David Beckham: My Side

‘David. What are you playing at? Hitting those flippin’ Hollywood passes all day?’

Hollywood passes? I’d never heard that before. I knew exactly what he meant, though. And I thought twice before I hit the next one. Truth is, I still love playing those long balls; they’re a part of my game. But, even now, whenever one doesn’t make it, I imagine Eric, shaking his head and grumbling: ‘flippin’ Hollywood passes’.

It’s not always been true with Alex Ferguson or other coaches I’ve worked with, but with Eric you always knew exactly where you stood. If he lost his temper with you, he made sure you understood why and, somehow, he had the knack of shaking you up without ever abusing you or putting you down. We always knew, however hairy it got, Eric only ever wanted what we wanted too: to get the best out of ourselves and to achieve everything we could as individuals and as a team. No wonder he commanded the respect of every single one of us young players. Some young players nowadays who sign for a big club suddenly think they’ve hit the big time. There was none of that with our generation. And if there had been, Eric would soon have sorted us out.

I was lucky. I had good coaching all the time I was growing up but, of course, when I got to United and started work with Eric, I knew straight away that I’d moved up to another level. I remember hearing the argument a lot when I was young: that it would be best to start with a smaller club and work my way up to a bigger one like Manchester United. And I can see the sense in that. Once I began training at the Cliff, I realised that the only way from here, if things didn’t work out, was going to be down. But my feeling then, and even more so now, is that if you’re given the chance to be with the best, you should take it.

Everything at United was right: the facilities, the kit, the training and the other players in our group. Who wouldn’t want to have Eric Harrison as a youth team coach? I couldn’t get enough of it all. While we were trainees, Gary and I would go back to the Cliff in the evenings twice a week, when Eric was working with the schoolboys on the big indoor pitch, and join in the sessions just to get extra training under our belts. Phil Neville was in that age group – two years younger than me and Gary – and so was Dave Gardner. I don’t know how you find your very best friends. Maybe they just find you. Dave and I just hit it off and we’ve been close ever since: I was best man at his wedding in the summer of 2003. He stayed on as an apprentice until he was eighteen, by which time I was playing regularly in the first team. Dave turned professional with Manchester City and he still plays non-League with Altrincham. Nowadays, for him, football’s about staying fit and keeping his eye in: he’s a full-time director of a sports management company.

During those first years at United, Eric used to make sure we went to every first-team game at Old Trafford. Not just to watch the game, but to watch individual players. I’d think back to Dad taking me to Cup Finals when I was a boy.

‘Never mind the game, David. Just watch Bryan Robson. Watch what he does.’

Now Eric was telling us the same thing: ‘Watch the man playing in your position. One day, you’re going to take his place.’

To hear something like that gave us so much confidence; not that we realised at the time how soon the manager was going to make us all part of his first-team plans.

Going to those games at Old Trafford was a chance, as well, for Eric to insist on the importance of having standards. He always made sure that we turned up in a blazer, with a collar and tie. It reminded me of Stuart Underwood wanting the Ridgeway players to be well turned out when we arrived for big games. I still think those things make a difference. Some teams might be seen arriving at a ground or walking through an airport in their tracksuits. The fact that a Manchester United team will always be wearing club blazers is part of having a professional attitude. That smartness said something about our respect for ourselves and for the club.

Our training sessions weren’t all about technique and tactics and learning new tricks. If Eric spotted a weakness in your game, you could be sure he’d do his best to confront it. I don’t know if ‘Headers’ was designed just to make me suffer, but some mornings it felt like it. As a forward player, you need to be strong enough to hold your own physically against bigger and tougher defenders. Heading and tackling weren’t exactly my strong points, especially as I was smaller than most of the other lads. ‘Headers’ was Eric’s way of toughening up young players like me. There were two teams: midfielders and forwards lined up against defenders. The ball was chipped up and you could only score with your head. That would have been fine, except it was an invitation to the likes of Gary Neville and Chris Casper to come crashing into you from behind in order to stop you. Gary was the worst. You’d end up bruised all over, wondering what you’d done to annoy him. I dreaded those sessions then but, four years later, by the time I was lining up in the Premiership against the likes of Stuart Pearce and Julian Dicks, I was grateful that the first serious knocks I’d taken had been off my own team-mates.

It wasn’t just when we were doing that particular routine that Gary and Chris Casper did their best to give me grief. Busy they were, the pair of them. Cas was very big and strong for his age. His dad, Frank, had been a player with Burnley when they were a top side in the sixties, and Chris had obviously picked up habits from him. He had this very grown up, professional attitude. And, when we were playing together, he talked non-stop through every single game. Sometimes Cas played at the back; he ended up playing centre-back as a professional. Other times he’d get a game in central midfield, which meant I’d be playing alongside him. He’d be geeing me up, telling me who to pass to. And not just me: he’d be telling anyone within earshot. He even used to talk to himself. After ninety minutes, I’d have a splitting headache and what made it worse was that Dad thought it was good to be like that.

‘You should be like Cas, you know. You should be talking like him. More than him, even.’

I’d be thinking: I prefer silence. As I’ve got more experienced – and especially since I’ve been a captain – I’ve come to understand how important it is to communicate on the pitch. Obviously you have to let a team-mate know if someone’s coming to close him down but, if someone can’t see a pass for himself then, by the time you’ve told him, the moment’s probably gone anyway. If you’re playing for Man United or for England, do you need your mate telling you, minute by minute, if he thinks you’re playing well? Of course you have to talk. Half the time, though, I thought Cas was talking just for the sake of it. It was like lining up alongside a commentator.

He used to get on my nerves when we played together, but Cas and I were good mates too. He was one of a small group of us who went away on holiday together. My mum and dad were the first people to meet Joe Glanville: they’d always run into him at games. Joe was Maltese, and United mad. They got to know each other and, the next thing I knew, my parents were telling me we were going on holiday to Malta. Everything was being taken care of that end and we just had to get ourselves to the airport at the right time, with our bags packed.

We had a lovely time that summer. While we were out there, there was a United supporters’ club function which Steve Bruce and Lee Sharpe were helping with. Joe and his friends put us up in a nice hotel. We’d wake up in the morning and someone would be there to take us wherever we wanted to go: down to the beach, into the village, or round the island. It was a great set-up and the Maltese loved their football. The next summer I went back with Cas, Gary and Ben Thornley. It was a lads’ holiday; or, at least, as laddish as it was ever going to get with us – a couple of beers and a little holiday romance but nothing you’d need to keep a secret from your mum.

We’d told Joe beforehand not to book us a smart hotel or anything, although when we got to our apartment block we wished we hadn’t mentioned anything. The place was terrible. There was no air-conditioning and Malta, in the summer, is stifling hot. Gary and Ben grabbed the one room that had a fan in it and Cas and I just sweated away, all day and all night. Those were really good times, though. I loved it so much I went back the next six summers on the trot. Gary even got himself his own place over there.

The four of us used to knock about in Manchester, too, along with Dave Gardner, who was younger than us but always knew the best places to go. Our regular night out together was on a Wednesday, usually to a place called Johnsons, which was in the centre of town but slightly tucked away. We were sensible lads – Ben, I suppose, was the most outgoing – and we knew when to stop; when to go home and when to get out of a place if it seemed dodgy. We also had Gary with us, who’s one of the most paranoid people ever. He’d drive us mad sometimes. We’d all walk into a place, then turn round and see Gary, standing there bolt upright.

‘No, lads. I’m not comfortable here. We’ve got to get out. Come on, we’ve got to get out.’

All it would take would be one funny look from someone. In a way it was good, because it meant we never had a whiff of trouble. Later, we’d all end up at Ben’s to stay the night. He was still living with his parents and his room was right up at the top of the house: a big room but absolutely freezing. Ben, of course, would be tucked up cosy in his bed. Me, Gary and Cas would be lying on the floor, shivering. I miss those nights out: I couldn’t do anything like that now, after all.

Like all young players, we had our jobs to do around the training ground. I remember Cas and I being put on the first-team dressing room, which meant we had to scrub the baths and showers and clean the changing room itself. I got in there first and got the easy half of it: got my shorts on and just sploshed around till the baths and showers were hosed down. Cas was too slow off the mark and got left with the mud and rubbish in the changing rooms. We had a bit of a row about that one, and almost ‘got the ring out’, which was when we’d wrap towels around our hands and have mock boxing matches to sort out an argument. To make it even worse for him, we changed over around Christmas. That meant I was on the changing rooms, looking busy cleaning boots, and ready to pick up the bonuses from the senior players at just the right time. Cas couldn’t believe I’d got away with it.

It’s one of the sad things about a life in football. You get really close to people and then, when they move to another club, you lose touch. I still see Ben Thornley now and again and I know Gary talks to Chris Casper sometimes. But I think back to when we were teenagers and the four of us were together all the time, and got on so well: once Ben and Cas moved on, that all finished. It’s a shame but, perhaps, it just goes with the job: you have to focus on the players who are in the dressing room alongside you at the time.

Even though I was occasionally homesick, it was a fantastic life. Mum and Dad were great, coming up to watch me play every weekend without fail. And day to day at United was everything I’d imagined it would be. It hadn’t taken long for me to become friendly with the lads I was training alongside all week; or for us to start winning football matches together five- or six-nil. Because I was smaller and, at first, Keith Gillespie used to play in my position on the right, I did worry that I wasn’t getting in the team for some of the bigger games. That first season, most of the players we were playing against were a year older than us when it came to FA Youth Cup ties and, to start with, Eric used to leave me out of those games.

Eventually I got my chance. Keith Gillespie got moved to play up front so I could play wide right. I was competing with Robbie Savage for that position as well, but Robbie got injured during that season. I’ve found out since that United hadn’t won the Youth Cup since 1964, when George Best was in the team, so what we achieved in 1992, with most of us in our first full year at the club, meant something special as far as history was concerned. At the time, though, none of us were really aware of that: it was just the excitement of playing and winning games for United.

I remember beating Spurs in the 1992 Youth Cup semi-final. Then, like the semi, the final was played over two legs. We beat Crystal Palace 3–1 down in London. The game almost never happened: it had hammered down all day and the pitch was waterlogged but, just as they were deciding to call it off, the rain stopped and we went ahead. Nicky Butt scored two and I got the other – a volley, left foot, from the edge of the box after Ben Thornley cut the ball back – and then we won 3–2 back at our place. The bond in that team was amazing, with Ryan Giggs, who was a year older than most of us, as captain.

That second leg at Old Trafford was some night: there were 32,000 United fans there to watch, which made for a bigger atmosphere than any of us had ever experienced before. You always get supporters who want to see the local talent come through and so follow the Youth side. But 32,000 of them? Maybe the word was getting round that the club had found a particularly good group of young players. I think we were aware of what was going on, but we never really talked about it amongst ourselves. Over the two or three years we were coming through, Alex Ferguson said just once: ‘If we don’t get a first-team player out of this lot, we might as well all pack up and go home.’ Other than that, nobody inside the club mentioned that there might be something special happening. The focus was always on that day’s training session or on that afternoon’s game.

We got to the Youth Cup Final the following year, too. I can still remember the semi-final against Millwall. We’d heard that they had something planned before the game. Sure enough, out they came on the night of the first leg at Old Trafford, and every single player had his head shaved. I don’t know if that was what threw us out of our stride, but we lost 2–1. For the second leg we had to go down to the old Den – which, being nearly full, had a pretty intimidating atmosphere even for a Youth game – and we won 2–0 to go through to the final, where we played Leeds United.

People have said since that it was strange how we had so many future first-team players in our side and yet hardly any of the Leeds boys came through. In those two games, though, they played very well and were really fired up. We lost 2–0 at Old Trafford and then went to Elland Road for the second leg. There, it wasn’t just the players who were up for it. We’d had a 30,000 crowd again in Manchester. When they announced that Leeds’ home crowd was even bigger on the night, you’d have thought a goal had been scored. Their fans really got behind them and they beat us again, this time 2–1.

We’d played a lot of games that season and I remember being very tired, but losing that final wasn’t such a bad thing. For most of us, it was the first big disappointment of our footballing lives and perhaps it made us stronger, having to experience it together. You want to make sure you don’t feel that down again in the future. And you certainly don’t ever want Eric Harrison going mad at you again like he did in the dressing room after we’d lost at Elland Road.

By then, the 1992/93 season, the players in our age group were starting to get involved, and to get games, with the first team. As early as September, I got called into training with the senior players and, a couple of days later, the manager told me that I would be travelling to Brighton for a League Cup tie. Gary, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes were coming as well. We flew down on this little seventeen-seater plane. It was a horrible flight: the noise, the bumping, the cramped seats, and it seemed to go on forever. Maybe that was why I got such a great night’s sleep once we’d finally arrived. I woke up to the news that I was going to be one of the substitutes.

About twenty minutes from the end, the gaffer told me I was going on in place of Andrei Kanchelskis. I was so excited I jumped off the bench and cracked my head on the roof of the dugout: a great start to a first-team career. The boss wanted to have a look at me and I think I did all right. Mum and Dad were at the Goldstone and they were as surprised as I was that I actually got a game. Seventeen minutes as a United player, but I still felt really young. What was I? Just seventeen? More like the boy who’d been on the bench at West Ham as a mascot than a man ready to be in United’s first team. The manager had a little go at me in the dressing room afterwards. I don’t remember having done anything wrong. He was probably just trying to make sure I didn’t get ahead of myself: a sign of one or two difficult times, maybe, that lay ahead for the two of us further down the line.

It was a long time before I got another chance. The Youth Cup side had all moved up to reserve team football: we’d won the ‘A’ League and then the Central League, the first time the club had done that in over twenty years. I played in some League Cup games again early on in the 1994/95 season, when the gaffer rested his first-choice players. Back in the early 1990s, United struggled a bit in Europe because of the Overseas Players Rule, which meant you could only play three foreigners in the European Cup. It wasn’t that we didn’t have a strong squad, but the changes the boss had to make would disrupt the rhythm of the side. That particular season, we were already as good as out of the competition but had a home game against Galatasaray still to play. It was early December.

The first I knew about the possibility of me being involved was an article in the Manchester Evening News saying the gaffer was thinking about giving some youngsters a chance to try European football. On the day, he told a few of us we’d actually start the game that night. I don’t know about the others, but I went into it not having a clue what to expect. About half an hour in, I scored my first senior goal for United. The ball rolled out to me, in front of the Stretford End, and I remember thinking: if I catch this right, something could happen. Even though I didn’t really connect properly, the ball bobbled in somehow and I turned and ran away to celebrate. Eric Cantona was the first player to get to me. I was buzzing that much, he was having to fight me off in the end. I just wouldn’t let go of him. I’ve scored a goal and I’m celebrating with Eric Cantona.

I really enjoyed myself. I think Galatasaray had left out some senior players, too, and the game wasn’t as difficult as it might have been. We played well, and the fact that there were so many of the younger boys in the team made it even better. Starting the game had made a difference, too. I felt a lot more at home at Old Trafford that night than I had during my seventeen minutes down at Brighton, two years before. For us boys, it felt like the European Cup Final, never mind that United were going out whatever the result. As it was, we won 4–0, which is a decent score in a European game whatever the circumstances. The manager didn’t say anything afterwards. He was disappointed to be out of Europe, but seemed happy enough with how the young lads had played.

That first start in a big European fixture was an exception for me. I still had work – and filling out – to do. The thing that has kept United and the players at the club driving on is the knowledge that if your standards slip, there’s someone waiting to take your place. As a teenager, the doubts about whether you’d still be there in a week, a month, or even a year’s time, were even more intense. It was back to the reserves after my start in the Galatasaray game. Back to wondering whether I was good enough to take the next big step: establishing myself in the first team by getting games in the Premier League. Sometimes in a career, even if you think you know what you need next, you have to be ready to make the best of what comes along.

It wasn’t every day I got called in after training to see the manager in his office:

‘Preston North End have asked if they could take you on loan for a month. I think it’s a good idea.’

Straight away, I put two and two together and made five. I was nineteen. Nicky Butt and Gary Neville were already getting games on a fairly regular basis. I’d been involved with the first team, but I wasn’t progressing as quickly as them. Had United decided I wasn’t going to be strong enough to make it? Was this a way of easing me out? I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. They don’t rate me. They want to get rid of me.

It might have been an overreaction, but that’s how I felt. Of course, the first person I spoke to was Eric Harrison and, because of the conversation I had with him, the boss had me back in to explain.

‘This isn’t about anything else but you getting first-team experience, in a different team, in a different league.’

I’m glad I had that chance to talk to him because it meant I went to Preston in the right frame of mind. I could have stayed in Manchester to train and just gone to Deepdale to play in the games but, because I knew now it was something United saw as part of me developing as a player, I decided to join up with Preston full-time for the month. If I was going to do it, then I should do it properly.

When I turned up at their training ground for the first time, I was pretty nervous. I went into the dressing room and all the Preston players were sitting there, as if they’d been waiting for me. I don’t know if they were thinking it, or I just imagined they were. Here’s this big-time Charlie from United, and he’s a cockney as well. Either way, it was a really awkward morning. Preston were in Division Three. It was a world away from the life I’d got used to at a club where everything was taken care of for you, where only the best facilities were good enough. At the end of the first training session, I threw my kit down in the dressing room before taking a shower.

‘Not on the floor. You take it home and wash it yourself for tomorrow.’

It didn’t bother me. I just wasn’t prepared for how things were done at Deepdale. The manager, Gary Peters, didn’t waste any time by way of introductions. On that first day, he got all the players and me together in a circle:

‘This is David Beckham. He’s joining us for a month from Manchester United. He can play. And he’ll take all the free-kicks and all the corners, which means you’re off them and you’re off them.’

He pointed to the lads who were usually on dead balls and didn’t even wait for an answer. What a start. It must have annoyed some of the other players. It would have annoyed me. Things were a bit embarrassing to start with, but once we were working together and got to know each other, I had a great time with all the lads at Preston. We had a few nights out the month I was there. It made a real difference that I wasn’t just turning up for the games. They knew I’d chosen to be at Preston every day for the month of the loan.

Amongst the players, David Moyes, who’s now the Everton manager, was the top man. He was a centre-half, the kind of player who’d throw himself into any tackle possible. Even into some that weren’t possible. He’d be shouting, geeing people up, and was passionate about winning games. He was club captain and he talked to me, got me involved, right from the off. It’s not just hindsight: you could tell then that David was going to make a manager. He knew straight away what I was about, that I’d be quiet, keep myself to myself and just talk when I needed to. He put himself out to bring me into the group, to look after me, and I really appreciated that.

Gary Peters, the manager, was brilliant as well. It probably helped that he was a Londoner too. He made it clear what he needed me to do and gave me the confidence to do it. He seemed to really believe in me. He must have watched me playing for the reserves at United and I found out later that he’d asked about taking me on loan almost as a joke, not thinking the club would agree. He couldn’t believe it when the gaffer said yes. I understand Preston even put a bid in for me after the loan spell, but Gary knew that really would have been pushing their luck.

It all happened very quickly. I trained with them on the Monday then Gary put me into the reserves on the Wednesday, which felt quite strange. Preston played in the Central League, like United’s reserves, and beforehand it almost seemed like I’d fallen on hard times. But once you’re out there playing you forget all that. I did all right, set up a goal and scored one myself. So, come the Saturday, I was on the bench for the first team against Doncaster at Deepdale.

It was a bit of a surprise when Ryan Kirby, who I’d played alongside for so many years with Ridgeway, lined up for Doncaster. My dad was up for the game, of course. And so was Ryan’s dad, Steve, who’d also done some of the coaching when we were kids. For me and Ryan, though, it was more of a quick hello and then we had to get on with it.