It’s swings and roundabouts being a titchy kid in football. David Beckham first played for Chingford-based youth team the Ridgeway Rovers, where he was coached by his dad, Ted. Back then, he didn’t make the England schoolboys squad because he wasn’t burly enough – his father subsequently employing the somewhat nauseating tactic of feeding his son Guinness with raw eggs to gain weight. On the other hand, it did mean he could be a match mascot atManchester United, his dad’s passion, at the age of 11, because he was still so cute and shrimpy.
If the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parent, well, not in football, chum; the parent can simply teach the child how to live out that dream, by doing a shed-ton of keepy-uppies in the garden. Ted was a Tiger Dad (that is, a keen disciplinarian invested in their child’s success), while Beckham’s mother, Sandra, worked longsufferingly, though ineffectively, to draw the line between parental ambition and child labour. That’s the picture that came out of the 2023 Netflix documentary, anyway.
In 1986, a young Beckham (pictured left) appears on the Thames Television showDaytime, hosted by Sarah Kennedy.
Be careful what you wish for, is the bit Jung didn’t say. Playing for the Red Devils was the dream, and by the time Beckham won the under-15 player of the year award at the Brimsdown Rovers (an Enfield club he was playing for), he’d already signed schoolboy forms with Manchester United. On paper, the Beckham family, and its patriarch in particular, should have been happy for the rest of time. Not so much. Ted and Sandra split in 2002. Writing in his 2005 book, David Beckham: My Son, Ted said: “All the hype, all the stress, all the attention – it wasn’t a world we were used to and it was very tough … We just drifted apart.”
Footballers in the 90s weren’t meant to be good-looking. You could get away with it if you were French (like Thierry Henry), or if you were French and you looked like you didn’t mind if your nose got broken (like Eric Cantona), but not if you were simply boyband gorgeous. Blame it on the pervasive, though dwindling, homophobia of the era: if you were too handsome, grown men couldn’t love you as hard and as vocally as they might wish, when you did a good thing playing football. Three people changed all that, and none of them were Posh Spice. There was Beckham himself, who just couldn’t help it; plus David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, who sprayed unabashed love all over the place in their TV series Fantasy Football League.
Beckham was part of United’s hyper-talented class of 92, in the youth team with Nicky Butt,Ryan Giggs,Gary Neville,Phil NevilleandPaul Scholes, all of whom Alex Ferguson took a punt on (they were also known as “Fergie’s Fledglings”). There have been reams written about Ferguson, his moods, relationships, inner workings and whatnot, but pre-Posh, it does seem pretty open and shut; he was happy when they won and angry when they didn’t. It turns out they’d end up winning a lot – such as this victory in the 1996 FA Cup final against Liverpool.
It was the month of May. Tony Blair had just won the election, football was the emblematic pastime to unify a newly classless nation, and Beckham was the natural repository for all our optimism. He was young, pretty, industrious, wholesome; the poster boy for the new Cool Britannia. So why does he look like such a dork? Well, dur, it’s because he hasn’t yet met Victoria.
Beckham’s Brylcreem campaign was his first big money-maker outside football – he got a reported £4m for the effort, which generated a sort of fascinated ill will towards both him and the modish hair styling product. Would the brand be adversely affected by the footballer’s footballing? Were they upset when he got a buzzcut? Was anybody really worth £4m for doing anything? Was he trivialising his personal brand by the association, and furthermore, was it definitely Posh’s fault? Ah, happy days, when “selling your soul” was still a thing, and we had the bandwidth to worry about it.
A louche Beckham relaxes after anEnglandfootball training session at Bisham Abbey in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.
The breakdown in relations between Beckham and Ferguson did seem to be related to the match scores a lot of the time – but to keep the rest of us interested, there was a constant hum of things that the manager didn’t like about the growing legend of Posh and Becks. Ferguson didn’t like Posh’s fame eclipsing Becks’s, or even existing; he didn’t like the chemical reaction they made, where as a unit they were an entirely different and more powerful element; he didn’t like that Becks kept his phone on in case Victoria called; he didn’t like it when they went on honeymoon. Long story short, their engagement was a bad day for Ferguson and, by extension, the patriarchy.
Since the pairing of John and Yoko – and some might accurately say, since the dawn of time – it has not been possible for a popular man and woman to be romantically involved without incurring the accusation that the female party is influencing him in some nefarious and underhand way. Beckham donning a sarong was taken as incontrovertible proof that Posh had somehow managed to steal him from the world of men, by witchcraft. It is absolutely impossible to overestimate how upset people were by sarong-gate, particularly the tabloid media. The Sun ran the pic with the headline: “Beckham has got his Posh frock on.”
In a moment ofmadness, Beckhamreceived a red cardinEngland’s 1998 World Cup match against Argentina,forkickingDiego Simeone. (Argentina would go on to win the game 4-3 on penalties.)
David and Victoria’s wedding took place in Luttrellstown Castle in Dublin, Ireland. The theme was Robin Hood, though none of the £750,000 they spent on it seemed to end up with any poor people, and the guests were asked to wear black and white, so as not to clash with the purple-clad couple. Arguably, though, there is no colour that wouldn’t clash with this shade. Prince Philip said later that the reason thrones were eschewed for Queen Elizabeth’s 2012 diamond jubilee celebration was that they’d have “looked like Mr and Mrs Beckham”.Heshould be so lucky.
Every 90s kid remembersTopps Premier Leaguefootball sticker books – and thisclassic-era Beckham sticker was essential to any collection.
David and Victoria arrive in matching leather suits to aVersaceparty in London.
Baby Brooklyn, born four months before the wedding, was another source of tension for Beckham’s Manchester career, as he once missed something or other to look after his child, his wife being away on business. There was no end of sniffiness about Beckham’s fatherly tenderness, which was seen by many in the 00s as even worse than wearing a sarong.
In a consummate display of early 00s fashion, David and Victoria attend Capital FM’sParty in the Park for the Prince’s Trust.
By now, Becks was in a kind of philosophical, Schrödinger’s cat situation – everything he did got a lot of attention, so did it follow that his every action wasforattention? How could you ever judge the authenticity of the private self when society had made it its mission to invade that privacy? Into this quagmire came the buzzcut: after 10 years with their own public profile, his tresses vanished, replaced by a harder, or certainly balder, look. James Clarke, a Manchester paparazzo, said later: “When David Beckham shaved his head, I honestly thought a member of my family had died. Because my phone went off … The panic in people’s voices …”
David and Victoriawalk the red carpet at the second annualNRJMusic Awards in Cannes, 2001.
Beckham became a pariah after his red card in the match against Argentina, for a sin so grievous (the aforementioned lashing out at Diego Simeone) that even people who made it their business not to care agreed that it was utterly shocking. Fast forward to England nearly exiting the World Cup qualifiers in a game against Greece, only to be rescued by Beckham’s barnstorming last-minute free kick. His redemption was immediate and emotional.
Beckham always looks as if he’s wearing the thing that originally cost a million quid, then got 70% knocked off it because no one else would be seen dead in it. Which is to say, extremely high fashion – just high in the sense of off your tits. His taste is a mystery. When, in the same year, he became the first footballer ever to appear on the cover of the gay lifestyle magazine Attitude, it was not as a style icon that they celebrated him, but rather as an LBGTQ+ ally, which is objectively a bigger deal.
Beckham was England captain for six years from 2000. In that time, they won some matches, such as this one against Denmark – but they never won quite as many as people were expecting, and this was sometimes pinned on footballers with too much cash becoming petulant. Beckham is certainly first among equals in that respect (petulance notwithstanding), as he’s minted: he and Victoria now have a combined net worth of around £450m.
Beckham and six-year-old Kirsty Howardhand thejubileebaton to Queen Elizabeth IIafter its final leg around the City Of Manchester Stadium, at the opening of the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
A very 00sdisplay of frosted tips, from a gamebetweenManchester United andWestBromwich Albion.
Beckham launching a new rangeof sunglasses for the Police brand, in London.
When Beckham published his first memoir, My Side, in 2003, he described everything – his childhood, his love of football, his love of his wife, his children, his love of hard work – in such anodyne terms thatTerry Eagleton, reviewing it, said “the man runs the gamut of emotions, from chuffed to gutted”.
Beckham sporting a small scar above his eye during Manchester United’s Champions League group game against Juventus in February 2003.
…no sign of the injuryat the MTVmovieawards in Los Angeles, a few monthslater.
A resplendent Beckham in a leather tunic, in a still from Pepsi’s gladiator-themed ad (which also starredFrancesco TottiandRaúl).
A cleaned-up Beckham attends the launch of the Pepsi advert in Madrid.
Why would a man so physically perfect that he would be paid millions to wear some sunnies or drink a drink, so athletic that the whole world watches, frozen, to see what his body will do next, choose to deface himself? Is he experiencing his perfection as a burden? It’s easy to read too much into tattoos when you don’t understand them.
Beckham’s transfer to Real Madrid – the club he left Manchester United for in 2003 – was vexed. It happened very fast. Posh wouldn’t go with him, supposedly because she had to find schools for Brooklyn and Romeo, but the rumour was that she thought Spain smelled of garlic. Then that alleged affair happened with Rebecca Loos. Perhaps this look, displayed towards the end of Beckham’s time in Spain, shows just how lost he was. A cardigan with a horse on it. No longer English, definitely not Spanish. A citizen of nowhere.
In retrospect, you can see the pure artistry of the Posh and Becks brand-building: the evolution, the agility, the canniness. Part of the reason the alleged Loos affair so transfixed the media was that it made this perfect union look like a lie. The couple let the dust settle, for ages, then roared back, revamped and reconnected.
Beckham after England’s World Cup qualifier against Belarus at Wembley in 2009.
Becks and Prince Harry had a proper bromance, which you can tell immediately from the look on William’s face here, the buttoned-up vibe of him wondering, “Why does this guy like my brother better than me?”. The relationship fell apart in 2020, when Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, reportedly suspected Posh of leaking stories about her to the press, a kind of farce-replayed-as-more-farce of the Wagatha Christie case. Except Posh actually wasn’t leaking anything, because, c’mon, she’s Posh Spice.
A candid shot of Beckham with his newborn daughter, Harper, posted on Victoria Beckham’sTwitterfeed.
Kyle Martino, a midfielder for LA Galaxy when Beckham arrived at the club in 2007, remembers a party thrown in his honour as being “like Madame Tussauds in real life”. He brought the stars out and shifted a lot of merch; he made a lot of money and he won some stuff, and if Major League Soccer was considered a retirement league, or a baby league, well, he left it in better shape than he found it.
Beckham at a ceremony for the arrival of the Olympic flame at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall in May 2012, as it toured theUKprior to theopening ceremonyin July.
By the early 2010s, Beckham had moved beyond questions like: “How much money does he have? How much money does he want?” (partly with big-ticket gestures like giving his Paris Saint-Germain salary to charity). So journalists were able to cut to the chase – was that his real butt in the H&M shoot? Did he have a packet double? “No,” he told a French journalist, “I can say the crotch is mine and the backside is mine as well,” he said. “I can confirm that’s my bum.”
Beckham shows off a host of Chinese script tattoos at Peking university inBeijing, while touring the country as an ambassador for the Chinese Super League.
Tom Bower’s 2024 book, The House of Beckham, painted a rather snide portrait of the marriage, in which Beckham is constantly surrounded by lovelies, and Victoria is in a constant huff about it. But this image of a devoted spouse who is willing to sit with his children at a fashion show, at least one of whom is visibly ready to expire from boredom, while sitting next to Anna Wintour, tells a completely different story.
Becks hits the big screen, with a minor role in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
The Beckhams attend the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
If the first decade of Posh and Becks’s brand-building was defined by protecting the asset – which is to say, not saying very much and letting the sponsored content do the talking – their respective social media followings (he has 88 million followers on Instagram, she has 33 million) gradually created a more direct relationship with the public, through which Beckham could show his true self. Covered in tats, enjoying nothing more than a pair of sparkly horns – a mess of contradictions, sure, but who of us isn’t?
When Sam Taylor-Wood’s 107-minute film portrait of a sleeping Beckham, simply dubbed David, was made in 2004, our arts correspondent Charlotte Higgins concluded simply: “The curves of his musculature and honeyed tone of his skin are sensuously conveyed. This is a David as physically perfect as Michelangelo’s.” Pretty-boy footballer, supposed love rat, fine-art subject ... whatever you make of this life on the public stage, and its lurches from idolatry to vilification, you have to admit that it’s beena lot.
Beckham asleep, again – this time with his dog (wrapped in a Louis Vuitton x Supreme blanket, naturally).
Almost every lockdown hobby was annoying, and Beckham’s beekeeping was no exception.
Beckham pays his respects toQueen Elizabeth II, as the monarch lies in state at Westminster Hall, 16 September.
David and Victoria pose for photographs as they arrive at the Jacquemus menswear SS24 show at Paris fashion week, held at the Château de Versailles.
Beckham’s deal with Qatar, to be a brand ambassador for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, was unfortunate; it looked a lot like he’d picked the wrong lane, sat precariously between LBGTQ+ allegiance and yet more money. Unlike the slings and arrows of outrageous football, there aren’t many possibilities for split-second redemption in the world of moral principles. Yet, if he could redeem himself with one shot – a proud, lifelong gay icon, defiantly posing in his undies, we’ve been through this – it would be this one, in Hugo Boss’s Boss One bodywear.