Ladies and gentlemen, the Beckhams
Kara Kennedy
Whether you’re a Man United season ticket holder like my grandfather, who watched all four hours without so much as a tea break, or you’re more familiar with David Beckham as the husband of former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham (AKA Posh), there is something in Netflix’s new docuseries Beckham for you. It has all the trappings of a hit reality TV show: famous faces, cringy confessionals, tensions between the cast. Plus, it’s got high-tension sports drama. It switches between the present day and the height of Beckham’s heyday so seamlessly that I found myself at the edge of my seat anticipating the outcome of soccer games that happened before I was born.
I’m no hooligan, but it doesn’t take much to have more of an interest in the sport than Mrs. Beckham, who plainly says in the documentary, “I wasn’t into football then, and I’m not into football now.” Like Posh with soccer, before Beckham, I had very little interest or knowledge of her husband, my perception being that he was charmingly vapid with a pretty face. I was wrong, kind of. While he is dumb, David Beckham is complex — tough, vulnerable, with a champion mindset. He is unfalteringly besotted with Victoria and has been since the day he met her. Yet, even so, he is the first to admit that nothing and no one comes before football. “I loved the game more than anyone has ever loved it,” he says. This was never more evident than when watching home videos of Victoria and their young children begrudgingly being dragged from pillar to post. When David signed for Real Madrid and Victoria moved to Spain with their oldest son, Brooklyn, the rumor was that she didn’t like the country because the Spanish “smell like garlic,” a claim she denies in the series with a laugh. Anyway, she seemingly got over the (in my opinion, delicious) stenches of Spain and settled in. But she really needn’t have bothered, as it wasn’t too long before the family moved to the states when Beckham was bought by LA Galaxy in a deal that would see him make $255 million over five years.
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Any successful reality TV show needs a villain, and there is no shortage of them in Beckham. The British tabloids were at their peak wickedness at Beckham’s prime. When he famously got a red card during the 1998 World Cup match with Argentina after kicking Diego Simeone, there is no other word to describe what ensued other than outright nationwide bullying. Especially after the documentary features Simeone confessing he hammed it up and opining that the red card should never have been issued, it’s tough to watch. One particularly cruel act came during a West Ham game when someone hung an effigy of 23-year-old Becks outside of a pub. A picture of this was soon spread all over the front page of newspapers in Britain. David says of the time, “To walk down the street and to see people look at you in a certain way, spit at you, abuse you, come up to your face and say some of the things they said, that is difficult. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping. I was a mess. I didn’t know what to do.” Victoria adds that at the time, 23-year-old Beckham was “just a child.” Beckham’s mother recalled that she was even once “offered outside” by a West Ham hooligan.
The famously troubled relationship between Beckham and longtime Man United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is explored throughout Beckham. The star midfielder still refers to Ferguson as “the boss” and claimed that Ferguson was “like a father figure” and “one of the most important people in my life from the day I met him.” But the relationship was not without drama. Ferguson, who is so famous for rampantly chewing gum during games that a discarded piece once sold for $480,000, was colder about his former player. When asked about his thoughts on Beckham’s move to the LA Galaxy, Fergie said, “I couldn’t agree with it. If he’d have asked my advice, I’d have said, ‘Not in your life!'” Then there’s the infamous boot incident: Beckham looks like a naughty schoolboy when admitting that he “said the F-word” to Fergie after he criticized his performance after a game, which provoked Ferguson into kicking United striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s boot, which landed above Beckham’s eye and broke the skin. The relationship would never be the same again. Speaking of his heartbreak when Sir Alex wouldn’t even speak to Beckham after deciding to sell him off to Real Madrid, he said, “’It was my home. My relationship with the boss was always special. We had our moments, but I still loved him.” Ferguson said their relationship at this time “was at a stalemate.”
The Netflix docuseries isn’t short of laughs, although I’m not sure it was going for that. There’s an instantly iconic moment that sees Vicky B earnestly trying to talk about her “working class” upbringing, only for husband David to burst into the room telling his wife to “be honest.” After a bit of back and forth between the pair, and Posh claiming that it’s “not a simple answer,” it turns out that what Becks is bravely trying to fish out is that Posh Spice was driven to school every day during this “working class” period by her father in a Rolls Royce. The pair noticeably film their cameos separately after that clip. Another knee slapper was the flashback to Posh and Becks’s wedding, where the fashionistas wore eye-wateringly bad purple outfits, including a purple top hat by Beckham. In Beckham’s interview, he claims, “I think I just took Victoria’s lead on it, but what were we thinking?” Victoria takes a more fond approach, claiming that they “didn’t care” and “weren’t worried about what people were going to say.”
The docuseries ends with the family dancing in their Cotswolds countryside pile. Beckham, older now, has graying hair, dodgy Botox, and a Jeremy Clarkson-esque wardrobe. He’s hung in his boots for a pair of tongs … in a $50,000 barbecue tent equipped with a 12-seat table and huge grill. On Saturdays, Beckham will spend 12 hours of his retired days grilling.
It has now been 10 years since Beckham played his teary last game for Paris Saint-Germain. While the famous family is undeniably still fodder for the tabloids, especially since Brooklyn Beckham married billionaire actress Nicola Peltz last year, times have changed. From the purple suits seeming like a good idea to the way the subjects of this astoundingly well-produced documentary keep wistfully reflecting on how, back then, there wasn’t such a concept abroad as “mental health,” the era that Posh and Becks defined the headlines is almost unrecognizable. While vicious tabloid culture has improved, not to mention the fashion, what Beckham really brings home is good old-fashioned noughties nostalgia.
This isn’t really a documentary about soccer. This is a documentary that takes you back to a different, better time … that was only 10 or 20 years ago. It’s no wonder Beckham shot to the coveted “most watched” slot on Netflix: It’s not often that there’s a sports documentary that makes the wives and girlfriends of the world text each other to figure out how to drag their men to the couch to watch it.
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Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in the Spectator, the New Statesman, Tatler, the Daily Telegraph, and others.