Beckham Magazine - My Side (The Feud)

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BECKHAM : 'MY SIDE' EXTRACTS - THE FEUD
Friday, Sep 05, 2003

I'd grown up , but he just didn't like what I'd become...

"THE reception I got after the final whistle against Real Madrid was better than any I could remember at Old Trafford. I went to the four corners of the ground to return the applause.

"By the time I got back to the dressing room, I had a warm glow inside.

"When I got back to the house in Alderley Edge, everything was quiet. I decided not to wake the boys and tell them about Daddy's great night.

"I made myself a bowl of noodles, and ran myself a pint glass of iced water. I put the television on: Manchester United versus Real Madrid. The whole game. I slurped my noodles and settled into it. The free-kick and scrambling my second goal. The free-kick I'd missed.

"But then the camera cut away to the gaffer's reaction and my blood ran cold. His face told me everything I needed to know. His rage, his frustration: and it was all Beckham's fault.

"Maybe you needed to have lived through the past six months to really understand what was obvious to me:

"It's over. He wants me out.

Slammed
"The gaffer had had enough. I'd grown up as a person and he didn't seem to like what I'd become. Now it looked like he'd seen enough of me as a player, as well.

"His face in the seconds after I'd missed that free-kick made me feel like a door had just been slammed in mine. I'd been flying all evening.

" I genuinely believed what I'd done during the game would force a way back in for me. No chance. If it was anything to do with the gaffer–and, of course, it would be–I was sure I was finished."

The match was played on April 23 this year. England captain David, whose debut home goal helped new club Real Madrid win the Spanish Super Cup this week, was aware Fergie had a history of getting in digs.

But the real animosity that had been simmering since Becks fell in love with Victoria erupted in a monumental row after a game against Leicester last season.

"I had broken a rib," he writes in his autobiography. "I didn't have any choice but to rest. The whole England squad was invited to Buckingham Palace, which was something I couldn't miss out on. I felt unbelievably proud, being introduced to Her Majesty the Queen as the England captain.

"She asked about my injury and about our arrangements since the kidnap plot (which the News of the World famously exposed). She obviously took an interest in that, personal security being something she knows all about."

After that, David and Victoria took their sons Brooklyn and Romeo to Barbados.

"I came back fresh," he adds. "But I began to feel a chill in the atmosphere between me and Alex Ferguson."

After a month of "getting the cold shoulder" David decided on a clear-the-air meeting. He writes: "I asked him. ‘Is there a problem? Have you got a problem with me?' He did. A big problem. It was that, instead of going straight off on holiday, I'd gone to Buckingham Palace with the rest of the England players.

Chop
"He reckoned I'd have been fit sooner if I hadn't waited those extra couple of days before going away.

"I tried to argue my case. As I understood it from the doctors, there's nothing you can do that will hurry a recovery from a broken rib: it's four weeks' rest and that's that. As for going to Buckingham Palace, I tried to explain, ‘I'm England captain. Never mind that I was proud to be asked to go and meet the Queen, I'd have been ripped apart if I hadn't been there. The whole World Cup squad was there'.

"I felt it was my duty to be there too. Ashley Cole got stick because he turned up wearing trainers. What would it have been like if I hadn't turned up at all?

"What the gaffer said next, I'll never forget: ‘When I saw you turn up there, I questioned your loyalty to Manchester United'.

"That stung. I couldn't believe I was hearing it. I said, ‘I love United. I want to be here. But if you don't want me to be, you should tell me'.

"The boss didn't answer. I walked out. In training, it felt like I was on the end of the worst criticism. It was beginning to feel like I was being set up for the chop. We were all used to getting stick from the gaffer. But this was personal and it was humiliating."

Yet, David still clung to the hope that he could rebuild a relationship with Fergie...until Manchester United were drawn against Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of last season's European Cup. The first leg, in Madrid on April 8 this year, ended in a 3-1 victory for the Spaniards "with Real playing football like I'd never seen it played in my life."

During that match, David pulled a hamstring muscle that kept him out of United's next league match against Newcastle. The team played so well, he was out of the next game against Arsenal too, returning only for a game against Blackburn.

The all-important second leg against Real Madrid at Old Trafford on April 23 loomed. David writes: "Everybody assumed I'd be playing. Except me. On the morning of the game, the gaffer said, ‘David, you're not going to start tonight. You'll be on the bench'.

"I flinched. It felt as if the whole of the season had been about him building up to doing this to me. Real Madrid: an important game, son. Too important for you to play in.

Throat
"I could taste the anger and the disappointment in my throat. I looked at the gaffer, tried to look into his eyes: nothing there for me.

"I shook my head, turned round, and began walking back to the changing room. ‘David. Come back here. Don't walk away from me'.

The boss didn't shout. He didn't lose his rag. It was as if he was asking me, not telling me, David, please come back. I want to finish what I was saying.

"As if there was anything that needed to be said. I kept walking. Thinking back to that scene now, I'd say if the gaffer had still cared about me as a person or as a player, we'd have had a row there and then. He wouldn't have let me walk away like that."

When he saw the list of 11 players who would start the match "frustration made way for disbelief" as he noticed the name of Juan Sebastian Veron. "It made me sure the gaffer was leaving me out for personal rather than football reasons," he says. Veron had been injured for seven weeks.

As the build-up continued, David adds, "for the first time in my life, I wondered if playing football somewhere else might be better than playing it here." It was Victoria who lightened the mood when he told her he would be a substitute. "Don't forget to take your Preparation H out there with you," she said. "You spend more time sitting on that bench than you do playing. Piles will be next.

"And make sure you keep a smile on your face so, if the camera's on you, nobody will know there's anything wrong."

This was the match in which he came on late and scored twice. The next day, rumours were rife that Madrid wanted to buy David.

"Reading they might want me was reassuring when it seemed United didn't," he says. "It felt as if I was out in my own private Arctic."