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 coach. 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 coach 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 football, 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.
‘I’m in Manchester but I’ll drive down. We could go out.’
My wife picked me out of a football 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 travelled 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 favourite 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 footballer 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.
Just a month or so later, we were down in London to play Chelsea and, before the game, someone in the dressing room said that a couple of the Spice Girls were at Stamford Bridge.
Which ones? Is Posh here? Where are they sitting? Somehow or other, I kept the excitement to myself. Maybe this was the chance I’d been waiting for. Later, I found out that it was Victoria, along with Melanie Chisholm, who’d come to the game. As I went up to the Players’ Lounge, I was praying she would be there.
I met up with Mum and Dad. Victoria and Melanie were