Beneath the floodlights on a stormy night at Old Trafford, Manchester United’s No.7 draws a breath, 30 yards from goal. The scoreboard reads: Manchester United 4 Real Madrid 3. Still trailing on aggregate, United need this free-kick to go in, plus one more goal in stoppage time, if they’re to reach the semi-finals of the 2002-03 Champions League.
He’s already put two goals past Madrid’s Iker Casillas, including, in his own words, “the best free-kick of my United career”. A hat-trick would make his 60th-minute introduction seem even more misguided.
The trademark run-up commences, left arm arcing into the night sky. His adidas Predator boot strikes leather. A stadium holds its breath…
Illuminated only by a television screen, he watches the moment back, four hours later, on the sofa of his family home.
This free-kick, unfortunately, sails over the crossbar and disappears into the Stretford End. “F**king hell,” he sighs. “If only…”
But then he spots something among the highlights that makes his blood run cold. The cameras have panned to the Old Trafford bench, where his manager of the past decade, Sir Alex Ferguson, realises the tie is now lost. The Scot glares at his player with a look of unmasked contempt.
“That face told me everything I needed to know,” Beckham later recalled. “It was over. He wanted me out.”
From the day Ferguson called the Beckham family home in 1986 to invite an 11-year-old future England captain to train with United, the youngster had been in awe of his mentor. “He was the man who’d made everything possible for me,” he reflected. “The father figure in what had become a second family.”
Beckham was the golden boy; the Class of ’92 graduate who turned into an overnight celebrity following his famous halfway line goal against Wimbledon in August 1996. The midfielder became the poster boy of a side that went on
