I’ve been in Madrid for twelve months now. A year ago, all of it was new, and as confusing as it was exciting. I was waiting to find out what was expected of me; what I could expect from life at a new club and in a new city. Now, I’ve found my way past most of those questions. I mean: I know now what I’m going to be asked. The answers, of course, will have to wait for kick-off. And a new manager at the Bernebeu, José Antonio Camacho, has already made sure we understand that we’ll need to find the right ones.
To say a lot’s happened since I left the club I grew up at, Manchester United, and came to Spain to start learning all over again, wouldn’t be the half of it. Some of what’s gone on I could perhaps have been half-expecting. Most of it, though, I had no idea at all about when I got here a season and a major international tournament ago. I can still remember the adrenalin rushing through my system the August morning I was introduced to Madrid as a Real player. At the Pabellon Raimundo Saporta, I’d been hurried through corridors and then ushered onto a stage alongside the President, Florentino Perez, and the greatest player ever to pull on the white shirt that I was going to wear for the next four years, Alfredo di Stefano.
Thinking back now, one thing nags me about that day. Especially after the shocks and challenges and lessons I’ve learnt over the months since. Amidst all that felt just right that morning, one thing jarred at the time and still does. Now, in August 2004, I’m grateful to put right a choice of words I made before my life was turned upside down during a year in Spain, back home in England and at Euro 2004. The last twelve months have reminded me – if I needed reminding – what’s made the whole adventure worth the living so far.
When it came time for me to speak to the press and to the Real supporters, my voice trailing away across that hangar of a basketball court, I remember I said:
‘I have always loved football. Of course I love my family and I have a wonderful life. But football is everything to me. To play for Real Madrid is a dream come true.’
Football and my family: know about them and you know most of what you need to about David Beckham. Back then, though, I had those things – the things that have made me the person I am – in the wrong order.
I probably knew then. And I definitely know it about myself now. Football’s the best game in the world, the best career I could possibly have been lucky enough to enjoy. It’s given me fulfilment and a lot more besides. But everything to me? No, I’m sitting here on a terrace at our new home in Moraleja and what matters most in my life – in anybody’s life, surely – I can see in front of me. I can put my arms around them right now: my wife and my two sons. They’re what I’m here for. I hope I’ll never have to, but I’d sacrifice what I do for a living and everything it’s brought my way without a second thought to have what I have having them. I met Victoria, fell in love with and married her and, together, we’ve made our family. Until you love your own children, you never realise quite how much your mum and dad loved you. I’m ready to do for my family what Mum and Dad did for me: everything. Doesn’t matter how exciting, frantic or rewarding the rest of it is, it’s Victoria and Brooklyn and Romeo who make sense of it all.
‘To play for Real Madrid is a dream come true.’
That’s right enough. And it keeps coming true every time I pull Real’s white shirt over my head. But for us Beckhams, here together with the warm air wrapped round us, back in England or wherever else the future’s going to take us: it’s the together that counts: I could never have imagined how sweet it would be until it happened. And it has for me; and for my wife and for my children too. Our lives have come true: a family. Whatever lies ahead of us, I won’t ever let them go.
‘Mrs Beckham? Can David come and have a game in the park?’
I’m sure Mum could dig it out of the pile: that first video of me in action. There I am, David Robert Joseph Beckham, aged three, wearing the new Manchester United kit Dad had bought me for Christmas, playing football in the front room of our house in Chingford. Twenty-five years on, and Victoria could have filmed me having a kickabout this morning with Brooklyn before I left for training. For all that so much has happened during my life – and the shirt I’m wearing now is a different colour – some things haven’t really changed at all.
As a father watching my own sons growing up, I get an idea of what I must have been like as a boy; and reminders, as well, of what Dad was like with me. As soon as I could walk, he made sure I had a football to kick. Maybe I didn’t even wait for a ball. I remember when Brooklyn had only just got the hang of standing up. We were messing around together one afternoon after training. For some reason there was a tin of baked beans on the floor of the kitchen and, before I realised it, he’d taken a couple of unsteady steps towards it and kicked the thing as hard as you like. Frightening really: you could fracture a metatarsal doing that. Even as I was hugging him better, I couldn’t help laughing. That must have been me.
It’s just there, wired into the genes. Look at Brooklyn: he always wants to be playing football, running, kicking, diving about. And he’s already listening, like he’s ready to learn. By the time he was three and a half, if I rolled the football to him and told him to stop it, he’d trap it by putting his foot on it. Then he’d take a step back and line himself up before kicking it back to me. He’s also got a great sense of balance. We were in New York when Brooklyn was about two and a half, and I remember us coming out of a restaurant and walking down some steps. He was standing, facing up towards Victoria and I, his toes on one step and his heels rocking back over the next. This guy must have been watching from inside the restaurant, because suddenly he came running out and asked us how old our son was. When I told him, he explained he was a child psychologist and that for Brooklyn to be able to balance himself over the step like that was amazing for a boy of his age.
It’s a little too early to tell with Romeo, but Brooklyn has got a real confidence that comes from his energy, his strength, and his sense of coordination. He’s been whizzing around on two-wheeled scooters – I mean flying – for years already. He’s got a belief in himself, physically, that I know I had as well. When I was a boy, I only ever felt really sure of myself when I was playing football. In fact I’d still say that about me now, although Victoria has given me confidence in myself in all sorts of other ways. I know she’ll do the same for Brooklyn and Romeo too.
For all that father and son have in common, Brooklyn and I are very different. By the time I was his age, I was already telling anyone who would listen: ‘I’m going to play football for Manchester United.’ He says he wants to be a footballer like Daddy, but United or Real? We haven’t heard that out of him yet. Brooklyn’s a really strong, well-built boy. Me, though, I was always skinny. However much I ate it never made any difference while I was growing up. When I was playing football, I must have seemed even smaller because, if I wasn’t with my dad and his mates, I was over at Chase Lane Park, just round the corner from the house, playing with boys twice my age. I don’t know if it was because I was good or because they could kick me up in the air and I’d come back for more, but they always turned up on the doorstep after school:
‘Mrs Beckham? Can David come and have a game in the park?’
I spent a lot of time in Chase Lane Park. If I wasn’t there with the bigger boys like Alan Smith, who lived two doors away on our road, I’d be there with my dad. We’d started by kicking a ball about in the back garden but I was murdering the flowerbeds so, after he got in from his job as a heating engineer, we’d go to the park together and just practise and practise for hours on end. All the strengths in my game are the ones Dad taught me in the park 20 years ago: we’d work on touch and striking the ball properly until it was too dark to see. He’d kick the ball up in the air as high as he could and get me to control it. Then it would be knocking it in with each foot, making sure I was doing it right. It was great, even if he did drive me mad sometimes. ‘Why can’t you just go in goal and let me take shots at you?’ I’d be thinking. I suppose you