Beckham Magazine - My Side (The Insults)

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

"BROOKLYN had gastro-enteritis, I'd only ever missed one day of training in nine years as a pro and was sure that, if I explained, the club would understand.

"I rang United and left a message, ‘Brooklyn's really struggling. Is it all right if I don't come in? I think I should stay with him'.

"No one called back.

"I got into training on the Friday morning...the gaffer came storming and shouted at me, ‘Beckham. Here. I want a word'.

"Suddenly, I'm in the middle of a row in front of the entire first-team squad. I tried to stand my ground but the boss wasn't having any of it: ‘Go and train with the reserves'.

"In front of the other lads, that was a huge insult: a huge blow to anyone's self-esteem. I refused...I walked back across the training pitches, went to the changing room, got dressed and walked out to my car.

"Something made me stop, though. It's a big game on Saturday. Be professional about this. I went into the gym to work on my own. After about half an hour, Roy Keane came through on his way back to the dressing room.

Sneering
"I asked Roy what he thought I should do. ‘You should talk to the manager'. I should have ignored his advice.

"I went to the gaffer's office, and walked into the biggest dressing down I've ever had in my career.

"As he saw it, I had my priorities all wrong. But I didn't back down.

"I said, ‘My first priority has to be my family. My son was ill and that's why I missed training'.

"The boss thought differently: ‘Your responsibilities are here at the club, not at home with your son'.

"But what tipped a big argument over into becoming a blazing row was a photo in that day's papers of Victoria at a charity function on the Thursday night: the evening after the morning I'd missed training.

"By tea-time, Brooklyn had been back to his usual self and Victoria had decided, while he slept, to honour a long-standing commitment which meant her being away from the house for a couple of hours.

" That wasn't how the boss saw it, though: ‘You were babysitting while your wife was out gallivanting'. That word: gallivanting. It was the sneering tone I thought came with it that made me flip: ‘Don't talk about my wife like that. How would you feel if I was disrespectful like that about your wife?'

" I'd expected him to be angry with me. I hadn't expected I'd lose my temper as well. He told me not to report for the Leeds game, the next day. I went downstairs and left."

The following day, David went to Leeds anyway. "When he announced the substitutes: I wasn't even on the bench," he said. "There were photographs of me sitting in the stands that afternoon."

David remembers the date of the row exactly. Friday, February 18, 2000. He later went on England duty and, when he returned, he went shopping in Manchester's Trafford Centre. "My phone rang," he writes. "It was the boss."

This is how the conversation went as Fergie leapt to the offensive...

"Where the hell are you?"

"Eh?"

"Where the hell are you?"

"I'm in my car."

"Don't lie to me. You're in Barcelona, aren't you?" David says: "I nearly laughed out loud. I said, ‘I'm in my car. I'm just driving out of the Trafford Centre'. The gaffer wasn't having any of it. ‘My mate has seen you at Barcelona airport', he said.

" What could I say? I described the car park at the Trafford Centre, told him which shops I'd been in. There was a long silence. ‘OK. Goodbye'. I found out later that, five minutes before he rang me, the boss had rung Gary (Neville, one of David's best friends at United) to find out where I was.

Dumped
"Gary had put the phone down and just thought to himself, ‘Please don't be in Spain'.

"The gaffer genuinely believed the life I led away from football was interfering with what really mattered: winning games for United. And nothing I could say could convince him he was wrong."

After David starred for England against Greece in a vital international, Sir Alex had a special greeting reserved.

David writes: "The gaffer's first words to me were, ‘I hope you're going to work bloody hard now you're back at United'."

He adds: "I knew better than to be surprised by the gaffer but that comment hurt a bit anyway. I came back into training on a high, all of our England players did. And, because of that, I couldn't wait for the next game for my club.

" I enjoy the big moments but I really don't believe I'm someone who gets carried away with them. I didn't arrive at training expecting anyone to pat me on the back and say how well I'd played. I was just turning up to work at United in a good mood.

"The boss obviously didn't see it like that. At least, he didn't see me like that. He thought what I needed was to be dumped back down to earth."

Before last Christmas, there was yet another row. United players have a tradition of taking presents to children at a local hospital.

For the previous two years, David and Victoria had visited a different hospital, the Christie Cancer Hospital, so more children would get a star appearance.

David writes: "I made the mistake of asking whether we should do the same thing again. The boss saw that as me snubbing the rest of the team, wanting to be different and treated differently—none of which was anything like the truth—and pulled me to one side to give me a piece of his mind about it."

Then came the day of United's Worthington Cup game against Chelsea. It was also the day of Brooklyn's first Nativity play at school.

David explains: "We were due to meet up at 1pm. I asked the gaffer if I could report a few minutes late: the play started at midday and lasted about an hour.

Ripped
"Maybe I should have known not to even ask. If I'd been another kind of character, I'd have gone off anyway and then blamed traffic for me being 15 minutes late getting to work.

"I'm not the only dad in the world who'd be desperate to be at his son's nursery school for something like that and I hoped the boss would understand. At worst, I thought, he might just say no, that we had a big game and he didn't want me to go.

"But he was furious: ‘Hell, David, what are you after? What more do you want?'

"Before I could say anything he just turned on his heel and walked away. I was sorry to miss Brooklyn's play. What I didn't understand was why it was such a big deal that I'd asked. This standoff just seemed to drag on. They were the worst three months I'd ever had at Old Trafford."

It was against this background that the infamous flying-boot incident took place after an FA Cup fifth round defeat to Arsenal when furious Fergie kicked a boot in the dressing room and sliced David over the eye.

But the greatest shocks were still to come as David finally learned that his days at the club were over—and listened aghast to an announcement that, he admits, had him wondering "was I in earthquake country?"