Beckham (5 page)

Martin Heather was the Essex manager and the exact opposite to Don—or Stuart Underwood, for that matter. All the boys loved him. Martin was also the sort of man that our mums would fancy: quiet, always smart, very well-spoken. He was a very different kind of coach, too. He hardly ever shouted, which meant that when he did you knew he wasn't happy. He really looked after us. I remember he took us on a soccer tour to Texas when I was thirteen.

Though back then it didn't make any difference to me if I was in Chase Lane Park or at some tournament in a foreign country—either way I was playing soccer. I vividly remember going with Essex to play in America.

I love the States. I love the patriotism, the way of life. For once, I didn't even feel homesick. That trip was different because instead of staying together, we lodged on our own with local families. The first people I stayed with were Mexican. Their house was just a couple of steps up from being a shack, to be honest, but they turned out to be really nice people. They had a son who was taking part in the competition. They were mad about soccer and couldn't do enough for me. All my Essex team-mates were staying in these huge houses and being driven around in huge cars. We'd just get in the pickup and drive down to McDonald's for breakfast every morning. I had such a great week with that family: I sometimes find myself thinking about them even now.

Happy at home and playing as much soccer as I was, there was only one worry in my life: I thought Manchester United were never going to
notice me down in London. The Ridgeway policy of young boys not going off straight away to professional clubs didn't bother me. I was having a great time playing and training with the team and, because of my dad, there was only one professional club I ever wanted to play for. In the back of my mind I just had to trust that, if I got on and worked hard, United would hear about me. What else could I do?

Word got around about the success of Ridgeway Rovers and we got used to the scouts turning up at our games every week. I know my dad was approached by scouts from West Ham and Wimbledon, as well as from Arsenal and Spurs. When the time came to train with a professional club, I had to choose between the two North London clubs, as I couldn't have gone to United anyway, unless we'd moved up to Manchester. I chose Spurs. Maybe it had something to do with my grandad being Tottenham mad. I remember saying to Mum at the time:

‘Grandad will be pleased, won't he?'

Tottenham seemed a friendly club; back then David Pleat was the manager. I just felt more at home there. The coaching was good and Spurs had some excellent players of my age: Nick Barmby was in the same group and so was Sol Campbell, who already had this great presence about him. I don't know what the coaches and the other lads thought about me turning up to train in my Manchester United uniform. I wasn't going to hide the fact that I was a United fan, even though I enjoyed my time at White Hart Lane.

Despite the interest from London clubs, for me it was always Manchester United. I might have ended up being a supporter or playing for them anyway, but I'm sure Dad was the main factor. He was the original Cockney Red. And he was passing the passion on to me even before I knew he was doing it. Dad was ten years old at the time of the 1958 Munich Air Crash. He had already been following United but the disaster turned it into a lifelong obsession for him. I think it was the same for a lot of supporters of his generation. When I was young, we used to talk about the United team of the time: Robson, Strachan,
Hughes and the rest. But he used to tell me about the Busby Babes, about the European Cup at Wembley, about Best and Stiles and Law and Charlton. What other club could there have been for me? Here I was, almost a teenager, with people saying they thought I had half a chance of someday making it as a professional player. I don't know about United born; I was definitely United bred. And what kept me going was the idea that, eventually, I'd get the call I'd been waiting for ever since I'd first kicked a ball.

‘What's the matter, Mum?'

‘Lucky you had a good game today.'

‘Why?'

I'd been playing for my District side, Waltham Forest, away to Redbridge. I must have been eleven. My dad had been working and couldn't come to watch, so Mum had taken me to the game. The ‘good game' was probably one of the best I ever had for that team, and afterwards I remember coming out of the dressing room with the rest of the boys. Mum was waiting for me. We got to the car park and I put my bag in the back of the car. It was only then that I noticed she had tears in her eyes.

‘Just lucky you had a good game.'

‘Yeah. But why?'

‘That man over there: he's a Man United scout. They want to have a look at you.'

I can still remember the rush of joy and excitement. There was relief in there too. I burst into tears on the spot, just cried and cried. I couldn't believe how happy I felt. I'd wondered for such a long time if I'd ever hear those words.
He's a Man United scout
. His name was Malcolm Fidgeon. He came back to the house and talked to my parents and
explained the club wanted to give me a trial in Manchester. The next thing, a few days later, Malcolm was turning up in his brown Ford Sierra to drive me up north.

I owe Malcolm a lot. He was United's London scout and the person who took me up to the club and looked out for me until I moved there permanently. I went up that first time and then back for two or three other trials. I loved it, staying up in Manchester for days or a week at a time, playing soccer and talking about soccer from morning until night. I did everything I could to make the right impression and worked as hard as I could. Eventually, we were told they'd be interested in signing me. One evening at home, the phone rang and Dad answered it. A minute or two later, he came back in with this look on his face, like he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. Of course, this was his dream as well as mine beginning to happen.

‘That was Alex Ferguson.'

Everything went quiet.

‘He phoned to say they'd enjoyed meeting you, that you've got talent and that they think your character is a credit to you, and to me and Mum.'

And there was more.

‘He said you're just the kind of boy Manchester United are looking for.'

That was the first contact I had with the man who became the driving force behind my career. Thinking back, for all my anxiety about whether they would want me or not, maybe I wasn't surprised that the manager knew who I was. The summer before, I'd already had my chance to play in front of a capacity crowd at Old Trafford.

I was ten years old when I attended the Bobby Charlton Soccer School for the first time. I had seen a feature about it on
Blue Peter
. Playing soccer in Manchester? With Bobby Charlton? I suppose Mum and Dad's only choice in the matter was how they were going to fund it: I think Grandad paid in the end. It was a residential soccer school
for that first summer, with hundreds of kids from all over the world staying in the university halls of residence while the students were on vacation. It lasted the whole week and I played plenty of soccer, but the rest of the time I felt a bit lost. Mum and Dad came up and stayed with relatives near Liverpool, and I was on the phone to them every evening. I had a toothache. I was homesick. And the week just passed me by a little.

I was desperate to have another go, so I went back the following summer. Things went a lot better. There were skills competitions on each of the courses, which used to run all through the summer, and the winners each week went through to a Grand Final back in Manchester in December. I made it through to that final and it turned out to be a fantastic weekend, for all of us. Mum and Dad stayed with me at the Portland Hotel in the city center. I had my own room, twenty floors up, with this huge plate-glass window overlooking the city below. I think they were a bit nervous about that. On Saturday morning, we had to register and then go over to United's old training ground, the Cliff, for the first part of the competition which was held in the indoor sports hall: ball-juggling, target shooting and short passing. I think I was in the lead already by the time we broke off for lunch.

The second part of the competition was staged out on the field at Old Trafford. I was so nervous I don't think I'd eaten for a couple of days. Mum and Dad were there, probably feeling worse than me. That afternoon, United were playing Spurs, and by the end of the competition there must have been about 40,000 supporters in the ground. I was so excited to be out on that field, I wasn't even thinking about winning. They introduced each of us to the crowd before we did the dribbling and then the long passing. I can still remember when they announced ‘David Beckham' and said I was from ‘Leytonstone'—all the Tottenham fans started cheering. Then the guy on the microphone said: ‘And David is a massive United fan'. All the Spurs fans started jeering and the rest of the ground, the home supporters, began applauding. To be fair, I
got a decent reception from both sets of fans when the announcement was made that I'd won.

We went up to the Europa Suite in the main stand where Bobby Charlton was doing the presentation. It was quite an experience for an eleven-year-old. I know Mum and Dad were very proud; people were coming up to them saying how well they thought I'd done. Maybe, though, it didn't overwhelm me completely. I think the function was still going on, but I drifted away into a corner because the game had started and I wanted to watch it on one of the televisions. It had been some afternoon. It was some prize too: a fortnight's training with Barcelona at the Nou Camp in Spain.

I couldn't wait to get over there. Terry Venables was the Barcelona manager, with Mark Hughes and Gary Lineker playing for the team. Me and two other lads were joined by Ray Whelan from the Bobby Charlton Soccer School. The four of us were put up in what looked like a farmhouse—a pretty luxurious one—at the heart of the Nou Camp complex. I think that building had been there even before the soccer club was and you could sense the history of everything that had happened since: there were pennants and memorabilia on the walls, dating way back, alongside pictures of famous players from Barcelona's past. This was a place where legends had been born.

The farmhouse was right next to the first team's training ground, in the shadow of the stadium itself, and we stayed there with the boys from other parts of Spain who were with Barcelona's youth team. I was still only eleven and saw one or two things that I wasn't used to from life in Chingford: in the evenings, prostitutes would walk up and down outside, on the other side of the railings, and all the older Spanish boys would be leaning out of the windows whistling at them. We used to have this hot chocolate drink at night that I liked so much I drank two one evening and made myself sick. I went to the toilet, turned the light on and saw a cockroach crawl across the floor. What was I doing here? The soccer was an experience. And so was the rest of it.

We'd go out every day with Barca's youth teams and reserve players. The training was amazing. The only catch was that Ridgeway had a Cup Final against a team called Forest United, at White Hart Lane, at the weekend. I was devastated at the prospect of missing that game; there was also my grandad, who was such a big Spurs fan and wanted to see me play there. He ended up paying for me to fly home for the game and then back to Barcelona again. There wasn't a happy ending, though. Forest United had a young Daniele Dichio playing for them, aged twelve, already seven foot tall and growing a beard. They beat us 2–1 that afternoon. Then I was straight on the plane and back to Spain, on my own and not really sure if I fancied another week away from Chingford.

Barcelona, the soccer club, was really impressive. The training facilities were excellent, although the young kids trained on a gravel field, which I wasn't used to and didn't really enjoy. The first team had an immaculate surface to play on, and the reserve team had a 20,000-seater stadium all of their own. We were taken inside the Nou Camp one day. You come up from the dressing rooms, past the club chapel that's off to one side in the tunnel, and then up a flight of stairs onto the field. Sometimes you can't help yourself: with acres of grass and the stands towering above, I started running up and down, kicking an imaginary soccer and pretending to be Mark Hughes. What would it be like, to be out there actually playing a game?

All the boys who I was training with were probably sixteen and seventeen. The two lads who'd finished second and third at Old Trafford were fifteen and nineteen. Everybody was really friendly but, at first, it was like:
What's this child with the spiky hair and the funny accent doing here?
Once we got started, everything was fine. Obviously, none of the coaches or the other players spoke English but, if we were playing, we could make ourselves understood. It was the first time I'd been in a professional set-up, training with professional players. It opened my eyes. We'd watch the first team most days and, one time, we went out
and were introduced to Mr Venables and the players. Of course, I'm quite good friends with Mark Hughes now. He often laughs about that time in Spain: the Barcelona players didn't have a clue who we were. I still have the photo of me, Mark, Terry Venables and Gary Lineker that was taken that afternoon.

It was an exciting time. I was training with Spurs, and United had let me know they were more than just interested. I went up to Manchester a few times in the school vacations, always with Malcolm Fidgeon in that brown Sierra, and hooked up with the team when they came down to London to play. The club in general, and Alex Ferguson in particular, did their best to make me feel a part of it all. The older players, like Bryan Robson and Steve Bruce, mocked me about those times once I eventually joined the club. I was at pre-match meals and I'd be in the dressing room after games, helping clear away all the uniforms. One afternoon, when United were away to West Ham, they invited me to come along as the mascot. I was given a United tracksuit and there I was, at Upton Park, warming up on the field with the likes of Bryan Robson and Gordon Strachan. Then they let me sit on the bench for the game. I even spotted myself on
Match of the Day
that evening.

United seemed pretty keen on me. Of course, I was so keen on United that it was almost embarrassing. I used to wear my hair spiky, wanting it to look like Gordon Strachan's, and the day of that West Ham game I took him a tub of hair gel as a present. He got some grief about that; and so did I a year or two later. Another time before a game in London, they invited me and Mum and Dad to have an evening meal with the squad at the team hotel at West Lodge Park. Never mind that I ordered a steak and then couldn't understand when a piece of tuna was put down in front of me. I was seated on the top table with the manager and the staff. They had a present for me: one of those padded bench coats. It was about six sizes too big for me. You couldn't see my hands at the ends of the sleeves and it trailed round my ankles, but
I didn't take the thing off for a week. Better still, I had a present for the boss: a pen. Alex Ferguson took it and looked at me:

‘Thanks, David. I'll tell you what: I'll sign you for Manchester United using this pen'.

Remembering that, it might seem strange that there was ever any doubt about who I was going to sign schoolboy forms with before I turned thirteen. But I'd been really happy training at Spurs and got on well with their Youth Development Officer, John Moncur. It was also important that White Hart Lane was fifteen minutes down the road from home. Much as Dad might have dreamed about me playing for United, he put that to one side when we sat down to talk. It wasn't: this is what you should do. But: what do you want to do? We decided we should at least find out what Spurs had to say.

Maybe I knew all along that it had to be United. The meeting between me, my dad and Terry Venables, who'd come back from Spain and was then managing Spurs, left me feeling like I had more questions than answers. John Moncur took us along to Terry's office. I can picture the scene now: Terry had dropped something on the floor, either some crisps or peanuts, and was bent down in his chair, scrabbling on the carpet, trying to pick them up. He looked up at us:

‘So, John, what have you got to tell me about this young lad?'

Never mind not remembering me from Barcelona: that must have seemed like ages ago. I got the impression that, although I'd been training at Spurs for a couple of years, the manager didn't really have any idea who I was. I couldn't help thinking about the times I'd been up to Manchester. Alex Ferguson knew all about me. He knew all about every single boy. He knew their parents, he knew their brothers and sisters. That seemed important to me, important for my future. It always felt like you were part of a family at United.

Spurs made us a really generous offer, which amounted to a six-year deal: two years as a schoolboy followed by two years as a Youth Training
Scheme trainee and then two years as a professional. A thought flashed through my mind.
By the time I'm eighteen, I could be driving a Porsche.

‘So, David, would you like to sign for Tottenham?' Terry said eventually.

Dad looked at me. He'd never been one to make my decisions for me. I took a breath:

‘I'd like to think about it, Mr Venables.'

In my head, though, I was shouting out:
United! It's got to be United!

Of course, Mum and Dad and I talked about what we'd heard. I think Mum would have liked me to join Tottenham, because of Grandad and because it would have meant me being able to stay at home, but she kept that to herself. Neither she nor Dad were going to put pressure on me one way or the other. We all knew that, if I ended up signing for Spurs, things would be fine. I'd be happy and well looked after at White Hart Lane. We had an appointment at Old Trafford to get to first, though.