ORDINARY BOY WHO CAME TO LIVE AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE
Sunday January 14th 2007
WHEN he was a teenage boy, David Beckham used to get his teenage kicks,
quite literally, from spraying 60-yard passes on the training ground.
But Eric Harrison, the youths coach at Old Trafford, was never
impressed. Harrison would come down on Beckham like a ton of bricks
for indulging in what he called "Hollywood passes".
When he moves to Los Angeles in August to avail of possibly the most
lucrative pension plan in sporting history, they will presumably be
happy to see him bend it like Beckham all day every day. Because if a
man can’t spray Hollywood passes in Hollywood, where can he do it? At
31 it seems that his journey has found its logical destination in
Los Angeles Galaxy, earning fantasy money in a phoney town with an
ersatz football club.
It is another amazing coup in a young life that has been packed with
these quantum leaps. And we all know enough about him by now to know
that, for him, it makes perfect sense. The move fits the man. Most
players, facing the twilight, accept the inevitability of the descent
to the small time after their turn at the top is done. But the one
player with a gift for reinvention like no other has pulled another
rabbit from the hat. Facing mid-table marginalisation in Spain or
England, he chose neither.
Long ago he chose to live a different life for himself than virtually
all of his peers in professional football. He took the flak for it,
the derision and the envy, and followed his own star. In so doing he
created the space for himself to be who he wanted to be – even if it
meant paying the price for not conforming.
In his autobiography My Side – a surprisingly good account of his
life – he explains that this attitude didn’t come with wealth or
fame; it was in his nature from the start. Even as a six-year-old
the vanity and narcissism was already evident. Invited to act as a
pageboy at a family wedding he chose an outfit that consisted of
"maroon knickerbockers, white stockings up to the knee, a frilly
white shirt, a white waistcoat and a pair of ballet shoes." His
parents warned him that people would laugh at him – he didn’t care.
"I’ve always had a streak in me," he said, "which might seem flash if
you don’t know me, of being particular about the things I want and of
valuing individuality, even if I get stick because of it . . . I’ve
got my own tastes and if I can indulge them I will, whatever other
people might say. I’ve always been the same: knowing what I like is
just part of who I am."
Not just knowing what he liked either, but what he wanted too. The
remarkable thing is that he got what he wanted – and he wasn’t aiming
low. His father was his first coach, a Manchester United fanatic and
the classic pushy parent who lived his dreams through his son. But
David was willing to be pushed. They would practise for hours together
every evening when his father came home from work. At the age of five
he was telling people he would one day play for United.
At the age of seven he was practising his free-kicks. Evenings,
weekends, holidays were all the same: father and son utterly dedicated
to coaching, training, improvement.
The boy was good, a natural talent, but the work ethic came naturally
to him too: "I was lucky that I had that drive from a really young
age. Knowing what I wanted in the future, what would have been the
point in messing about along the way?"
His first boys team was Ridgeway Rovers; he was picked for the district
team, then he was picked for Essex County team. It was a vertical
ascent. At 16 he joined United as a trainee. In 1993 he signed his
first professional contract. In ’94/’95 he broke into the first team.
Playing for United was the dream, not playing for England, but once he
became an international he wanted to captain his country – and he did.
He’s sitting in his hotel room in Tbilisi, Georgia (or was it in
Yerevan, Armenia?), the night before a World Cup qualifier when
he sees the Spice Girls on television. He tells his roommate Gary
Neville that he’s smitten by Posh. "Gaz, I’ve got to meet her." He was
"absolutely certain that meeting Posh Spice was something that simply
had to happen."
Playing for Manchester United? Check. Captaining England? Check.
Hooking up with that singer from the biggest girl group on the
planet? Check.
Winning the World Cup? The European championships? A bridge too far.
He was never a great player; he played in three World Cups and two
European championships and every time his performance lagged well
behind his profile. Nor ultimately was he much of a team player
either. The one thing at which he was genuinely great, striking the
ball, was an outlet for his own glory as much as for the rest of
the team.
Beckham grew up convinced he was the special one
Perhaps it was because of the attention devoted to him by his parents
in childhood, growing up with the conviction that he was the special
one, despite having an older and younger sister, that prevented him
from ever fully submitting his ego to the service of the team. He
never understood the primacy of the team the way his contemporaries,
the likes of Neville, Scholes and Giggs did. And no matter how often
his limitations were exposed at the highest level, did he ever seem
to question the gulf between his ability and his celebrity.
The likes of Pele, Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan became bigger than
their sports because of pure stratospheric talent. Beckham became
bigger than his for a host of reasons, only one of which was his
talent with a ball.
Still, he changed his sport and, along the way, became some sort of
symbol for the zeitgeist of his day.
The first time he visited America was with the Essex schoolboys team.
He stayed with a Mexican family, in a house that was "just a couple
of steps up from being a shack." They would get in the family pickup
every morning and drive down to McDonald’s for breakfast.
He was an ordinary boy then. If he walked back into their house
now, they could be forgiven for thinking he had just come down from
another planet.