Beckham (25 page)

I felt fantastic going back down to the dressing 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 soccer. 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 soccer with. He's got a perfect attitude to the game. Once the final whistle had gone, we were all out celebrating on the field 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 field. 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 equalized, 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 abuse 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 dressing 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-nothing, 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 workout, 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 soccer, there's never time to go back to scratch and workout 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 torn 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 field didn't help but we never really built up any momentum. They had lots of players packed in their own half and probably looked more likely to score another goal on a breakaway than we did to get an equalizer. I picked up an injury 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 soccer. I walked down the touchline towards the dressing 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 soccer. 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 dressing 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 abuse, 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 pouring 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 England 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 soccer 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.

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 games 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 courage to change the makeup of the national team, to recognize what needed to be done and then to go ahead and do it no matter what 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 honor 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 captain one day.

By the time Kevin had left the international set-up, I think people were starting to talk about the possibility of me being up to the job. I have to say there were at least as many people against the idea at the time as were for it. And obviously it wasn't something I could make happen myself: I just had to wait and see, along with everybody else. The night before Peter Taylor announced his squad for the friendly game against Italy, Victoria was away and I was staying at Gary Neville's house. My cell phone rang at about eight o'clock in the morning. I'm not the best at getting up early, so my first, blurry reaction was:
Who the hell's that?

I picked up the phone and managed to mutter:

‘Hello?'

The voice at the other end was wide awake.

‘Hello, David. It's Peter Taylor.'

I came to my senses very quickly indeed. I was out of bed and on my feet.

‘Oh. Hello, Peter. How are you?'

The caretaker manager hadn't just rung up for a chat. I'll never forget what came next:

‘Sorry to ring this early but I'm about to announce the squad. I've picked a young group and some new young players. I think the right thing is for you to captain them. I've got absolutely no doubt about you being ready for the job. I wanted you to know before I tell anybody else.'