Beckham (39 page)

He did. A big problem. To be specific, it was that, instead of going straight off on vacation, I'd gone to Buckingham Palace with the rest of the England players. 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 in the papers 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 abuse because he turned up wearing sneakers. What would it have been like if I hadn't turned up at all?'

What the manager 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, to be honest. I'd been at the club for thirteen years.

‘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. And, in the days afterwards, it was like the conversation hadn't happened at all. In training, it felt like I was on the end of the worst criticism, whatever I did, for no real reason at all. The manager's never been afraid to change things at United. I got my chance in the first team, after all, because he sold Andrei Kanchelskis.
Now it was beginning to feel like I was the one being set up for the chop. We were all used to getting grief from the boss: for years it had been one way of him getting the best out of his players. This wasn't like that, though. It was personal and it was humiliating. Try as I might to carry on as normal, the situation got to me. Ask Victoria: she had her own worries with Romeo being so young. And she hated the fact that I was so down and depressed the whole time. It wasn't her fault was it? But she was the one who got it in the ear day after day from an unhappy husband.

That meeting with the manager hadn't resolved anything. Even after I'd got back to full fitness and was playing again in the team, it seemed I couldn't do anything right in his eyes. Before Christmas, the players would go to local hospitals, bringing presents for the kids. The previous couple of years, we'd spread things around a bit by me and Victoria going to a different hospital, the Christie Cancer Hospital in Manchester, and 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 wanting to be 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.

The day of our game against Chelsea at Old Trafford in the Worthington Cup, Brooklyn had his first nativity play at nursery school. We trained in the morning and were due to meet up at one o'clock to prepare for the game. I asked the manager if I could report a few minutes late: the play started at midday and lasted about an hour. 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 fifteen 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 had to take that as my answer. I was sorry to miss Brooklyn's play but I understood a manager not wanting his player to be there on the day of a game. 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. The boss, when he wasn't having a go at me, seemed to be ignoring me. I got more and more depressed. At training, at home, I felt like just withdrawing into my shell. I'd be really quiet. Things people said to me would go in one ear and out the other. He was ignoring me and I found myself ignoring him and pretty well everything else, too. Obviously I talked to Gary, to Victoria, and to Tony Stephens about what was going on. But I really missed there being someone at the club to act as an intermediary between me and the boss: a Brian Kidd, a Steve McClaren or an Eric Harrison who could see things from the manager's perspective as well as the players', who really understood what the situation was and could advise you accordingly. The new number two, Carlos Queiroz, was a great coach, no question, but maybe because of a language barrier or because of his own background as a top-flight manager himself, he wasn't someone I'd have felt comfortable having that kind of conversation with. I don't think Carlos would have recognized it as part of his job, either. The boss himself, obviously, didn't want to talk to me. For the first time in my United career, I felt like I didn't have anybody on the staff I could turn to for help.

I've already mentioned how difficult I've found it to cope with my parents' splitting up. It goes without saying, though, that with the situation between them coming to a head and, then, the divorce going through, my own relationship with Mum and Dad couldn't help but be affected too. Any son, or daughter, who's lived through a family breaking up, will know how disorientating and confusing it is. With Dad, especially,
things changed over that time. In the past, he'd have been the first person I'd have talked to about what was happening at Old Trafford. Now, he had his own problems and pressures to deal with and it didn't feel right to be looking to him for advice. Because she and Jackie—Victoria's mum—are the world's best babysitters, I was still seeing a lot of my mum around the time things started to go wrong for me at United. I've always known that she and Dad were there for me but, as far as soccer was concerned, Mum had given me support while Dad, I suppose, had been the one to give me guidance. Now, though, she could see for herself how this standoff with the boss was torturing her son; and how me being upset was hurting her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren too. Without me knowing, Mum decided to take it on herself to do something about what was happening.

We played West Ham in the FA Cup and Mum was at Old Trafford to watch. For the first time, I felt the depression affecting my game. I played, and we won 6–0, but there wasn't much pleasure to be gotten from it, especially as the boss had had a go at me about something at half-time. I remember getting changed and leaving the ground as quick as I could. By the time I was in the car with Victoria, it felt like something had to give. I felt completely powerless and just sat there, staring out into the rain, and choking back the tears. Mum came away from Old Trafford a bit later—she and Joanne were driving back to London separately—and phoned from their car:

‘I've been to see him.'

My first reaction was: ‘Been to see who?'

Without Mum saying, I knew she meant the boss. And then I was angry. The idea of my mum going to see my boss seemed totally wrong, somehow. She explained that it hadn't been planned, that she'd run into the manager by chance in the corridor and felt she had to tell him what she thought. At 27, it seemed to me that I should be able to sort out my own problems at work. It was a real surprise to me that she'd done what she had. I'd guess it was for the boss, too. She told
me a bit about what had been said and one thing stuck in my mind:

‘Do you know Sandra, the trouble with David is that everybody sucks up to him now.'

Nothing the manager could have said about me could have hit harder than that. I've always believed, whatever anyone else says or thinks about you, that you have to be true to yourself. When I was a kid—playing for Ridgeway, training with Spurs, starting out at United—whenever Dad had been angry with me about something, had decided my attitude wasn't right, he'd known just what to say to really get to me:

‘You've changed.'

Those words, coming from him, always stung me like nothing else: they suggested I was cheating with my soccer and with my life by pretending to be someone or something I wasn't. Dad knew how to get to me and so did Alex Ferguson. What he told my mum after that West Ham game was his way of saying the same thing Dad had said years ago. I knew how alike they were: stubborn, for a start. Maybe what neither of them really knew was how much I'd inherited that stubbornness as part of my own character. I couldn't let myself buckle under, anyway. I was angry, at first, that Mum had been to see the boss but it made me realize that if I was this upset and this frustrated, I needed to face up to the situation instead of just letting it grind me down.

A few days later, the boss asked to see me. He wanted to talk about the arrangements for the England friendly against Australia: the understanding with Sven was that the senior players would only be involved for 45 minutes. Of course, as England captain, I needed to know what was going on. All that was fine. Now it was my turn. I'd thought long and hard since the West Ham game about what I wanted to say to the manager and what I wanted to hear from him. We'd had a couple of days off and that had given me time to get a few things straight in my own mind. I needed to know if he wanted me to leave United. And, if he didn't but was going to carry on treating me the way he had been, I wanted him to know that I had one other option. I
couldn't imagine myself actually doing it but it was possible: I had enough in the bank to make sure that my decisions didn't have to be about money. Rather than have my life broken apart by the game I loved, I had a choice: I could retire from soccer altogether. I got as far as discussing it with Victoria. I didn't want to believe, though, that things might come to that:

‘Can we sort out our problem now, boss?'

‘What problem? Do we have a problem?'

‘Yes, we do. I'm not in the state I'm in for no reason. I'm depressed at the moment because of what you're doing to me.'

‘I've not been doing anything to you,' he said.

Then he went on: ‘You've been treating me the same way: ignoring me, not even looking at me in team talks.'

Which was true, but only because it had been all I could do, sometimes, to stop myself letting slip how down I was feeling. If you can't deal with something, you try and block it out.

‘Boss, this has been going on for months, at least as far back as me breaking my rib and the business about the visit to Buckingham Palace. I'm not enjoying training. I'm not enjoying soccer. I just can't go on like this.'

When I asked him if he really believed that people sucked up to me, and that I'd changed because of that, I think it caught him off guard. It was a strange moment—a moment of uncertainty—not like anything that had ever gone on between us before. Perhaps he was surprised that Mum and I had talked to each other about his conversation with her or surprised that I didn't mind him knowing we had. At first he denied saying it and then tried to explain what he'd meant. As far as I could see, the manager was missing the point.

‘I don't agree with you but put that to one side. Even if you don't approve of how other people might behave towards me, is it right to blame me for it? To take it out on me the way you have been doing?'

I think the boss agreed with that. The principle of it, anyway. This was too important to me to just leave it there, though.

‘I'm 27 years old now. I think I've grown up a bit. And I think, now, I respond better to encouragement than I do to being picked on. The way it's been the past few months: perhaps, in the past, it might have worked on me. It doesn't any more. If I'm playing well now, it's down to me and the support I get at home. It's in spite of how you're being towards me, not because of it.'

He assured me that he wasn't trying to pick on me on purpose. That he wasn't treating me any differently than he was the other players. I'd said most of what I had to say and it felt strange that the boss hadn't jumped back at me. It never blew up into anger. Maybe that's why the meeting didn't get to where I'd thought it might: either a genuine reconciliation or me telling the boss that I was planning to retire. Instead he said he wanted us to move on:

‘You communicate with me. I'll communicate with you. We'll be professional and we'll go on from there.'

I stood up and went to walkout of the office. The manager said to me in that half-joking, slightly sarcastic way he has:

‘Come here and shake my hand before you start crying.'

I didn't feel like crying. I'm not sure it felt like the time to shake hands either, but I did. I left feeling that nothing had been resolved; that nothing had really changed. The next morning at training, though, it felt like something had. The manager was completely different, or seemed to be: positive, encouraging, friendly even. For a while, it was great. It seemed as if the meeting had, after all, done the trick. It was all I needed to lift me out of the gloom I'd sensed myself slipping into. Not getting it in the neck every other day meant I could enjoy training and playing again like I hadn't for weeks. It felt like me and the boss had found our way past something: the tension that had been between us since the broken rib and my visit to Buckingham Palace.

I was wrong. In fact, it was the calm before the storm.

The Sunday before I went off to join up with England, we played Manchester City at home. Earlier in the season, we'd lost the game 3–1 at Maine Road. I hadn't played, so that couldn't have been my fault. Just as well. The next day, Gary Neville told me that, in the dressing room, the manager had been as angry as he'd ever seen him after a game. The result at Old Trafford wasn't much better. We conceded a late goal and drew 1–1. The manager picked me out for criticism in the dressing room afterwards, saying I'd given the ball away too often. I could only think of a couple of passes that had gone astray. I didn't rise to it, I just sat and let him have his say, but then, during the week, regretted that I hadn't. If I'd stuck up for myself that afternoon rather than waiting until after our next home game, perhaps things wouldn't have blown up in our faces the way they did.