Beckham Page 11

  Just a month or so later, we were down in London to play Chelsea and, before the game, someone in the dressing room said that a couple of the Spice Girls were at Stamford Bridge.

  Which ones? Is Posh here? Where are they sitting? Somehow or other, I kept the excitement to myself. Maybe this was the chance I’d been waiting for. Later, I found out that it was Victoria, along with Melanie Chisholm, who’d come to the game. As I went up to the players’ lounge, I was praying she would be there.

  I met up with Mum and Dad. Victoria and Melanie were chatting in one corner. Their manager walked over and introduced himself:

  ‘Hello, David. I’m Simon Fuller. I look after the Spice Girls. I’d like you to meet Victoria.’

  I could feel little beads of sweat starting to roll down my forehead. Suddenly it was very hot indeed in that lounge. She came over. I didn’t have a speech ready, so all I could manage was:

  ‘Hello, I’m David.’

  Victoria seemed pretty relaxed. I think she and Mel had had a glass of wine or two. In the game I’d scored with a volley, which I hoped might have impressed her, until I found out she hadn’t been wearing her glasses. The truth was Victoria didn’t really have a clue what had been going on during the match. She was looking at me and, I guessed, didn’t have the faintest idea who I was. Man United? Chelsea? Were you even playing today? Later, someone reminded her that she’d picked my picture out of an album of soccer stickers when the Girls had been doing a photo shoot in team outfits a few days before. Knowing nothing about the game, she’d been the only one who hadn’t made up her mind whose uniform to wear. Looking at those pictures had been part of trying to decide which team she was going to pretend to support. Right then, though, that picture wasn’t doing me any good at all.

  ‘I’m Victoria.’

  And that was that. I couldn’t think what to say next. Simon Fuller rattled on for a bit about the game: I can’t say I remember a word of it. She went back into her corner with Melenie. I went back to where my mum and dad were standing. I looked across the room at Victoria. Stared, in fact: I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And I could see Victoria was looking back at me. I should be trying to get her number, at least trying to say something else to her. But I didn’t. She left. I left. That was it; I’d blown my big chance. I got back on the team bus and it was all I could do not to start banging my head against the back of the seat in front in frustration.

  During the course of the following week, once I’d got over feeling sorry for myself, I found out a little more about the Girl of my dreams. Despite the missed opportunity, meeting her had only made me more certain about her. I saw the piece in 90 Minutes magazine featuring the Spice Girls in their soccer uniforms, Victoria in United colors and a caption saying she liked the look of David Beckham. I didn’t know how these things worked; that the quote from her might have just been made up. No: made up was what I was. And for the next home game, there she was at Old Trafford.

  This time, it had been the full works. Victoria had been wined and dined before the match by Martin Edwards, the United Chairman. She and Melanie had gone out on the field to do the half-time scores. And now she was in the players’ lounge after the game, in the middle of another glass of champagne. I walked in and went over to say hello to Mum and Dad. And, because we’d met before—briefly, nervously—it was easier this time to say hello to Victoria. She looked fantastic in tight combat trousers and a little khaki top, cut quite low; an unbelievable figure. I remember hoping she wouldn’t get the wrong idea about me and her cleavage: there was a tiny blemish, like a freckle, at the top of her breastbone that I just couldn’t stop staring at.

  Deciding what to say next wasn’t exactly obvious. This is it. You’re the one. That was in my head. But you can’t really make that sort of declaration to someone you’ve only ever said three words to, especially with your mum and dad and your team-mates within earshot. Joanne was there and she and Victoria seemed to be doing better on the small talk than I was. My sister, at least, had some idea of how I was feeling. I did the bloke thing and went off to the bar to get a round of drinks. The next moment, Victoria was there beside me. It wasn’t like we knew what we wanted to say. How do you start? What’s it like being a pop star? What’s it like playing soccer for a living? But I think we both knew that we needed to be speaking to each other and once we started talking—at last—neither of us wanted to stop. Next time I was aware of where I was, I was looking around the room and thinking: Where’s everybody gone?

  Mum and Dad were still there. Oh, no. Not a Spice Girl they were probably muttering to themselves. And one or two other people were just sort of lingering, as if they were waiting to see what was going to happen. I remember Victoria going off to the ladies room and me having this big now-or-never moment with myself. When she came back, I sputtered out an invitation to dinner. I didn’t have any sort of plan. I hadn’t thought about where we might go. It was just instinctive: I didn’t want her to leave. Victoria said she had to go back to London, as the Spice Girls were flying off to America on Monday. But she asked me for my phone number. Without missing a beat, I did the reckoning up. What? So you can forget you’ve got it? Or lose it? Or decide not to call?

  ‘No, Victoria. I’ll take your number.’

  She scrabbled around in her bag and pulled out her boarding card from the flight up to Manchester that morning. She wrote down her cell phone number, then scratched that out and gave me her number at home at her parents’ instead. I still have that precious little slip of card. It was like treasure and I was never likely to lose it. But as soon as I got home, I wrote the number down on about half a dozen other bits of paper and left them in different rooms, just in case.

  It usually takes me ages to get off to sleep the night after a game: the adrenaline’s still pumping five or six hours later. That particular night, I was buzzing with having met Victoria properly too. I must have slept because I remember waking up late. At about eleven, I picked up The Number and dialed. The voice at the other end sounded just like her but, because I couldn’t be sure, I decided to be polite as I could:

  ‘Is Victoria there?’

  Just as well I hadn’t ploughed straight in. It was her sister, Louise.

  ‘No. She’s at the gym. Who is this? I’ll get her to give you a call.’

  Everybody’s been a teenager. A teenager in love. And I’m sure there are plenty of people, like me, who were still getting a bit melodramatic about it all well into their twenties. She’s out at the gym? Well, that’s it then: that’s the brush off, isn’t it? Getting her sister to answer the phone and say she’s out. I didn’t actually go and lie down and beat the floor with my fists, but that’s what it felt like. I knew Victoria and me had to happen. But maybe she didn’t and now it wasn’t going to. I just sat on the bed, staring at the phone. Half an hour? An hour? It felt like a week. And then the thing rang.

  ‘David? It’s Victoria.’

  We picked up where we’d left off at Old Trafford the evening before. I got the feeling we were both talking away, trying to find the nerve to actually say what we meant. I’d already asked once, in Manchester, and eventually I got round to asking again:

  ‘What are you doing later?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’m in Manchester but I’ll drive down. We could go out.’

  Five hours later I was at the car wash in Chingford. First things first: the car had to look its best. I wasn’t to know whether Victoria would be impressed with the new one, a blue BMW M3 convertible, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I scrubbed it, hoovered it and by the time I got to my mum’s I was looking in worse shape than the car had after the drive down. Mum knew I’d got Victoria’s number at Old Trafford and I think she knew what was going on when I turned up on the doorstep. She wasn’t too sure about the whole Spice Girls thing at all but she knew me better than to try talking me out of it: I’m as soft as she is but, when I get my heart set on something, I’m as stubborn as my dad.

  ‘All r
ight, David. It’s up to you.’

  She knew perfectly well she’d have no chance of changing my mind. On went clean clothes: a white t-shirt, a beige jacket, Timberlands and a pair of Versace jeans. It was like putting on my costume for the most important show ever. I rang the co-star and we arranged to meet—very swish setting—at a bus stop outside the Castle, a pub we both knew in Woodford. We worked out later that we’d been in that pub at exactly the same time as each other in the past but without realizing it.

  She pulled up in her car, a purple-colored MG, and I went over. I climbed in the passenger seat. I was so nervous. What should I do? Kiss her on the cheek? Shake hands? With a little wobble in my voice, I mumbled:

  ‘All right?’

  I’d sorted out my car. I’d sorted out my wardrobe. I can’t say I’d sorted out a plan for the evening.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Victoria smiled.

  ‘Um. Where would you like to go?’

  We pulled out into the road, neither of us having a clue where we were heading but both of us sure we wanted to go there together. I knew her manager, Simon, was really nervous about the Girls and their boys. Anything that was going on in Spiceworld was all over the papers almost before it had happened in those days. I didn’t want to be sharing her company with anybody anyway, to be honest. So we drove around looking for somewhere that would be private enough.

  The other reason for wanting to be out of the way was that she had a boyfriend, Stuart, who she was still seeing. He was off skiing in France with her dad at the time. Victoria was straight with me about it from the start; like me, she tries to be completely honest with people. We’d only just met. She didn’t want us to mess up each other’s lives, or anyone else’s for that matter. There was just one difficult moment and that was that night: Stuart called Victoria on her cell phone while we were driving around together. I was single, of course, but I told Victoria all about the important girlfriends in my past: Deana, who I’d been with for three years when I first moved up to Manchester and who had been so important to me as a teenager away from home for the first time; and Helen, who I’d been seeing for eighteen months more recently and who’d stepped away when people started fussing about this young lad from London making a name for himself at United.

  Victoria told me about Stuart, and about a lot else besides, as we drove past crowded pub after crowded pub around North-east London. When you meet The One, there’s a lot of catching up to do. We made a good start that night and, an hour or so later, I had my good idea:

  ‘I know this little Chinese.’

  There was a restaurant in Chingford that I’d visited with Mum and Dad. Nothing spectacular but it had one big thing to recommend it: there was never anyone else in the place whenever I’d eaten there. I gave Victoria directions; we parked and went in. Perfect: it was absolutely deserted. We sat down and I ordered:

  ‘Could we have a Coke and a Diet Coke, please?’

  The lady who ran the restaurant looked at us. Oh, the last of the big spenders. She didn’t have a clue who we were. I could understand her not recognizing me, but Victoria? It was a little world of its own, that Chinese.

  ‘You can’t have drink unless you eat meal.’

  I said we just wanted a quiet drink. She wasn’t having any of it:

  ‘This is an exclusive restaurant, you know.’

  We were getting chucked out. I offered to pay for a full meal if we could just have our drinks but it was too late for that and, suddenly, at eleven o’clock at night, we were standing back out in the street. It was time for Victoria to have her good idea:

  ‘We could go round to my friend’s house.’

  My luck: the friend was Melanie Chisholm. What had I got myself into? I was out with one Spice Girl and now we were going round to another one’s house. How much more nervous could a lad get on a first date?

  When we arrived, Melanie was in her pajamas and had got out of bed to answer the door. The moment we walked in, my heart sank. There was this big Liverpool FC poster up on the door. I’m not ready for this.

  I sat down and Victoria and Melanie went missing for ten minutes. I think they were in the kitchen chatting while I was left on my own on the sofa in the lounge like a complete lemon. By the time they came back, I’d wound myself up all over again. It was like being at a really awkward tea party. Victoria was nervous too, I think. We sat at the two ends of the sofa as if we hadn’t been properly introduced. They chatted. I sat and listened. I’m not sure I actually said a word the whole time we were there.

  An hour or two later we were back in Victoria’s MG, continuing our tour of the M25’s beauty spots. I remember she drove us past her parents’ house at one point, maybe just so that I’d know where to find her. Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, we were back at the Castle. The Spice Girls were off to the States the following day and we had to say our goodbyes. I got back in my car and waved. Victoria promised to call when she got to New York. Not exactly the most romantic of first dates, but I felt like it couldn’t have been better. I’d known that all we needed was to meet. Love at first sight? No, it was happening quicker than that.

  So was everything else. That 1996/97 season United won the League again and got closer than we ever had before to what I think had become the manager’s real ambition: winning the European Cup again for the club. It’s a bit like learning soccer all over again, getting to grips with playing the best teams in Europe. There have been one or two teams that United seem to have played over and over again in the last ten years. I’m thinking of Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich, in particular. It’s almost as if you have to meet those teams in the Champions League just to find out what kind of progress you’ve made on the European stage.

  In the autumn of 1996, I remember we got beaten twice by Juve, 1–0 both home and away. No matter how much of the ball we had, we just couldn’t workout how to defeat them. We still qualified from the first group stage, though, and it felt for a while like we were on our way. There was one amazing night at Old Trafford when we spanked Porto 4–0 in the quarter-finals. That was the start, I think, of people taking United seriously as a team that could win the competition. That year, we went into the semi-finals against Borussia Dortmund believing we had a real chance. Instead, they mugged us: like so many German teams, they were very organized and knew exactly what they were doing. They defended really well; I remember their left-back, Jorg Hein-rich, was about as difficult to play against over those two games as any player I’ve ever faced. After they beat us 1–0 in the first leg in Dortmund, we fancied our chances, but they repeated that score line at Old Trafford and then went on to beat Juventus in the final.

  Those games against Dortmund were real killers but, otherwise, things couldn’t have gone much better for me that season. I found myself wearing the number 10 shirt, playing almost every game, and scoring the kind of goals I used to when playing for Ridgeway Rovers: like the one from beyond the halfway line at Selhurst Park against Wimbledon, or the volley against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on the day I first met Victoria. To top it all off, I was voted PFA Young Player of the Year. When the opponents you’re up against in the Premiership every week give you that kind of recognition, you can’t help but feel like you’re doing something right.

  It was a great time to be a United player. We had the best manager in the country, and it definitely felt like we had the best number two as well. I know the boss said some uncomplimentary things about Brian Kidd after he left Old Trafford to take the manager’s job at Blackburn Rovers, but I thought they made a great team. Kiddo’s a fantastic coach—just ask anybody who’s ever worked with him—and I think, at United especially, he did a great job working between the boss and the players. Everybody in the dressing room thought that Brian was ‘one of us’. After training or after a game, no one needed to watch what they were saying or doing. Kiddo would be having a laugh along with the rest.

  He knew when it was time to be serious too. We worked really hard in tr
aining but you never noticed it with Kiddo because he made sure every session was different: it stopped us ever getting bored and the new routines kept players fresh. Scholesy and Nicky Butt and the Nevilles had known Brian even longer than I had: he was United through and through. I think that’s part of the reason he handled relationships between people at the club so well. I know I’m not the only one who, at some point during his time at Old Trafford, had to thank him for defusing a confrontation with the boss. He never went against the manager, or tried to undermine him in any way, but I always felt like he looked out for us players. It made for a really happy dressing room.

  It was also a pretty successful dressing room. We were disappointed to miss out in Europe but, in May 1997, winning the Premiership for the second year running was a big achievement in itself. In the end, we finished seven points clear, but it was more than just a one-or two-horse race. Liverpool, Newcastle and Arsenal all had a go at different times in the season. We won the title with a couple of weeks to spare; it was a bit strange becoming champions thanks to another team losing. On Monday night we drew 3–3 with Middlesbrough at Old Trafford. You don’t forget any game where Gary Neville scores a goal. Then on Tuesday, Liverpool, the only team who could beat us to the title, had a televised match against Wimbledon. I was round at Ben Thornley’s house with Gary to see it. I don’t like watching soccer on television in the best of times and, with what was at stake, I couldn’t stand the tension. Gary and I ended up going out for a walk and missing the whole of the second half.

  By the time we got back, Wimbledon had won and that meant we were champions. Normally at the end of a game in which you win a trophy, you can let some of the adrenaline out, on the field and back in the dressing room. That evening in 1997, though, we were sitting in Ben Thornley’s lounge. We broke the club curfew that night; the only time I ever did. We had a game against Newcastle coming up on Thursday and so we should have been at home, getting an early night. I’m not a drinker or a clubber anyway, as a general rule. But that evening was different. We’d won the League, hadn’t we? It didn’t feel like an occasion to be sitting indoors, so the three of us went out on the town in Manchester and had a beer or two more than we should have done. I’m sure the manager knew—he knows everything about everybody—but we got away with it. And there was no harm done because we drew against Newcastle two evenings later.