In the new Netflix docuseries Beckham, fans get a behind-the-scenes look at the life of legendary soccer player David Beckham, from his early days at Manchester United to his ups and downs on the English national team to his high-profile relationships and famous family.
Director Fisher Stevens compiles present-day interviews with David’s parents, former teammates, coaches and more, cut together with home video footage and sports coverage that show just how dominant a figure he was on the pitch, from his signature “bend” to his ability to anticipate the ball and make a play on the fly.
Worldwide sports fame had its pitfalls, however, especially when combined with wife Victoria Beckham’s status as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet at the time they met. The high-profile couple was stalked by paparazzi throughout their courtship, as demanding schedules kept them apart for weeks at a time. They received death threats, and feared for their safety as they expanded their family to include sons Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, and daughter Harper.
As David’s playing career evolved and ultimately concluded — he now is part owner of Inter Miami FC — fascination with his family never waned. Victoria became a successful designer, and their children clearly follow in her fashion-forward footsteps. But the media pressure remains as well, with public criticism about their every move and speculation about infidelity testing the couple’s relationship.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest revelations from Beckham.
David’s dad missed the kick that put him on the map.
The series opens with David’s iconic goal from the 1996 Premiere League opener, when he scored an unthinkable 57-footer from midfield against Wimbledon.
David’s father, Ted, was at the game that day, however, he reveals that he unfortunately missed the special moment.
“Didn’t see it,” he recalls telling the celebrating fans around him. “Some bloody bloke stood up right in front of me.”
As a young star, David would spend his entire paycheck in one day.
As his football career surged, so too did the paydays and sponsorship contracts. David himself admits that he was incredibly reckless with his money, often spending it the moment it was earned.
“I’d signed a contract with Adidas for 50,000 pounds,” David recalls in the doc. “And I went and bought an M3 for 50,000 pounds.”
His teammates confirm as much, with Phil Neville sharing this anecdote: “David used to get his salary on a Friday, used to spend it on a Saturday, all, and then spend the next five days waiting for his salary so he could get the jeans to match. That was him. Have money, spend it. Have money, spend it. Have money, spend it.”
It was love at first sight for David and Victoria — at least on his end.
Before the pair had ever met in person, David recalls in the doc, he and fellow Manchester United player Gary Neville saw the Spice Girls on TV.
“I turned ’round to Gary and went, ‘See that one there? I’m gonna marry that one,'” he remembers. “We’re laughing and joking, and I’m like, ‘No. I’m gonna marry that one.'”
“I suppose most blokes have done that, looked at the television and gone, ‘I like her.’ You don’t f**king end up with them!” Neville teases.
Many worried that David was sacrificing his career for Victoria.
David’s devotion to Victoria was instant — and intense. Teammates recall him spending every free moment on the phone, staying up late before big games and driving long distances just to see her for a moment.
“He was like an addict,” Neville recalls. “He would drive four hours to spend 20 minutes with her.”
“I didn’t care when I saw her, how much I saw her,” David admits. “If it was me driving down to London to see her for seven minutes, I did it.”
However, he was mostly able to get away with it, due to his incredible talent.
“David had the ability to have madness in his life, potentially, and literally an hour before kickoff, he’d switch off and he’d switch into football mode,” Neville marvels. “And he’d be on it and he’d perform. I don’t know how he did it.”
Victoria told David she was pregnant with their first child the night before his notorious World Cup game against Argentina.
After fighting tooth and nail to get England out of the group stages in the 1998 World Cup — and dealing with a benching from manager Glenn Hoddle — David and his teammates were set to take on international rivals Argentina in their round of 16.
The night before, Victoria called him from New York — Brooklyn, to be exact, and told him she was pregnant. Admittedly not a football fan, the Spice Girls star says that she didn’t really give much thought to how the news might affect David’s play.
On his end, David admits that the moment he knew the news, leaving the tournament to be with Victoria was “the first thing I wanted to do.”
But of course he didn’t, and one of the most polarizing moments in World Cup history followed. After being fouled by Argentina’s Diego Simeone, David kicked his leg back at his opponent. Simeone fell in dramatic fashion, prompting the referee to give David a red card, removing him from the game and leaving England down a player. They ultimately lost the game in penalty kicks, and were eliminated from the World Cup.
David became “clinically depressed” following the red card incident.
When he returned home to England following their World Cup elimination, David was public enemy No. 1. Sports commentators called for him to never play for the national team again, targets were drawn over his face in newspaper cartoons and he received death threats.
“He was absolutely broken. He was in pieces,” Victoria says. “He was really depressed, absolutely clinically depressed. It pained me so much, I still want to kill these people.”
“I don’t think I have ever talked about it, just because I can’t. I find it hard to talk through what I went through because it was so extreme,” adds David. “To walk down the street and to see people look at you in a certain way, spit at you, abuse you, come up to your face and say some of the things they said, that is difficult. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping. I was a mess. I didn’t know what to do.”
The couple even worried that something might happen to their newborn son, so much so that David slept against the door of their hospital room after Victoria gave birth.
“The moment he came out, I all of sudden thought, ‘How am I going to protect him?'” David remembers. “That night, Brooklyn slept next to Victoria. Victoria was like, ‘Come on, squeeze on the bed with me,’ and I was like, ‘Absolutely not, I’m sleeping with my head against the door.’ Because I was paranoid that someone was gonna steal him.”
“We were getting kidnapping threats, right from when we had Brooklyn,” Victoria reveals. “I mean, you can’t even explain how that feels, because we couldn’t hide.”
A move to Madrid and cheating rumors put a major strain on the couple’s relationship.
When David was traded to Real Madrid in 2003, Victoria was criticized by the press for not immediately relocating with him.
“Did I resent David? If I am being totally honest, yes I did,” Victoria admits in the doc. “It was probably, if I’m being honest, the most unhappy I have ever been in my life. It wasn’t that I felt unheard because I chose to internalize a lot of it because I was always mindful of a focus that he needed.”
It didn’t help matters that, at the same time, David’s former personal assistant, Rebecca Loos, claimed that she’d had a four-month affair with the soccer star just after he moved to Madrid on his own. Victoria addresses the rumors for the first time, saying it was “100 percent” the hardest time in their marriage.
“It was the hardest period for us. Because it felt like the world was against us,” she notes.
“When I first moved to Spain, it was difficult because I had been part of a club and a family [at Manchester United] for my whole career, from the age of 15 to when I was 27,” David explains. “I get sold overnight, the next minute I’m in a city, I don’t speak the language. More importantly, I didn’t have my family.
“Every time that we woke up we felt there was something else… we both felt at the time that we were not losing each other but drowning,” he adds. “I don’t know how we got through it, in all honesty.”
“Victoria is everything to me, to see her hurt was incredibly difficult, but we’re fighters and at that time we needed to fight for each other, we needed to fight for our family. And what we had was worth fighting for.”
David almost missed the birth of third son Cruz due to a photo shoot with Jennifer Lopez.
Victoria says she was “pissed” when a sponsorship commitment caused David to nearly be late to the hospital for the birth of his third child.
“I was like, ‘Seriously, I’m about to burst, I’m on bed rest. Are you kidding me?!'” she recalls. “You’ve got a damn photo shoot with Jennifer Lopez — who is gorgeous and not about to have a baby.”
“So I had my C-section and I remember lying there, I don’t feel at my most gorgeous, let’s just say, and I remember someone showing me the front page of the newspaper, which was a gorgeous picture of David between Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé, and the headline was, ‘What would Posh say?'” she adds. “Let me tell you what Posh would say. Posh was pissed off!”
Beckham is streaming now on Netflix.
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