembley with Dad? Every time, both of us imagining what it would be like for me to play in one? And now, March 1996, here were United at Villa Park for a semi-final against Chelsea, who had Mark Hughes in their side. I didn’t know if I’d ever have a better chance.
I couldn’t wait, although I promised myself I’d stay well out of Sparky’s way when the day came. I’m really friendly with Mark now. We see quite a lot of him, his wife Gill and their three children, who are the nicest, politest kids you’ll ever meet. I always used to say to Victoria that they were how I hoped our children would be. I knew back then, though, that it didn’t matter how well I knew Mark or how close we were off the field; on it—if he had to—he’d smash me as soon as he’d smash anybody else. He was one of those players whose character changes when they go out to play. Mark Hughes would fight for the ball, and fight anyone for it, all day long, which is why supporters and team-mates loved him like they did. I’ve seen games where he didn’t just bully the center-half he was playing against, he’d bully the entire opposing team.
Chelsea took the lead on the afternoon, Ruud Gullit scoring with a header. Then Andy Cole equalized for us. Well into the second half, one of their defenders, Craig Burley, misplaced a pass. Steve Bruce, who was on the bench, shouted: ‘Go on, Becks!’ As the ball came towards me, I took a touch and it bounced away a bit off my shin. That took me wider of the goal than I would have wanted. But the keeper came out—we actually caught each other’s eyes for a split second—and I slotted it past him into the corner. I ran off to celebrate: I jumped up in the air, threw my fist up and, I swear, at that moment I felt like I could have reached out to touch the roof of the stand, like I could have hung there till the final whistle went. I remember being desperate, as we played out time, for that goal—my goal—to be the one that took us to Wembley.
My mum and dad were sitting up in the stand and, at full-time, I looked up towards them and felt the tears welling up inside of me. Wembley held so many memories for us, going back as far as the first time Dad took me. I can still remember going to a schoolboy international one Saturday afternoon when I was only seven and having to stand on my seat to be able to see. Dad kept telling me to get down. I kept getting back up. Eventually, the seat gave way and I fell and knocked out my two front teeth. There was blood everywhere and Dad had to take me home.
Wembley always meant the Cup Final, too: we were there for that amazing 3–3 draw between United and Crystal Palace in 1990, which had every bit of drama you could hope for, with Ian Wright coming on as a substitute and almost winning them the game. I remember not being able to go to the replay because it was a school night and I was going mad at home, jumping off the settee and dancing round the front room, when Lee Martin scored the winner. Every time United got to a final, I’d hang a flag in my bedroom window, with a picture of Bryan Robson stuck next to it, so everybody could see from the street who I supported. I don’t know who said it first, but it’s true: kids don’t dream about playing for a team that wins the League. Every schoolboy’s dream is about playing in the Cup Final. As we celebrated at Villa Park, I knew—and my parents knew—that dream was about to come true.
Wembley was six weeks away and we had Premiership games we had to win but, in the back of my mind, was the thought that I had to stay fit and keep playing well enough to make sure I was in the team against Liverpool. As it turned out, it was close. Steve Bruce told me later that the manager had been thinking, just before the final, about leaving me out. Liverpool played with three center-halves and the boss and Steve and the coaching staff met to talk about matching their shape—playing with wing-backs—which would have meant I’d have been on the bench. At the time, and I’m glad about it, I didn’t know any of that. All I had to think about was beating Liverpool and doing the Double.
For me, the FA Cup Final had always seemed like a very special occasion. It was for the club I was playing for, too. Manchester United have been in more finals—and won more of them—than anyone else. The club and the manager knew how to do it in style. We traveled down to London a couple of days before the game, all fitted out in new suits, and stayed at a lovely hotel down by the Thames, near Windsor. As well as training, there were things like clay-pigeon shooting organized, which obviously weren’t part of the regular routine before an away game. It was all about building us up to the game but making sure we were relaxed as well. I think us young lads were just wandering around with big grins on our faces the whole time. Playing for United in the Cup Final? We were pinching ourselves.
It’s amazing how often it’s sunny on Cup Final day. In 1996, I remember being surprised how hot it was, even before we got started. I was sweating during the walkabout on the field an hour or so before kick-off. The Liverpool players were strolling around Wembley like it was their own front room: they’d been fitted out in white Armani suits. Some of them were wearing sneakers. Michael Thomas was filming it all on a camcorder. I looked up towards where my mum and dad were going to be sitting. I knew, even then, that the day was going to mean as much to them as it meant to me.
The game was really tough. Tiring, too: the field was very sticky because the grass had been left quite long. Things might have been different if someone had been able to get a goal early on. That might have opened up the game. I had a chance in the first five minutes but David James saved my shot and it went out for a corner. Liverpool tried to stop us playing. We tried to stop them playing. And, well into the second half, it looked like neither team was going to score.
I’d almost missed out on a place in the starting line-up. And I was almost taken off just before the moment that won the game. The boss told me later that he had been about to make a substitution. He’d not been pleased with my corners all afternoon: ‘crap corners’ he called them. But before the board went up for the change, we won another. I ran over to take it and, as I turned my back on the crowd to put the ball down, I was somehow able to hear this one United supporter’s voice above the din:
‘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 adrenaline 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 organized for everybody, win or lose. That whole weekend, the club had made sure our families had been involved. My girlfri
end 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 adrenaline 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 realize 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 vacation to Sardinia and, to be honest, forgot all about soccer 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 grief 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 team bus. 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 bus 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 soccer, 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 soccer 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 traveled 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 on 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 favorite 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 soccer player 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.
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