THERE are many dads desperate for a footballer son, but David Beckham’s went to extreme lengths – even feeding him raw egg and Guinness once a week.
In the Beckham documentary, out today on Netflix, David reveals the way Manchester United-obsessed Ted Beckham treated him growing up, training him from morning to night, giving him 50p for every target hit.
David Beckham pictured with mum Sandra and dad Ted, who was Manchester United-obsessed and very strict on himCredit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
Beckham always saw Sir Alex Ferguson as his second “father figure”Credit: Netflix
With a disciplinary parenting style that his mum, Sandra, wasn’t a fan of, it’s no wonder Beckham always saw his equally strict Man Utd manager Sir Alex Ferguson as a guiding “father figure”.
Aside from both men famously falling out with David when he moved from Man Utd to Real Madrid in 2003, there are many similarities between the two men who shaped the football legend’s career.
Growing up in Leytonstone, Beckham got used to strict training from his dad, who would take him “out for hours”.
“I’d loved to have been a footballer but I had the next best thing,” Ted says. “I taught him how to kick a ball properly.
“I used to say to him, ‘Right, every time you hit the crossbar, I’ll give you 50p’ and it used to cost me a fortune.”
Beckham adds: “Left foot, right foot, over and over again. And it was all about control.
“Even when I was seven or eight years old, he’d boot the ball up as high as he could and say ‘control it,’ ‘OK, not good enough, do it again,’ ‘Not good enough, do it again’ over and over again.”
When he joined the youth team Ridgeway Rovers, he went 92 matches unbeaten – but his dad still wasn’t content.
“I was a bit worried about the size of him,” Ted says. “So that’s when we started giving him Guinness and raw egg.
“To be fair to the boy, he did it every week.”
Becks adds: “I was scared when he was there because I knew if I put a foot wrong, he’d tell me. And he’d always tell me. Always.”
Mum’s fears
Beckham was never out of the garden when he was growing upCredit: Netflix
He was given 50p by his dad every time he hit the crossbar
In the documentary, Beckham’s mum Sandra – who divorced Ted in 2002 – says she thought the determined dad was “too strict”.
She says: “I used to say, ‘he’s only young, leave him be, let him be happy.’
“I tried to tell him but he wouldn’t listen to me, and I used to get upset when he made him cry.”
Beckham adds: “I would hear my mum turn round to my dad and say, ‘Stop talking to him the way you’re talking to him. Stop shouting at him, stop telling him off. He did well today,’ and my dad would always be like, ‘He did alright’.”
But, having watched his hairdresser mum and gas engineer dad work so hard to provide for him, Becks didn’t mind the brutal regime.
“I saw my mum and dad working hard every day until 11 or 12 o’clock at night and I knew the only way to be a professional footballer was to work hard,” he says. “From the moment I got in from school to the moment I slept, I would be out in the garden.”
Beckham had trials with his local club Leyton Orient, Norwich City and attended Tottenham Hotspur’s school of excellence, though never represented the club in a match.
He also played for Brimsdown Rovers’ youth team for two years and attended one of Bobby Charlton’s Soccer Schools in Manchester.
It was here that he won the chance to take part in a training session with Barcelona, as part of a talent competition, which is when Sir Alex first became aware of him.
Fergie time
After being snapped up by Manchester United in 1991, on his 14th birthday, his first training session with the gaffer made him realise he was dealing with another disciplinarian father figure .
On his first day, he brought in white trainers to wear on the pitch, rather than the required black boots and was told by Sir Alex “absolutely not”.
Beckham’s former teammate Paul Ince says: “Sir Alex would buy players not just because they were talented, but he’d look at their background.
“‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ ‘Yes Gaffa’
“‘How long you been with her?’ ‘Two years.’
“‘When you getting married? ‘1990 gaffa.’
“He liked the fact you were going home to someone because he liked you to be stable, not having parties every night.”
Gary Neville adds: “He had socialist principles; You might be an individual but, in here, we’re all equal. He built a team of mini-mes.
“We all knew the rules. You had to conform. Go against him and you were out.”
David pictured with his mum and Sir AlexCredit: Tim Stewart
While Becks says his dad never complimented him to his face, his pride is obvious in the documentary, and insists his strictness “turned out to be the right thing”.
Speaking of his time prior to Manchester, Ted says: “He was brilliant.
“He won 92 games without getting beat.
“He was that good. I said to him, ‘See what we’ve been practicing?
“Whenever he played, I phoned the clubs up and got the videos sent to me.
“I got about 1,300 or 1,400 games on video.
“It was just a pleasure watching him play and he loved it, he enjoyed it.”
Meanwhile, Sir Alex looks proud of Beckham every time he watches him score in the documentary.
And when he speaks about first meeting him, he says: “He came to us as a small, skinny little boy you know? But when you see potential it sticks out at you.
“It’s your job then to bring that to fruition, to make them a man.”
Brought him back from the brink
Beckham’s red card at the World Cup was his lowest moment
Beckham opens up on the worst year of his life in the documentary, when fans abused him and spat at him in the street, after he got a red card at the 1998 World Cup.
He says he was “clinically depressed” at the time, but it was his upbringing, as well as Fergie’s help that got him through.
“I think I was able to handle being abused by the fans, because of the way my dad had been to me,” he says.
“Wherever I went, I got abused, every single day. To walk down the street and to see people look at you in a certain way, spit at you, abuse you, come up to your face, and say some of the things they said, it’s difficult. That’s difficult.
“I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping. I was a mess.
“I didn’t know what to do. Then the boss called me up.
“He said, ‘David how you doing, son?’ I got quite emotional and said, ‘Not great, boss.’
“He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, son.’”
Sir Alex adds: “I told him, ‘Go on your holiday, get back and we’ll look after you. Don’t read the papers. There’s no point to it. What you can do is ignore it.’”
When Becks returned to Man Utd, Gary Neville recalls him being “battered and bruised”.
“But Sir Alex created an island and any unfriendly that came near the island didn’t get near it. We f***ed them off,” he adds. “It’s like an inner sanctum with no windows.
“We all look after each other. You look after your own, you never s*** on your own.
“We never leave one another in trouble and we never would. Ever.”
Making history
In 1999, Becks made history when he set up two goals in injury time in the European Cup Final, winning Man Utd the treble.
And Beckham says all he was thinking about was what his dad had taught him at the point when he got a corner.
He recalls: “I was thinking, ‘Do what I did when I was a kid.’
“My dad used to make me do corner after corner after corner after corner and put it in the exact same spot as he wanted, and if I didn’t he’d kill me.
“He used to tell me, ‘It’s moments like corners at the end of a game that can create history.’”
And he wasn’t wrong. Man Utd had been losing 1-0 to Bayern Munich for most of the game and, reflecting on the match, Fergie says: “With David, that night there was something inside him saying, ‘I am not going to let this happen’.
“It was a personal thing that he had in him, that stubbornness and determination.”
Torn apart by Man Utd
David and his dad have healed their rift and the star was best man at his 2021 wedding
Sir Alex speaks about his and Beckham’s row in the documentary
Beckham’s dad was “absolutely obsessed” with Man Utd, and that was always where he’d wanted his son to play.
“That was his dream. His dream was to have a son that played for Manchester United,” Beckham says.
In fact, so obsessed was Ted that Beckham’s full name is David Robert Joseph Beckham.
“The Robert is after Sir Bobby Charlton,” says Ted. “He’s my hero.”
He’d get a Man Utd kit for Christmas every year, despite his parents “not having much back then”.
So, when a furious Fergie – literally – booted David out of Man Utd and into Real Madrid in 2003 after a dressing room clash, Ted was far from happy.
He learned of the transfer – which he opposed – from Beckham’s agent and he said the news hit him “like a sledgehammer”.
He publicly accused Sir Alex of betrayal and furious Becks refused to let Ted come to watch him sign for his new club.
“I don’t know if I can repair my relationship with him,” devastated Ted said at the time. “We’ve hardly spoken. My biggest upset was not being invited to his signing. I’m choked, really.
“I’ve been there since day one and that really upset me. I’ll never forgive him for that.”
The physical move put more distance between them, with Ted no longer able to get to matches to watch his son play on a weekly basis.
“I’ve lost him – that’s how I feel,” he said. “We’ve lost that comradeship we had between us. It will be even worse now he’s gone to Madrid.
“I still have to work and I can’t afford to fly over to Madrid every week. When he was at Manchester United, I could pop in the car and drive up the road. I can’t do that now. My biggest fear is that it is all over for us.”
Thankfully, David has since healed his rifts with both of his father figures.
