Beckham Page 13
I was lucky, though. So were Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes and the Nevilles. We were finding out what it was like to miss out with United, but we were getting the chance to be part of an England team together. And a successful England team at that. When it came to the end of the season in May 1998, we were hurting from losing out to Arsenal, of course, but there wasn’t the time to sit down and feel sorry for ourselves. Almost as soon as the last League game had been played, I was packing my bags for La Manga in Spain, and joining up with the other United lads and the rest of a 27-man England squad to prepare for the biggest summer any of us had ever known. I might have felt a little weary after a long English season, and maybe we all did, but that wasn’t important. I was about to experience a World Cup for the first time. France 98 meant new dreams and new expectations: as if being a husband-to-be didn’t already have me buzzing every day. I couldn’t wait for the tournament—and another chapter—to start.
6
Don’t Cry for Me
‘Oh, you’re the soccer player, aren’t you?’
There are plenty of soccer supporters in England who would rather see their club win the League than see the national team win the World Cup. I can understand that. You follow your club 365 days of every year; you’re thinking and talking about it far more than the England side. Everybody gets involved when England are playing in the major tournaments and big games, but your passion for the team you support is there all the time. When I was younger, maybe I was a bit like that. Even though I thought about representing my country, all my focus was on making it at United. Playing for England didn’t really begin to matter to me, and didn’t begin to seem like a realistic ambition, until after I’d found my feet at Old Trafford.
When I was a boy, Dad used to take me to watch schoolboy internationals involving players who were my age or just a little older, but I don’t think we ever went to see the full England side. In my early teens, I played soccer for my District and my County but I never got a sniff of a chance beyond that. Once I’d started at United, I did get invited for trials at the FA National School, which was based at Lilleshall in Shropshire in those days. I went along knowing full well that, even if I’d been offered a place, I wouldn’t have taken it up. As it turned out, I never had to think twice about the decision: the coaches at Lilleshall thought I was too small for a sixteen-year-old. I do know players—current England team-mates like Michael Owen and Sol Campbell—who went there and had a really good time. But it wasn’t for me. There was only one school where I wanted to be learning my game: Old Trafford. Who could be better teachers for me than the likes of Nobby Stiles, Eric Harrison and Alex Ferguson?
It’s an honor for any player to represent his country. But you can’t make it happen for yourself. All you can do is concentrate on playing for your club and hope that you catch the eye of the right person. As a teenager, I had enough on my plate trying to establish myself at United. That first Double-winning season, though, brought all of us into the limelight—and into the reckoning as far as England was concerned. When it happened for me, it all came quicker than I could have imagined, and was a bigger thrill than I’d ever let myself dream it might be. Almost overnight, it seemed I went from being a promising player at my club to being a regular part of the England team challenging for a place in the 1998 World Cup finals in France.
Terry Venables had left the England coaching job straight after Euro 96. I’d already met his replacement, Glenn Hoddle, during the Under-21 Toulon Tournament at the end of the 1995/96 season. We knew Glenn was going to be the next England manager, so it was quite exciting that he came out to France to watch a couple of games and introduce himself to us. As a player, Glenn had been a hero of mine. I’d always admired not just his technical ability—he really was a man who could hit a Hollywood pass—but also his whole approach to the game. I even got him to sign my England shirt after one of the matches. I’m not sure if the Toulon tournament was the first time he’d watched me, but I had a good game the night he showed up. He didn’t say anything to me but, going into the new season, the possibility of playing for the full England side was in the back of my mind for the first time.
There aren’t many players who get an England call-up completely out of the blue. New caps very rarely come as a complete surprise. I was lucky: I was playing in a successful United team and, against Wimbledon, had scored the kind of goal that brings you to people’s attention. Obviously, an England coach knows all about you anyway, but my start to the season meant there was a lot of speculation in the press, talking about me as a future England player who might be ready for his chance. There was a World Cup qualifier, away to Moldova, in September. I should have spoken to Gary Neville about it, but I think there was a bit of rivalry there: he was already in the England team and I wasn’t. Most players have a story about a dramatic phone call or their club manager pulling them aside at the training ground to tell them the news. I found out I’d made the England squad while sitting on the sofa at my mum and dad’s. Mum and I had been watching the television, when the details came up. As soon as I saw the name Beckham on the list of players Glenn Hoddle had chosen for his first game in charge, I jumped off the sofa. I surprised myself how excited I was. Mum and I hugged, laughing out loud, and then I was on the phone to my dad who was at work. For once, I think he was completely lost for words. He was proud, though. As proud as I was to be given my chance.
Whenever a new challenge has come along during my career, my first instinctive reaction is to suddenly find myself feeling like a schoolboy again. That was definitely true as I prepared to join up with a full England squad for the first time. I was going to be working alongside big-name senior players like Paul Gascoigne, David Seaman and Alan Shearer. I was just twenty, but at that moment I felt even younger, like a kid who’d been given the chance to meet his heroes. These were the players I’d grown up watching on television and, all of a sudden, I had to get ready to train with them ahead of a World Cup qualifier.
At United, Alex Ferguson was great. He was genuinely pleased for me, and told me just to go down and enjoy myself:
‘If you get the chance, play well. Just play like you have been doing for us at United.’
I took him at his word. I met up with the rest of the squad at Bisham Abbey and my first session with Glenn and with England was the best I’d ever trained in my life. I was beating players, getting my crosses in, every single pass reached its man. I even stuck a couple of shots away past David Seaman into the top corner. It was the kind of training session you’d have in a dream; it was a little bit weird just how perfect it was.
I don’t know how much it had to do with impressing him in training but for his first game in charge as England manager, Glenn Hoddle put me in the starting line-up. Of course, it helped that there were players around me who I knew well, like Gary Neville, Gary Pallister and Paul Ince. And we made a great start: Gary Nev and I were both involved in the build-up to the first goal, which was scored by Nicky Barmby. A few minutes later, Gazza had got a second and we weren’t going to lose it from there. In the second half, Alan Shearer got a third. As debuts go, it wasn’t spectacular but I felt as if I belonged straight away. I’d helped set up that third goal for the captain as well. Perhaps because I hadn’t had years of looking forward to international soccer, nerves weren’t a problem and I’d just got on with playing my game, like Mr Ferguson had told me to. On September 1 1996, on a Sunday afternoon in a city called Kishinev, on a bumpy field in front of about 10,000 people, I became an international soccer player.
Glenn Hoddle must have been pretty pleased, too. I played in every game of the qualifying campaign for France 98 that, thirteen months later, found us needing a draw in Rome against Italy to go through as group winners. After we’d lost 1–0 to Italy at Wembley, everybody had assumed we would have to win a two-legged play-off to qualify. And before the return game most people still thought that was what would happen. Italy had won their last fifteen fixtures at the Stadio Olimpico and we had
our captain, Alan Shearer, out injured, with Ian Wright coming in for him on the night. Even the England fans who made the trip, believing we could do it, had a surprise coming: nobody expected us to play as well as we did. It turned into a fantastic night for England.
There were over 80,000 inside the stadium and there was quite a lot of trouble in the crowd before the game but, by the time we came out, the atmosphere was just amazing. We had a team full of young players but we gave a really professional performance. I thought we beat the Italians at their own game: we were disciplined, everybody knew what they were supposed to be doing and we passed and kept the ball brilliantly all game. Everybody played well but, early on especially, Paul Gascoigne set the tone for the whole team. Every time he got the ball—and he went looking for it all over the field—he kept possession and refused to be hurried. He was doing step-overs, flicking the ball through an opponent’s legs for a pass, as if he was challenging them: We’re as good as you are with the ball, you know. It was just what the rest of us needed.
We kept our heads, even though the Italians were flying into their tackles, wanting the win just as much as we did. Then they had Angelo Di Livio sent off late in the second half. In the stands and watching at home on television, people must have thought we’d done it. In fact, it was only in the time left between then and the end of the match that I started getting nervous. Ian Wright was clean through, went round the goalkeeper, but then hit the post with his shot. Is it going to be one of those nights? We’re that close. Are they going to run up the other end now and score?
The Italians broke upfield and Christian Vieri had a free header in the last minute and put it over the bar. Seconds later, the whistle went. Everybody charged off the bench and we were celebrating together out on the field. Glenn and his number two, John Gorman, were jumping up and down: they’d done a fantastic job preparing us for that game. Paul Ince looked like the hero of the hour, with his head all bandaged up after he’d caught an elbow during the game. Wrighty was dancing around, hugging everybody he could lay his hands on. The supporters up in the stand behind the dugouts were dancing, too, singing the tune from The Great Escape. I looked around me, trying to take all this in. I’d been an England player for just over a year and here we were, going mad, on our way to France for the World Cup the following summer. I was so proud to be part of it all.
It must have been an amazing night for Paul Gascoigne. He was back at Lazio’s home ground with England and he was the one celebrating. People back home had been wondering if he was past his best and here he’d turned in the kind of performance you’d never forget. The way Gazza played that night—his ability, his nerve and the passion—I still wonder if that wasn’t what we were missing at France 98. I know Glenn Hoddle had his reasons for not including Paul in the squad, but I think we’d have been better with Gazza there. Even if it was just him coming off the bench for twenty minutes, Paul could bring something to the team nobody else could. He could change a game on his own. And I know we’d all have liked him to be around as part of the squad.
What made it worse was the way Paul and the others found out they weren’t going to be in the final 22 for the tournament. It was a bit like a meat market: ‘You’re in. You’re out.’ It was the wrong way to go about doing it. We were in La Manga in southern Spain, 27 of us in all, to prepare for the World Cup together before the manager made his decision about the final squad. Everybody was nervous, thinking about who wouldn’t be going to France. It could be someone from my club, a mate. It could be me. One afternoon, after training, we were given timed appointments at the hotel: five-minute slots to go in and see Glenn, to find out what was going to happen to us. Almost from the start, the schedule wasn’t working. I remember, at one point, sitting on the floor in a corridor with five other lads while we waited our turn. It was a ridiculous way to treat the players.
When eventually it came to my turn, the meeting didn’t last long. Looking back, it makes it seem even more unlikely that things turned out for me the way they did once the World Cup began. I walked into the room and Glenn’s first words were:
‘Well, David, it goes without saying that you’re in the squad.’
And that was it. At least I didn’t hold up the next appointment. I was in the 22; but what about everyone else? Rumors had been flying around all day, not surprising when everybody was just waiting to find out what would happen to them. There was a leak somewhere in the camp, too: stories kept on turning up in the papers that could only have come from inside the England set-up. People were saying there was going to be one big story coming out of all this, that one high-profile name would be left out of the squad. The suggestion seemed to be that it would be Gazza. But nobody knew for sure, neither the press nor the players.
We were down by the pool earlier in the day and I sat next to Paul. Suddenly, he turned over on his sun bed.
‘Do you know something, David? I love you. You’re a great young player and you’re a great lad. I love playing soccer with you.’
I looked at him. This was me, listening to one of England’s greatest-ever players.
‘I really want to go to this World Cup, David. I want to play in this World Cup with you.’
He said that more than once. He must have heard the rumor that he might be left out. It wasn’t until later that we all found out what had happened, that the manager had told him he wasn’t in the 22 and that Paul had gone mad. Gary Neville was in the room next door to Gazza’s and heard the shouting and the furniture flying. I must admit that by the time that news came through I was more concerned about a couple of my United team-mates.
The fact that Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and I were so close made it even worse when Phil and Butty missed out. A couple of days before, one of the staff had even given Phil a wink, as if to say he was going to be in the squad. That only made his disappointment harder to take. I went up to see them as soon as I found out. Their flight home was in an hour’s time and they were standing in their room, bags packed. I gave Phil a big hug. The five of us had grown up together and now two of them were on their way home. It must have hurt Gary even more, saying goodbye to his brother. Thinking about it now, of course, Butty and Phil had plenty of time ahead of them in international soccer. Paul Gascoigne had just missed out on his last chance of representing his country.
I wasn’t the only one upset about the boys who’d been left out and the way they’d had to find out about it. We had a training session the next morning that was just about as bad as any I can remember. The atmosphere was eerie. We were just expected to get straight on with it. I realized the World Cup was only days away, but I felt there needed to be a time to relax, to take stock of things as a group. With Glenn, the intensity never dropped. Even when we had an evening off, we’d find ourselves all in a room with a bar, downstairs at the hotel, with the doors shut and the curtains drawn, so nobody could get near us. What we really needed was something different occasionally: perhaps just to sit in reception for an hour or two, sign some autographs for the kids and chat with England supporters. Everybody felt really low but nothing was said about the situation. The other lads had gone and Glenn just expected us to forget about the emotional side of it and act as if nothing had happened. It all felt very strange and, as far as the training went, it seemed to me that most of the players’ minds were on other things that day.
Through my early months as an England player, Glenn Hoddle had always been really good to me. I enjoyed his coaching—all of us did, I think– and I was proud of what we’d achieved in qualifying for the tournament with him as manager. Why everything changed, and so suddenly, I’ll never know. The first time I got any idea that things weren’t going to turn out like I’d dreamed they might at the World Cup was after a friendly that had been arranged at our training camp in La Baule against a local scratch side, a few days before the start of the tournament. It was all very low key. We lost the game and I’d be the first to admit I didn’t play very well. Then again, no
body did. Nothing was said but I felt then that the manager was being a bit stand-offish towards me. You get that sense, sometimes, from a boss: he’s got the hump with you and you feel uneasy, almost as if you’re being given the cold shoulder. That’s how it felt after that practice game, without it making me think for a moment that I wouldn’t play in our first match of the tournament. I’d played in every game leading up to the World Cup, after all.
I was wrong. Completely wrong. A couple of days before our opening fixture against Tunisia in Marseille, the manager sat us down, in a circle out on the training ground, to talk about the starting line-up. It seemed strange at the time that he started by saying that he expected players who weren’t picked to still turn up for the press conferences and behave as if the team hadn’t been announced. In a way, that part of Glenn’s approach wasn’t a surprise. He liked playing these guessing games. Before the match against Italy in Rome, I’d been sniffling a bit with a cold. He told the media I was struggling and even got me to leave training ten minutes early to make it seem I was worse than I was. I didn’t want to miss any of the session but he insisted. He thought we’d have an advantage if the Italians weren’t sure who’d be playing. Here in La Baule, though, two days before the start of our World Cup, it was different. I’ve realized since, of course, that the game Glenn was playing this time wasn’t just about keeping the press or the Tunisians guessing. It was about him testing a young player, which definitely made things more difficult for me than they needed to be.