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The Back Garden, August 2004 (#ulink_9471f7aa-b508-58ea-95e2-b492763c398f)
‘What matters most in my life I can see in front of me.’
In Madrid, the evenings are perfect like this more often than not. It’s just gone seven, the sun’s down from the sky but it’s still warming my heart and warming my bones. There’s a glass of red wine on the table in front of me. And another in front of Victoria. Brooklyn’s being some kind of superhero, plunging in and out of the little pool a few yards down the garden from this terrace where Mr and Mrs are sitting, feet up, cheering him on. Romeo’s at the bottom of the steps that take you out onto the grass, being best friends with Carlos. That’s the dog, not the left-back. It’s a long way from Chingford but, just like the house I grew up in, it’s not just a casa. It feels like a home, somewhere you belong. Un hogar, they call it in Spain.
Back from a summer away and Euro 2004, we’ve found a place to live together, the four of us, here in Madrid. We’ve taken a three-year lease – my contract at Real finishes in 2007 – on a house in La Moraleja, a residential area to the north of the city. We’re twenty minutes from the training ground and from the Santiago Bernebeu; half an hour from the middle of town. And just a few minutes from where Brooklyn is going to start school next month. La Moraleja is green and quiet – todo tranquillo – and the trees spread shade across our garden, which I can see the end of from here, for most of every day.
I’ve got my first competitive game of a new season waiting for me in a week’s time, after last season left Real Madrid needing to qualify for the group stage of the Champions League this time around. It’s crossed my mind a couple of times recently that we had to do the same at United before going on to win the thing back in 1999. I don’t know if you could ever have quite the same feeling ahead of a new season with any other club: here at Real our own sense of ambition in the dressing room is as tangible as the sense of expectation around the streets of the city. This is a football club, after all, where anything – anything at all – seems possible. Each fresh start feels like history waiting to be made. What’s more, we know we owe the madridistas after what happened to us –and to them – last spring.
I’ve been in Madrid for twelve months now. A year ago, all of it was new, and as confusing as it was exciting. I was waiting to find out what was expected of me; what I could expect from life at a new club and in a new city. Now, I’ve found my way past most of those questions. I mean: I know now what I’m going to be asked. The answers, of course, will have to wait for kick-off. And a new manager at the Bernebeu, José Antonio Camacho, has already made sure we understand that we’ll need to find the right ones.
To say a lot’s happened since I left the club I grew up at, Manchester United, and came to Spain to start learning all over again, wouldn’t be the half of it. Some of what’s gone on I could perhaps have been half-expecting. Most of it, though, I had no idea at all about when I got here a season and a major international tournament ago. I can still remember the adrenalin rushing through my system the August morning I was introduced to Madrid as a Real player. At the Pabellon Raimundo Saporta, I’d been hurried through corridors and then ushered onto a stage alongside the President, Florentino Perez, and the greatest player ever to pull on the white shirt that I was going to wear for the next four years, Alfredo di Stefano.
Thinking back now, one thing nags me about that day. Especially after the shocks and challenges and lessons I’ve learnt over the months since. Amidst all that felt just right that morning, one thing jarred at the time and still does. Now, in August 2004, I’m grateful to put right a choice of words I made before my life was turned upside down during a year in Spain, back home in England and at Euro 2004. The last twelve months have reminded me – if I needed reminding – what’s made the whole adventure worth the living so far.
When it came time for me to speak to the press and to the Real supporters, my voice trailing away across that hangar of a basketball court, I remember I said:
‘I have always loved football. Of course I love my family and I have a wonderful life. But football is everything to me. To play for Real Madrid is a dream come true.’
Football and my family: know about them and you know most of what you need to about David Beckham. Back then, though, I had those things – the things that have made me the person I am – in the wrong order.
I probably knew then. And I definitely know it about myself now. Football’s the best game in the world, the best career I could possibly have been lucky enough to enjoy. It’s given me fulfilment and a lot more besides. But everything to me? No, I’m sitting here on a terrace at our new home in Moraleja and what matters most in my life – in anybody’s life, surely – I can see in front of me. I can put my arms around them right now: my wife and my two sons. They’re what I’m here for. I hope I’ll never have to, but I’d sacrifice what I do for a living and everything it’s brought my way without a second thought to have what I have having them. I met Victoria, fell in love with and married her and, together, we’ve made our family. Until you love your own children, you never realise quite how much your mum and dad loved you. I’m ready to do for my family what Mum and Dad did for me: everything. Doesn’t matter how exciting, frantic or rewarding the rest of it is, it’s Victoria and Brooklyn and Romeo who make sense of it all.
‘To play for Real Madrid is a dream come true.’
That’s right enough. And it keeps coming true every time I pull Real’s white shirt over my head. But for us Beckhams, here together with the warm air wrapped round us, back in England or wherever else the future’s going to take us: it’s the together that counts: I could never have imagined how sweet it would be until it happened. And it has for me; and for my wife and for my children too. Our lives have come true: a family. Whatever lies ahead of us, I won’t ever let them go.
1 Murdering the Flowerbeds (#ulink_37fdd894-a6b3-562c-90b9-2f4761a39cb5)
‘Mrs Beckham? Can David come and have a game in the park?’
I’m sure Mum could dig it out of the pile: that first video of me in action. There I am, David Robert Joseph Beckham, aged three, wearing the new Manchester United kit Dad had bought me for Christmas, playing football in the front room of our house in Chingford. Twenty-five years on, and Victoria could have filmed me having a kickabout this morning with Brooklyn before I left for training. For all that so much has happened during my life – and the shirt I’m wearing now is a different colour – some things haven’t really changed at all.
As a father watching my own sons growing up, I get an idea of what I must have been like as a boy; and reminders, as well, of what Dad was like with me. As soon as I could walk, he made sure I had a football to kick. Maybe I didn’t even wait for a ball. I remember when Brooklyn had only just got the hang of standing up. We were messing around together one afternoon after training. For some reason there was a tin of baked beans on the floor of the kitchen and, before I realised it, he’d taken a couple of unsteady steps towards it and kicked the thing as hard as you like. Frightening really: you could fracture a metatarsal doing that. Even as I was hugging him better, I couldn’t help laughing. That must have been me.
It’s just there, wired into the genes. Look at Brooklyn: he always wants to be playing football, running, kicking, diving about. And he’s already listening, like he’s ready to learn. By the time he was three and a half, if I rolled the football to him and told him to stop it, he’d trap it by putting his foot on it. Then he’d take a step back and line himself up before kicking it back to me. He’s also got a great sense of balance. We were in New York when Brooklyn was about two and a half, and I remember us coming out of a restaurant and walking down some steps. He was standing, facing up towards Victoria and I, his toes on one step and his heels rocking back over the next. This guy must have been watching from inside the restaurant, because suddenly he came running out and asked us how old our son was. When I told him, he explained he was a child psychologist and that for Brooklyn to be able to balance himself over the step like that was amazing for a boy of his age.
It’s a little too early to tell with Romeo, but Brooklyn has got a real confidence that comes from his energy, his strength, and his sense of coordination. He’s been whizzing around on two-wheeled scooters – I mean flying – for years already. He’s got a belief in himself, physically, that I know I had as well. When I was a boy, I only ever felt really sure of myself when I was playing football. In fact I’d still say that about me now, although Victoria has given me confidence in myself in all sorts of other ways. I know she’ll do the same for Brooklyn and Romeo too.
For all that father and son have in common, Brooklyn and I are very different. By the time I was his age, I was already telling anyone who would listen: ‘I’m going to play football for Manchester United.’ He says he wants to be a footballer like Daddy, but United or Real? We haven’t heard that out of him yet. Brooklyn’s a really strong, well-built boy. Me, though, I was always skinny. However much I ate it never made any difference while I was growing up. When I was playing football, I must have seemed even smaller because, if I wasn’t with my dad and his mates, I was over at Chase Lane Park, just round the corner from the house, playing with boys twice my age. I don’t know if it was because I was good or because they could kick me up in the air and I’d come back for more, but they always turned up on the doorstep after school:
‘Mrs Beckham? Can David come and have a game in the park?’
I spent a lot of time in Chase Lane Park. If I wasn’t there with the bigger boys like Alan Smith, who lived two doors away on our road, I’d be there with my dad. We’d started by kicking a ball about in the back garden but I was murdering the flowerbeds so, after he got in from his job as a heating engineer, we’d go to the park together and just practise and practise for hours on end. All the strengths in my game are the ones Dad taught me in the park 20 years ago: we’d work on touch and striking the ball properly until it was too dark to see. He’d kick the ball up in the air as high as he could and get me to control it. Then it would be knocking it in with each foot, making sure I was doing it right. It was great, even if he did drive me mad sometimes. ‘Why can’t you just go in goal and let me take shots at you?’ I’d be thinking. I suppose you could say he was pushing me along. You’d also have to say, though, that it was all I wanted to do and I was lucky Dad was so willing to do it with me.
My dad, Ted, played himself for a local team called Kingfisher in the Forest and District League, and I would go along with my mum Sandra, my older sister Lynne and baby Joanne to watch him play. He was a centre-forward; Mark Hughes, but rougher. He had trials for Leyton Orient and played semi-professional for a couple of years at Finchley Wingate. Dad was a good player, although he always used to get caught offside. It took me a long time to understand how that rule worked and I’m not sure Dad ever really got it sorted out. I loved watching him. I loved everything that went with the game, and I could tell how much playing meant to him as well. When he told me he was going to pack in playing regularly himself so he could concentrate on coaching me – I must have been eight or nine at the time – I knew exactly what that sacrifice meant even though he never talked about it in that way.
From the time I was seven, Dad was taking me to training with Kingfisher on midweek evenings down at a place called Wadham Lodge, just round the North Circular Road from us. I’ve got great memories of those nights, not just being with Dad and his mates, but of the ground itself. It was about ten minutes from the house in the car. We’d drive down this long street of terraced houses and pull in through a set of big, blue wooden gates, past the first car park and onto the second car park, which was right next to the training ground. The pitch was orange-coloured gravel and cinder, with proper goalposts and nets, and there was a little bar, the social club, that overlooked it. Beyond that pitch, there were three or four others, including the best one which was reserved for cup games and special occasions. It had a little wall all around it and two dugouts. It seemed like a massive stadium to me at the time. I dreamt about playing on that pitch one day.
Wadham Lodge wasn’t very well looked after back then. I remember the changing rooms were pure Sunday League: mud on the floor, really dingy lighting and the water dribbling out of cold showers. Then there was the smell of the liniment that players used to rub on their legs. It would hit you as soon as you walked in. There were floodlights – just six lamps on top of poles – but at least once every session they’d go out and somebody would have to run in and put coins in a meter that was in a cupboard just inside the changing room door.
As well as training with Kingfisher during the football season, we’d be back at Wadham Lodge in the summer holidays. Dad used to run, and also play for, a team in the summer league, so I’d come to games with him. We’d practise together before and after and then, while his match was taking place on the big pitch, I’d find some other boys to play with on the cinder next door. I’ve had most of my professional career at clubs with the best facilities and where everything’s taken care of, but I’m glad I had the experience of a place like Wadham Lodge when I was a boy. I mean, if I’d not been there with my dad, I might have grown up never knowing about Soap on a Rope. More to the point, it was where I started taking free-kicks. After everybody else had finished and was in the social club, I’d stand on the edge of the penalty area and chip a dead ball towards goal. Every time I hit the bar was worth 50p extra pocket money from my dad that week. And, just as important, a pat on the back.
The other dads might bring their boys along sometimes but, once I started, I was there week in and week out. I’d sit in the bar and watch the men training and then, towards the end of the session, they’d let me join in with the five-a-sides. I was so excited to be out there playing with the rest of them – these grown men – that I took whatever I had coming. I do remember an occasion when one of them came flying into me with a tackle and Dad wasn’t happy about it at all but, usually, if I took a knock he’d just tell me to get up and get on with it. He warned me that I had to be prepared to get a bit roughed up now and again. If he’d been running around telling people not to tackle me all evening, it would have been pointless me being there in the first place. The fact that I always seemed to be playing football with players who were bigger and stronger than me when I was young, I’m sure, helped me later on in my career.
On the nights when I wasn’t at Wadham Lodge, I’d be in Chase Lane Park. We had this secret cut-through to get there: across the road and then four or five houses down from my mum and dad’s where there was a private alley. We’d wait around at the top of it until there was nobody about and then sprint fifty yards to the hedge, then through it and the hole in the fence. I still have one or two friends who I first met in Chase Lane. I went on to school with Simon Treglowen and his brother Matt, and I’m still in touch with Simon now. We decided we got on all right after one particular row about whether or not I’d scored past him in goal. That turned into a big fight, even though Simon’s four years older than me. Fighting: it’s a funny way boys have of making friends. Usually we’d just kick a ball around until it got dark, but there also used to be a youth club, in a little hut, run by a lady called Joan. My mum knew her and would phone up to say we were on our way over. You could play table tennis or pool and get a fizzy drink or some chocolate. There was an outdoor paddling pool at the back that got filled up in the summer. Some days, Joan would organise a minibus and we’d all head off down to Walthamstow baths. There was also a skate ramp by the side of the hut. I suppose my mum knows now that some of my cuts and bruises were from skateboarding, even though I wasn’t allowed on a skateboard back then. The one bad knock I got happened one evening when I fell getting our ball back from the paddling pool after it had been closed up for the night. Joan was still there and she phoned home to tell my parents how I’d got the cut on my head. For about six or seven years, into my early teens, it was a whole world in that park. All those facilities have gone now. It’s a shame. Times change and some kids started messing the place up until it had to be closed down.
My very first close friend was a boy called John Brown who lived just up the road. John and I went through both primary and secondary school together. He wasn’t really a footballer so, when I couldn’t talk him into a kickabout over at the park, we’d play Lego or Gameboy round at one of our houses, or ride our bikes or rollerskate up and down our road. Later on, when I started playing for Ridgeway Rovers, John used to come along to some of our games even though he didn’t play. A few of us, especially me and another Ridgeway boy named Nicky Lockwood, were always up for the pictures and John used to come too; I remember Mum would drop us off at the cinema over in Walthamstow. When we were little, John Brown and I were best mates but I suppose my football took me in a very different direction. John went off and became a baker after we both left school.
Lucky for me, they loved their football at my first school, Chase Lane Primary. I can still remember Mr McGhee, the teacher who used to coach us: a Scotsman and passionate with it, a bit like Alex Ferguson in fact. Kids used to tell tales about Mr McGhee throwing teacups, cricket balls, anything really, at the wall when he was annoyed. I never witnessed that myself but we were all a bit scared of his reputation, anyway. We had a really good team and used to turn out in this all-green kit. I was playing football with the Cubs as well, which you could only do if you went to church on Sunday. So all the family – me, Mum and Dad and my sisters – made sure we were there every time, without fail.
My parents knew how much I loved football. If there was a way for me to get a game, they did everything they could to make it happen. Whether it was playing or getting coaching, I’d have my chance. I was at every soccer school going. The first one was the Roger Morgan Soccer School, run by the former Spurs winger. I went there over and over again, doing all the badges until I got the gold. Dad was a lifelong United supporter and we started going to watch them when they played in London. My mum’s dad was diehard Tottenham and he used to take me to White Hart Lane. Every Christmas, I’d end up with a United kit and a Tottenham kit, and maybe an England kit from my mum. If it was football – or anything to do with football – I was there.
Mum wasn’t all that keen on football. Her dad was, though, which was one of the reasons I loved being with him as much as I did. Joe was employed in the print trade. For a long time he was over the road from home, at the Stationery Office in Islington. Then he moved down to Fleet Street. He and my grandmother, Peggy, lived on an estate just off City Road, down near Old Street. My dad went out to work early most Saturdays. The rest of us would get on the train at Walthamstow and go down to see my grandparents for the day. We had to get there before noon: Grandad would be off about 11.30 if he was going to watch Spurs. Before leaving, he’d come downstairs and watch me play football in the little park on the estate. I’m sure Grandad remembers those times: he definitely remembers me breaking his spectacles. I was only about six but I was already kicking a ball hard enough that his glasses didn’t stand a chance the time I accidentally caught him full in the face.
Once Joe went off to White Hart Lane, Peggy would take us off to the shops. Sometimes we’d go to the West End but, more often, we’d get the bus up to the Angel and go to Chapel Market. I didn’t mind at all. I had to follow Mum and Nan and my sisters around for a bit, but I always seemed to wangle a toy or something by the end of the afternoon. We sometimes had pie and mash for lunch in Chapel Street as well. Once we got back to the flat, Joe would be getting in from football. Then he’d get ready to go out and do the night shift. Dad would pick us up in Wenlock Street after finishing work and we’d all drive home together.
Once I started to get serious about playing football, Joe and Peggy would come over to us on Sunday morning. Grandad came and watched all my games. I liked him being there: he was softer with me than Dad when it came to talking about the match and how I’d played. Mum wanted to come too, so Peggy would stay at our house. She’d look after Lynne and have Sunday dinner ready when we all came in. Then, Sunday afternoons, we often went down to Victoria Park in Hackney. There was plenty of open space to play football with Dad and Grandad, and there were lots of other things to do as well: a big playground, the boating lake and even a little zoo.
I couldn’t have asked for anything more and I didn’t, but along came Ridgeway Rovers anyway and took over my life. I was seven, so it’s not surprising I’m not sure now how it all happened. My mum remembers me being spotted playing in the park and a bloke called Stuart Underwood knocking on our front door to ask about me. My dad, though, reckons there was an advert about a new boys’ football team in the local paper and that afternoon over at Chase Lane was a sort of trial. Either way, I’m really grateful – and proud – that I was part of that first Ridgeway Rovers team. And the man who set up the team had a lot to do with me making a future for myself in the game.
Stuart Underwood’s a massive bloke. About six feet four, with a big booming voice and this fantastic presence about him. He was a bit of a sergeant major type. I was scared of him at first. He could be pretty tough: no matter how young you were, if you weren’t playing well, in a game or in training, he’d tell you that you were rubbish and needed to do better, instead of just jollying you along. Stuart was honest with you. But he wasn’t one of those dads who stood on the touchline at kids’ games, bawling and screaming. He had this softness about him as well. His own son Robert played in the team, but Stuart seemed like a father figure to all of us. And he had this dream about creating a really good team.
Every single boy just loved playing for Stuart and we had this fantastic team spirit. He’d organise for Ridgeway to play in competitions in Holland and Germany, so we gained the same sort of experience as a professional footballer playing in the Champions League or an international tournament. Other fathers got involved, too. My dad took on some of the coaching. So did a man called Steve Kirby, whose son Ryan played for Ridgeway and ended up playing against me ten years later in the League. Dad was always a fit man and he did running with us, as well as working on our technique. Steve was a bit of a tactician and he used to do positional play, runs off the ball and that kind of thing. A lot of the time, all three of them would be there and we’d split into smaller groups: there weren’t many boys our age who got that much attention paid to their training. The three of them – Steve, Stuart and my dad – used to argue a lot, but it was all in the cause. They were honest people wanting to make the team as good as they could.
It worked. I don’t know where Stuart found them, but we had some really good players: Ryan Kirby, Micah Hyde, who’s now at Watford, Jason Brissett, who was at Bournemouth last I heard, and Chris Day, who was a lanky centre-forward for us but ended up playing in goal for QPR. It was all about the team, though. Stuart Underwood’s son, Robert, was a perfect example. To be honest, he didn’t have great ability to start with but because he worked so hard at his game, he made himself into a good team player. That was credit to him, but it was credit to Stuart and the rest of us too. We never once thought to ourselves: he’s not good enough to be playing for Ridgeway.
Stuart had to have everything done properly. We always had a decent pitch on which to play our home games, like the one at Ainslie Wood Sports Ground, which was just a short walk from home. We trained twice a week. Stuart lived nearby, in Larkswood Road, and there was a park there, with decent facilities, that we used to use. One way or another, Stuart would make sure we had what we needed. When we had important games, like Cup finals, he’d insist on us eight and nine-year-olds wearing a collar and tie. One important rule was that if you didn’t turn up for training in the week, then you didn’t play at the weekend; it was as simple as that. It was a good habit to learn: I always made sure I was there and that I was there on time. I loved the training anyway. Lived for it. But it was also another reason we had such a good team: Ridgeway Rovers always went about things the right way.
With so many boys’ sides, you notice the most talented players. They make a big fuss of the individuals in the team. That wasn’t allowed with Ridgeway: any showing off and you’d be brought back down. It was all about the team. In no time, we were starting to win games ten and eleven-nil and people could see there was something special about us. Professional clubs started watching our players, and I think West Ham asked about me when I was eleven. But Stuart, Steve and my dad had decided that there should be no need for any of us to be involved with clubs until we were older. If you were training with a professional club, the rule was you couldn’t be training with a Sunday League team at the same time. I knew I didn’t want that, I wasn’t ready for it. We all stuck with Ridgeway. I think, in the long run, those rules were why so many of us went on to make a success of ourselves. We learnt about commitment and dedication right from the start.
I had to learn about not playing football too. Because I was smaller than most, I used to get my share of knocks. Dad had drummed into me that, most of the time, the best thing to do was just get up and get on with it, like I’d had to with his mates over at Wadham Lodge. He taught me a lot about avoiding injury as well. As a winger – and because people were starting to hear about me a bit – I often had a defender trying to give me a kick. Dad worked with me on keeping the ball moving, releasing it quickly once it was under control. That still helps me keep out of scrapes as a professional player. And it’s the best way to play. When I was about ten, I did have one layoff through injury: the kind that happens to lots of boys. Running and jumping all the time, especially on hard pitches, ends up jarring knees, shins and ankles. With me, it was my heels: pins and needles at first and then, later, aching during and after games. I tried putting bits of foam in my boots but eventually I had to have a complete break from football. I couldn’t play, I couldn’t train. Couldn’t even have a kickabout over at the park. That was the longest five weeks of my life and, in a way, I’ve never got over it. Having to watch football instead of playing it still has me climbing up walls.
Ridgeway Rovers was a great time for all of us, not just the players. Our families got involved, whether it was washing kit, driving us about, coming on trips or raising funds. That team was together for six years, which meant our families were, too. And you can’t spend that amount of time together without becoming pretty close. I remember Micah Hyde’s dad, Ken, used to have dreadlocks: him and my dad – short back and sides – would be stood on the touchline together on a Sunday for the Ridgeway game. The parents used to organise dinners and Friday night dances to help raise money to pay for the team. Even though it was Dad who took us for training, my mum probably put in almost as many hours on me and my football, despite her job as a hairdresser. She was the only one of the mums who drove, so if there was a minibus run she always ended up with the job. When Dad was out working, Mum would be the one who got me to where I needed to be, when I needed to be there, with the right stuff ready in the right bag.
Looking back, it must have been quite hard for my sisters, with so much of our family time being tied up with my football. I’ve spoken to Lynne about it since and she says she did feel a bit left out by it all. She’s three years older than me and had her own friends and just got on with her own life. Even so, when we were at school together Lynne would always stick up for me if there was any trouble. One lunchtime at Chingford High, I remember having an argument with an older boy in the dinner queue. He ended up whacking me out in the playground. It was Lynne who took me home. She made sure I was all right and that the teachers at school knew what had happened. Football, though, she didn’t really like at all. We’ve both got our own families now: Lynne and her husband Colin have a girl and a boy, Georgina and Freddie. Even though we don’t see that much of each other because of the kids, I’d say I feel closer to my older sister these days than I ever did when we were young.
It was different with Joanne. I was five when she came along. I can still remember standing in the kitchen at home and my dad coming in and telling me she’d been born and me bursting into tears. I really wanted a brother, of course. But we got on fine: if I wanted her to go in goal in the back garden, she never said no. She just trailed after me all the time: to football, the park, the shops, everywhere. Joanne’s a hairdresser now, just like Mum, and it’s only in the last couple of years, since she started working and I got married, that we’ve stopped being together so much like that. I suppose she had to grow up eventually; and so did I. Sometimes, though, I do miss having my little mate around. I’m sure Joanne misses running around with big brother as well.
Mum always tried to make sure we sat down together to dinner as a family. That was when she and Dad would try and get me to tell them about what I’d been doing at school. I do the same with Brooklyn now. If I ask him, I usually get the same response my parents got with me: nothing. It wasn’t that it was a secret or anything. It’s just how kids are, isn’t it? When I was at primary school, I’d be around to help with meal times at home. I would take Joanne out in the garden or in the front room to play so Mum wouldn’t be tripping over a toddler while she was cooking. When it came time to sit down, I used to have the job of laying the table. Then, at secondary school, I opted to do Home Economics – cooking, basically – because the alternative was a double period of Science. I enjoyed being in the kitchen when I was at home anyway. By the time I was thirteen, if Mum was working, she’d leave me to get dinner ready for all of us. If she was cutting hair at home, I’d make cups of tea and arrange little plates of biscuits for her clients while they were there at the house.
There must have been some kind of mistake, because when I moved on to secondary school – Chingford High in Nevin Drive – it turned out they played rugby instead of football. Lucky for me, our rugby teacher, John Bullock, was tough and disciplined but a lovely man. He was great with all of us and always seemed to have a lot of time for me. He was a fantastic teacher. He died a few years back, on the same night I got sent off against Argentina in Saint-Etienne, but he was the one teacher I stayed in touch with. Even after I first went up to Old Trafford, I used to write to Mr Bullock, as well as go back to see him and the school, which I think meant a lot to him. People have told me since that he really adored me, and just talked about me all the time.
I don’t think Mr Bullock was very interested in football, but there were that many of us boys going on at him, pestering him, that he agreed to give it a go. And everything changed. As soon as we had a school football team, we started winning leagues and cups, which was great for us. It was great for the school, as well. Maybe the football helped me to be happy there. I wasn’t that interested in lessons. I was cross-country champion for the local borough and swam for Chingford High, but there was only one thing I ever wanted to do with my life. I was lucky that I had that drive from a really young age. Knowing what I wanted in the future, what would have been the point in messing about along the way? I got in trouble once or twice for being cheeky, like every schoolboy does. But, most of the time, I kept my head down and did my homework: I used to pop into Alan Smith’s house and his mum, Pat, would help me with some of it. She was really good at Maths, I remember, and Alan was too. He’s in insurance now, working for Rothschild, and I run into him now and again: he’s married and has moved away but he works from an office in his mum and dad’s loft. The important thing was that I never missed a day’s school, unless I was ill, at either Chase Lane Primary or at Chingford High.