This is how much I know about football. Not to call it soccer, and that the area in front of the goal is not called the circle but the box. I found out it was the box by watching the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which were also the first football games I have attended. So I know approximately three things about football: those two and that it’s an 11-a-side game. Also less factual but important, that it’s a game of great skill and even people who call the goal area ‘the circle’ can be caught up in the collective joy of watching highly skilled athletes out on the turf. Sorry. In football, it’s a pitch.
With this arsenal of facts (football joke) I came to watch Beckham with little insight other than he was a very famous footballer married to a former Spice Girl who now designs elegant clothes which surpass sniffy fashion editors’ expectations. You won’t learn anything about Victoria Beckham’s day job as Beckham, a four-part documentary series now screening on Netflix, has its focus on him, not her. Though she is a significant and surprisingly funny part of it.
We alit on part one of Beckham because we’d devoured the new season of Annika (Neon), came up blank on another cold climate detective series and nothing else appealed. “We’ll give it half an hour then I’ll go back to my book,” were my last reported words as I hit play. Four episodes later I know marginally more about football but a lot more about the wealth, misery and pettiness in the game’s top echelon.
Being very good at kicking a ball and looking hot in a leather jacket (or a sarong) has earned the Beckham collective a net worth of something like $950 million. So it wasn’t for the money that David and Victoria allowed a film crew into their lives, handed over home videos and made available his mum and dad, best mates and teammates to talk on camera. Why they’ve done this is never addressed directly but it does allow them to put their side of several defining events on and off the pitch. Fisher Stevens directs: he won an Oscar for the 2010 doco, The Cove, but also keeps his hand in as an actor, turning up in Succession as the weaselly PR guy, Hugo. The travel budget for Beckham would probably fund a couple of Kiwi films: Stevens and crew roam widely interviewing the Beckhams separately at various homes; to Spain to talk to Renaldo and Luis Figo, to Italy for the interview with coach/nemesis Fabio Capello.
The result is of course sympathetic to them. But it’s also frank and revealing. Much of this has already made headlines – should Victoria have told David she was pregnant with their first child the night before the World Cup quarter-final? She was away on tour and always a bit lost without her, he lost it a bit in the game, kicking out at Argentine player Diego Simone. Simone tells Stevens he ‘obviously’ hammed up his ooh-ouch response, but it got Beckham red-carded, and England lost on a penalty shootout – which his dad, not an entirely sympathetic character – points out. The fallout reverberated for years. Beckham was 23. He did a silly thing in a mad moment. Britain responded as if he’d done something some really life-changing to the nation, like engineer their exit from the EC. Another player talks about how mental health now starts the conversation for sports people under pressure. Back in 1998 no-one thought to question what unremitting public and media hatred does to a young man. Or if they did, it was drowned out in the din. Victoria still wants to “kill people” over it and refers in a later episode to having been in therapy. Twenty-five years later his mum, Sandra, still has it in for England’s then manager Glenn Hoddle – who pinned the loss on Beckham -- while Beckham himself is often on the verge of tears talking about it.
The red card debacle spins back to a point the series underlines again and again. Beckham responded by returning to the safety of his two families: his Manchester United teammates and Victoria and the kids. Family is everything. Little David practising his corners again and again and again as a kid to please his dad. He was talented -- won everything, kept winning, says Sandra. Manchester United was the family’s team and that’s where his father, Ted, wants him to go. As a 10-year-old his game was picked apart and analysed by Ted, often to Sandra’s discomfort. Ted was tough. But David wanted to please.
And when he gets to Man U (see how fast I’ve picked up the lingua football?) first in the development academy, and then into the premier team, he so wants to please. This time ‘dad’ is manager Alec Ferguson. He would seem to be a man who never gives a compliment when constructive feedback would suffice. Beckham responds by being the most punctual for practices, the most at everything. Sir Alec is not happy about the romance with Victoria Adams. He doesn’t want Spice Girl glitter brushing off on the Man U kit: he runs a Tight Ship. The message is that Man U is your family, you don’t need outsiders. (Sir Alec’s view on Spice Girls manager/creator Simon Fuller also managing Beckham off the field is not recorded).
The four parts of the series zig-zag back and forth in time. Beckham grows older, grows wiser. But what doesn’t change is his focus: family and whatever team he’s playing for are the centre of his life. He keeps his parents close, he reveres Ferguson until he’s summarily dismissed, transferred to Real Madrid without consultation. Divorced by Ferguson you could say. The pettiness and spite of the grown-up men in charge astounds: England manager Hoddle makes it personal, throwing Beckham and his World Cup red card under the team bus (as a kid Beckham had revered Hoddle, which makes the blaming all the more cutting). David getting too famous off field at Man U? Bench him. Word out that David is leaving Real Madrid? Bench him and make him train alone until his teammates intercede. Spain was not a happy time: his alleged affair with his assistant is raised (but no mention of his controversial decision to accept more gold to wave the flag for Qatar hosting the men’s FIFA World Cup).
If there was an affair – the question of “did you” is neither put nor answered – then all power to them for boxing on. This is where they become most relatable: they’re a couple dealing with couples and family stuff. Moving countries is all very well, but what are the schools like? Scenes with their four children give happy family vibes: everyone’s there, the banter is easy, he’s an affectionate dad.
Speaking of affection, I’ve totally bought the Beckham narrative that Victoria is his great love, from then to now. Discussing a view from the garden to a wing of the house, Beckham says it’s a favourite spot as it might allow him a glimpse of a naked Victoria. They’ve been married twenty-something years. He’s still besotted. She’s given to side-eye, he’s still moony.
If Victoria has thought of divorce, the first time may have been when she’d just had their first baby, by caesarean. She’s lying there waiting for the epidural to wear off, and he wants her to do his hair before he goes out to give the press the baby news. When the obstetrician schedules her C-section for their third child, he says no, the date really doesn’t suit as he’s got a photo shoot that day with Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce. It doesn’t go down well. She’s also very good on the “pulled a David Beckham classic” when he comes home and announces he is off to play in Paris, just when everyone was settled living in LA. Again, she’s worried about schools, he’s worried about letting down a team.
It’s laughably funny and poignant – I dare you to watch the sad-but-still-a-pro solo training in Madrid and not be even just a tiny bit moved. In the end, I’m declaring a win for Team Beckham. No-one needs a net worth of $950 million and while he seems to very much enjoy houses, cars and toys (do watch until the end for the summer-house kitchen kit) you can’t put a dollar value on having a happy home life, which from this, is his truest measure of happiness.
