Soccer

DAVID BECKHAM, who celebrates his 50th birthday today, can look back at his first half-century with considerable satisfaction.At 50, a man knows what his life looks like.National treasure David Beckham is celebrating his 50th birthdayCredit: The Mega AgencyOne of David’s dreams that came true was landing the hand and heart of wife VictoriaCredit: GettyBeckham co-owns football team Inter Miami, which counts superstar Lionel Messi as one of its star playersCredit: instagramAnd at 50, David Robert Joseph Beckham is national treasure, international icon, happy family man, businessman and brand — one of the most successful British brands in history, up there with Rolls-Royce, the Rolling Stones and our royalty.A few days before Beckham turned 50, I walked down London’s Bond Street and there he was, glowering seductively from the window of Boss, the Brad Pitt of Chingford, frowning seriously, still ripped and still hot, looking every inch like the man every woman wants and every man wants to be.Think about it for a moment — a company like Boss has the pick of young, fit, 20-something footballers currently gracing our Premier League, or Serie A, or La Liga, or Germany’s Bundesliga.But Boss doesn’t want a superstar footballer who is in his twenties.READ MORE ON DAVID BECKHAMIt wants Beckham promoting its Boss bomber jacket, Boss leather trainers and Boss cotton-blend jacket with zipped closure because — even at the ripe old age of 50 — David has an aura, and charisma, and an image that nobody 20 or 30 years younger comes even close to.Blew him awayDavid Beckham has been on our national landscape for so long that it is easy to miss how unique he is.This is not simply a man who became fabulously successful, who transcended his sport, who parlayed a talent for kicking a ball into a multi-million-dollar industry.He is the golden boy who became the man whose dreams came true. All of them.Most read in FootballWhen he was kicking a ball around in his parents’ back garden in Chingford, “murdering the flower beds”,” as he recalls, he dreamed of playing for Manchester United and England (his instinctive patriotism cannot be overstated).All football-crazy kids have a similar dream. But for David Beckham, the dream came true — he played 265 games for his beloved Manchester United in a 12-year career and appeared 115 times for his country, 59 times wearing the captain’s armband. The dream came true.David Beckham set sights on becoming next Gary Lineker as he lands TV chat show & lines up host of A-list pals as guestsAnd when he was a young footballer in Manchester, breaking into Alex Ferguson’s first team, he was watching TV in 1997 when he saw this woman — this girl, this vision — who totally blew him away, and he knew he had to get her into his life.“It wasn’t love at first sight,” he wrote in his autobiography, My Side, about the first time he saw Posh Spice performing with her fellow Spice Girls. “It was faster than that.”So that dream came true, too. He won the heart, and the hand, of Victoria Adams.Posh and Becks were the Romeo and Juliet of Britpop, marrying on July 4, 1999 among great pomp and splendour at Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland, accompanied by their first child, four-month-old Brooklyn.Becks played 265 games for his beloved Manchester United in a 12-year careerHe dreamed of playing for the Red Devils and for England as a childCredit: NetflixDavid was sent off in the 1998 World Cup in England’s match against ArgentinaCredit: News Group Newspapers LtdAnd later, as the years went by and his legs began to feel the pitiless passing of time, David dreamed of cracking America — an impossible dream for an English footballer.Incredibly, his American dream came true too — first as a player at LA Galaxy (where they have erected a statue of him), and later as co-owner and president of Inter Miami.David Beckham was born in Leytonstone, the week in 1975 that Oh Boy by Mud was No1 in the charts. His mum Sandra was a hairdresser and his dad Ted was a kitchen fitter.His parents were Cockney Reds — that strange lost tribe of Greater London football fans who pledge their footballing allegiance to a club half way up the M6.My parents knew how much I loved football. If there was a way for me to get to a game, they did everything they could to make it happenDavid BeckhamBeckham’s middle name of Robert was in homage to United’s Bobby Charlton, and by the age of three David was being given Manchester United replica kit for Christmas.Always, he was football crazy. “I like football more than anyone,” he writes in his autobiography, and it is probably the most revealing line in the book.He was, in many ways, an ordinary kid from an ordinary working-class home on the fringes of East London and Essex.The dreams he had were ordinary too — to be a footballing legend, to love a famous beauty, to have America swoon. But for David Beckham, all of his big dreams come true.So it is a shock to remember that the pivotal moment of his gilded, golden life was a living nightmare that could quite easily have buried David Beckham for ever.When he was sent off in the 1998 World Cup in England’s match against Argentina, it traumatised the nation.The demands of football placed strains on his own marriage to VictoriaCredit: GettyFormer United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was a father figure to DavidCredit: ErotemeThe match was finely poised at 2-2 in the second half when Diego Simeone violently clattered into Beckham from behind, rubbing salt into the wound by pushing Becks in his back, and giving his flowing blond locks a crafty tug.Beckham reacted — his boot lightly catching dirty Diego on the calf — and sneaky Simeone went down as though both barrels of a 12-bore shotgun had been fired into his brain at point-blank range.Red card for Beckham. Trauma for England — the team, the nation.And we can see now that the aftermath would not have been so virulent, and the backlash against Beckham so hysterical if he did not already look like the man who had everything — looks, money, talent, the Spice Girl.And, crucially, if England had not been so agonisingly close to beating the gifted cheats of Argentina.The ten men of England were lions, pushing Argentina all the way to a penalty shoot-out, which — in time-honoured tradition — England lost.Brutal aftermathAnd it felt like we would have won if our golden boy had stayed on the pitch. It felt like 1998 could have been the year that the ghost of 1966 was laid to rest.Back home, Beckham was blamed. And in all honesty, he deserved some blame.But he never deserved the death threats, or the effigy strung up on a lamp post outside Upton Park, or the vicious abuse that followed him for the next season, and beyond.If he had behaved like a spoilt brat as a 22-year-old at the 1998 World Cup in France, then from now on Beckham would carry himself like a man.He was a pin-up before 1998. In its aftermath, he began the long, hard road to becoming a hero. A lesser soul would have recoiled from the England shirt.Beckham continued proudly to pull it on, enduring the abuse of a section of England fans.From left to right: Mia Regan, Romeo, Cruz, Harper, David, Victoria, Brooklyn and Nicola PeltzCredit: GettyTed and Sandra Beckham were fanatically supportive parentsCredit: News Group Newspapers LtdHe finally silenced the critics in October 2001 when he bent and blasted a 30-yard free kick in against Greece, single-handedly dragging his country into the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.Even at 50, Beckham gets tearful talking about the 1998 World Cup and its brutal aftermath.They thought it was all over. But they could not cancel David Beckham. Family is everything to him. That sounds like a greeting-card cliché, but it is true for David Beckham. And from Chingford to Miami, it always has been.Ted and Sandra Beckham were fanatically supportive parents, as laser-focused on their son’s future success as the dad of the Jackson 5, devoting all their spare time to their son’s footballing dream.“My parents knew how much I loved football,” he writes. “If there was a way for me to get to a game, they did everything they could to make it happen. Whether it was playing or getting coaching, I’d have my chance.”And it was his own family with Victoria that gave him solace and support when he was public enemy number one.If this country loves David Beckham, then it is because millions of us feel like we have watched him grow upTony ParsonsBeckham learned that he was to become a father on the day that England landed in Saint-Étienne ahead of the Argentina game.As his world imploded after his sending off, he flew to the US to be with his pregnant Spice Girl. He was a father at 23.Family got him through. But family life has not always been easy.The greatest source of personal pain in his life is almost certainly that Sandra and Ted Beckham are divorced now, a situation that clearly pains him to this day.And the demands of football have placed strains on his own marriage.Living alone in Madrid when he became a Galactico at Real Madrid in 2003, and then, after joining LA Galaxy in 2007, leaving his family alone in Los Angeles — where Victoria and the kids were blissfully happy — to play for AC Milan in a ruthless bid to sustain his England career. They survived it all.And rather incredibly, Mr and Mrs Beckham — who used to be Posh and Becks — celebrated their silver wedding anniversary last year.If this country loves David Beckham, then it is because millions of us feel like we have watched him grow up. There is a showreel of his greatest hits in our national consciousness.Becoming famous overnight with the goal from his own half against Wimbledon on the first day of the season in August 1996.Biggest celebrityThe paparazzi chasing Posh and Becks as though they were the Charles and Diana of showbusiness.The haircuts. The sarong.The impossible precision of his passes, the Roy of the Rovers quality of his bent-it-like-Beckham goals. The tattoos. Modelling underpants well into middle age.The time he was on the wrong end of his manager’s hairdryer and got his eye split open by a kicked boot.“He is such a big celebrity,” said Alex Ferguson of David Beckham in 2007, “football is only a small part.”Fergie was a father figure to the boy who became a man, a mentor to the player who was part of United’s golden “you’ll-never-win-anything-with-kids” generation.But Fergie gets this one wrong. For David Beckham, football is the foundation on which he built an empire, an industry, a legend.Our abiding memory of him will, I suspect, be when he queued for 12 hours to see the late Queen Elizabeth lying in state.Beckham — our biggest celebrity — could have joined all the B-listers in the VIP queue.But the boy from Chingford — this patriot, this monarchist, this Englishman — got in line with the people.So happy birthday, David Beckham. What do you give the man with everything?Read More on The SunThe knighthood that he has earned will happen one day.But I suspect — like one of his spectacular goals — it will happen when the world is least expecting it. More