When David Beckham signed for Real Madrid in 2003, his arrival in the Spanish capital was given a cavalcade fit for a visiting US president. But despite the glitz and glamour that surrounded the new Galactico, life on the inside was not so rosy. “It’s really entertaining when the circus comes to town,” his wife Victoria reminisces in a new Netflix documentary, “Unless you’re in it.”
This four-part documentary delves into the story of how a shy lad from Leytonstone, who spent hours doing keepie-uppies in the garden, became a global icon – a memorable splash from The Sun boasted of finding the one person in the world who had never heard of Beckham: a shepherd in Chad – and the circus that came with it.
In recounting career like this – Beckham taking his first tentative steps onto the pitch for Manchester United aged 17, to breaking down in tears as he walks off for the final time two decades later – and the dramas of life lived in the brutal glare of the tabloids, there is much triumph and despair. And the story is expertly handled by Oscar-winning director Fisher Stevens (who also starred in Succession as oily PR man Hugo) who has created a slick, eminently watchable series that doesn’t outstay its welcome.
From the start, the documentary grasps the joy of this young talent breaking out on the biggest stage and tearing things up, feted as the next great English midfielder and scoring “the goal of the century” from his own half. And there is a fresh-faced sweetness about the romance with Victoria, at the time far more famous than Beckham as part of the Spice Girls. They would chat like teenagers on the phone at 3am, he would drive four hours just to spend 20 minutes with her. He even chartered a two-seater plane when he really missed her.
“David didn’t have a lot of friends at school; neither did I,” Victoria says at one point. Yet that innocence couldn’t last, as this is also a story of the Nineties and the early Noughties’ explosion of celebrity culture and of a rampant tabloid culture, and Posh and Becks were at the eye of the storm.
The film draws on extensive interviews with them both, as well as unprecedented access to former teammates, from Eric Cantona and Gary Neville to Roberto Carlos and (the original) Ronaldo. His club managers Sir Alex Ferguson, Carlos Queiroz and Fabio Cappello contribute, as do his parents, friends and a few wildcards in Anna Wintour and two paparazzi who used to follow him around Manchester.
Beckham himself is an engaging, charming presence as he talks through his life story, with that cheeky, lopsided grin never far away and always in a lovely cashmere knit. Now covered in tattoos, immaculately turned out and at ease, it proves a contrast to the awkward young lad with curtains we first see sign for United at 15.
The episodes tend to take on an arc from triumph to tragedy or tragedy to triumph. What starts as the joy of a supreme new talent arriving in the Premier League finishes the episode with him being sent off for England in World Cup 1998 and being hounded by a baying public demanding blood.
What follows is the most shocking part of the series. Anyone who followed the England team in the Nineties will remember the game, his kick out and the furore that followed. It’s likely few realise quite the sickening extent it went to or the toll it took. The campaign of hate was appalling; at its worst there was an effigy strung up with a noose outside a pub, while the sweet little old lady who has worked on the Manchester United front desk for most of her life revealed that Beckham was no longer being sent knickers in the post, but bullets. He was 23.
A quarter of a century on, Beckham still hasn’t got over it. “I made a stupid mistake, and it changed my life… I still beat myself up about it.” Victoria says he was broken and “absolutely clinically depressed” at a time where there was no support on offer from the game around mental health: “It was public bullying.”
Somehow, amazingly, this soft-spoken, shy figure withstood the barrage. It points to a character of absolute steel – the following season he was booed and vilified in every away ground he travelled to. The experience “would have broken 99.9 per cent of footballers,” his former teammate Philip Neville says.
In a Hollywood flourish that must have delighted Stevens, if it was the crowds that tried to break him, it was the Manchester United crowd that saved him. Seeing his struggles, they started chanting his name, and it all turned around. That season, Beckham was at the heart of a United team that won a historic treble and a few years later, he was captaining England and hailed as a hero by the country’s fans. If it shows how fickle fans can be, it also points to someone who has, to a certain extent, shaped his own destiny.
By 2001 he’s being talked of as a global phenomenon, and the Beckham circus moves on to Madrid, Los Angeles, Milan and Paris. The show settles in the English countryside, his oasis of calm, where he enjoys just spending time with his family. Family, he reiterates throughout, is all.
There are sweet touches – Victoria joking on the phone that David needs to get his highlights done after scoring in a World Cup match, the purple wedding suits that she still loves and he very much regrets, and his dad’s support forthat sarong that made every front page in the UK.
There is more pain along the way, such as when his second father figure Ferguson sells him after a bust up and then refuses to pick up the phone to explain the decision. “I’m glad I didn’t speak to him. It would have broken my heart,” Beckham says with the sort of guileless honesty rarely associated with A-list celebrities. Intriguingly, throughout the series he never utters Sir Alex’s name, referring to him only as “The Manager”, perhaps an indication of the need to retain that pain-reducing distance even now. Then there are Victoria’s struggles in Spain, where she felt vilified (she is adamant she did not say that Madrid smelled of garlic, a misquote that caused yet another furore).
Then in 2004, came the allegations that David had an affair, which prompted yet another tabloid feeding frenzy. “It was the hardest part for us because it felt like the world was against us, it felt like we were against us,” he says. But while they talk about the tabloid response, they don’t address the issue itself. “Ultimately, it’s our private life,” Beckham says. It’s perhaps the only false note in a four-hour documentary more or less entirely about their private lives.
So what picture emerges of David Beckham? Beyond the fashion shoots, cars and parties with Tom Cruise, it is someone who is single-minded, hardworking, and who is able to be pushed to extremes and still grow. He talks self-deprecatingly about not being great at school and lacking intelligence (”surprise”), but to do what he has done, be as good as he was and to shape his own destiny means he is no idiot. The idea that he is may be a little more of the internalised loathing that came during the Nineties just working its way out.
He was clearly shaped by his family, and not one father figure but two – both of whom pushed him, until he pushed back – and this is also about his family with Victoria, and the children (none of whom are roped in for interview). His love for them shines out, as do his fears of how this life in the goldfish bowl has affected them – as highlighted by heartbreaking footage of the family driving through Madrid with fans banging on the window, and Brooklyn screaming in fear.
As well as the revelations of what it was really like for celebrities in the wild west of the Nineties, it heaps on the nostalgia and reminds us how massive Posh and Becks really were in a way that’s easy to forget today. And for a life lived in the unrelenting glare, though they often say they felt like they were “drowning”, they have made it through – and they have a fascinating story to tell. Both are excellent company over four hours.
And as for that fateful red card that has shaped their lives? The documentary interviews Diego Simeone the player Beckham kicked in that World Cup match. Was it a red card?, Stevens asks. “Absolutely not,” the Argentine replies with a smile, “the contact was minimal, you could see I was hamming it up.” It’s a funny old game.
