![]() ![]() He was involved, he said, “but out in my own private Arctic”. ![]() When Beckham missed a late free kick that would have put United within one goal of progressing, the camera cut to Ferguson and Beckham saw his future written on his manager’s face.īeckham on the bench against Real Madrid in 2003 (Laurence Griffiths via Getty Images)īeckham still played a significant role in United’s run-in to regaining the Premier League title, scoring in each of their final wins against Charlton Athletic and Everton, but spent his final months as a United player feeling apart from the rest of the squad. He saw Ronaldo’s hat-trick, his own brace, but it was Ferguson’s reaction to another moment that stuck with him. ![]() In his autobiography, Beckham revealed how he was unable to sleep on returning home due to the adrenaline coursing through him, so sat up eating a bowl of noodles and watched a replay of the game. The story of that night features prominently in the documentary, as Beckham’s two goals off the substitutes’ bench in a 4-3 win against his club-to-be did not prove enough for United to progress on aggregate, but another anecdote from that evening does not make the cut. He wouldn’t have let me walk away from him like that.” ![]() Beckham later concluded that “if the gaffer had still cared about me as a person or as a player, we’d have had a row there and then. Ferguson had broken the news to Beckham that he would not be starting on the morning of the game, a decision he had expected all week but was no less difficult to hear.īeckham walked away from Ferguson as he delivered the news, half-expecting his manager to demand he turn around and walk back, but Ferguson did not put up a fuss. That was the night of United’s Champions League exit to Real Madrid in April of that year. Victoria Beckham at Old Trafford before things soured (Ross Kinnaird/Allsport via Getty Images) The incident itself was arguably not as damaging to Beckham’s United career as the fallout. To the United manager, this confirmed what he had long suspected: that Beckham had lost the tireless work ethic that had set him apart.įerguson kicked a pile of stray clothing in frustration and one of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s boots flew from the pile and hit Beckham in the face, cutting him above his left eye. In the dressing room, Ferguson accused Beckham of failing to track back, allowing Sylvain Wiltord to score Arsenal’s second goal. The tensions between the pair infamously came to a head after the 2-0 defeat to Arsenal in the next round. It reminded him of what his father used to tell him in his youth when he felt his attitude was not right: “You’ve changed.” “Do you know Sandra,” Ferguson said, in Beckham’s retelling, “the trouble with David is that everybody sucks up to him now.”īeckham felt that nothing his manager could have said would have hurt him more than that. One comment relayed back to Beckham stayed with him. Then, after a 6-0 win over West Ham in the FA Cup fourth round that January, Beckham’s mother bumped into Ferguson in a corridor at Old Trafford. It was no more or less significant than other minor disagreements between the pair, but it was a pattern the United manager found hard to ignore. The documentary makes much of Beckham’s refusal to take off a hat in front of Ferguson to avoid revealing a new hairstyle ahead of a match against Leicester City in 2000. There were reservations about his desire to sign up with agent Tony Stephens about the frequency with which he would visit Victoria about the brand endorsements, the boot deals, the Brylcreem. Ferguson regularly eased the concerns of Beckham’s parents that their son was too small to make it - any player with Beckham’s drive, talent and ambition would.īut during Beckham’s early twenties, his manager felt he was making “decisions that rendered it hard for him to develop into a really great footballer”, as Ferguson wrote in his 2013 book. Beckham and Ferguson on the eve of the Champions League final in 1999 (Patrick Hertzog/AFP via Getty Images)įerguson believed Beckham was the finest striker of a dead ball he had ever seen, not because of natural ability but, as Ferguson wrote in his 1999 autobiography, because he practised “with a relentless application that the vast majority of less gifted players wouldn’t contemplate”. ![]()
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