Beckham: The biggest learnings from David Beckham’s Netflix documentary

At first glance, no muscles were strained coming up with Beckham as the title of the four-part Netflix docuseries following the life and career of the most famous English footballer ever.

David may be the focus but he isn’t the only Beckham to feature – and certainly isn’t the most interesting one. Parents Sandra and Ted both deliver telling nuggets while Victoria steals many a scene with a brutal honesty that David, however often he tears up, never replicates.

If this had solely been the David Beckham show, there is little chance that he would have willingly revealed almost missing the birth of his son Cruz to attend a photoshoot with Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce.

Victoria, who delivers the stinging anecdote, remembers a headline which asked: “What would Posh say?” “Let me tell you what Posh would say,” she snapped. “Posh was pissed off!”

Here are some of the other key takeaways from an enjoyable trek through the life of the Beckhams.

It doesn’t take an unwavering cynic to see that this production is designed to paint a favourable picture of David Beckham. While there are numerous glowing personal testimonies, what leaps out about the character of the man in question is his obsessive focus on cleanliness.

Beckham’s self-confessed pet peeve is “smoke around the side of a candle”. “Every night before bed,” he reveals while standing in a pristine kitchen, “I’ll go around every candle, cut the wick, and make sure it’s clean.”

“He’s perfect,” Victoria sarcastically quips from the adjacent room.

After performing a creaky rendition of Islands in the Stream alongside Victoria in a permanent glamping corner of their country estate, Beckham is filmed studiously collecting glasses and wiping down surfaces. It could be stage-managed, but it certainly seems more natural than his son’s failed attempt to row a boat in the pond opposite.

In March 2019, the Beckhams officially became dollar billionaires. For a player who had retired almost six years earlier, such a valuation is a remarkable sign of Beckham’s marketability. But he doesn’t seem to have ascribed to the mantra of looking after the pennies.

After parroting the line fed to him by director Fishers Stevens “I like nice things,” Beckham revealed: “My first contract with Adidas was £50,000 and, soon after, I bought an M3 for £50,000.”

Roy Keane does his best Roy Keane impression when expressing incredulity at Beckham’s purchase of a “fancy pen”. “Who the f*** buys a pen?” Keane gawks in playful astonishment. “Who buys an expensive pen? Shirts and clothes I get all that and cars, but who buys a pen?”

The relationship between David and Victoria is one of the more intriguing motifs in the documentary. Most viewers would be well accustomed to Beckham’s exploits on the pitch but few were probably aware of the extreme lengths he would go to in order to spend just a snippet of time with Victoria, particularly before the pair got married in 1999.

Beckham backs up staggered accounts from his teammates that he would spend numerous hours travelling up and down the country to enjoy “just seven minutes” with the former Spice Girl.

Gary Neville, the best man at Beckham’s ‘Sherwood Forest theme’ wedding, claimed that David was “addicted” to his partner and “struggled always when he was away from Victoria for long periods”.

Beckham himself cites Victoria’s delayed relocation to Spain as one of the reasons behind his struggles at Real Madrid. Victoria admits to “resenting” David for the abrupt transfer and describes the accusations of Beckham’s affair during his time in the Spanish capital as “the hardest period for us”.

When the crunchy footage of that fateful knockout tie between England and Argentina in the 1998 World Cup rolls, it’s incredible to watch the incident that sparked such widespread fury. Beckham’s flick at Diego Simeone is barely noteworthy, let alone justifiable as “violent conduct”.

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” Simeone agreed in the documentary, appearing after Beckham had lent some words to a mini-series about the Atletico Madrid manager in 2022. Conveniently, the Argentine did not make that point to the referee.

Beckham had discovered that he would become a father for the first time on the eve of his dismissal against Argentina and “could not have been happier” but was forced under a black cloud within 24 hours.

“He was absolutely broken,” Victoria recalled as Beckham endured an unrelenting stream of abuse throughout the following season. “He was in pieces. He was really depressed, absolutely clinically depressed. It pained me so much. I still want to kill these people.”

The Daily Mirror infamously produced ‘David Beckham dart boards’, stoking the flames of the vitriol which fans delivered in person. “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,” Beckham remembered. “I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping. I was a mess. I didn’t know what to do.”

Shortly before Sir Alex Ferguson signed Beckham to Manchester United as a 13-year-old, he joked that he didn’t like his spiky haircut. It would not be the last time that the pair clashed.

The production mischievously pieces together a string of declarations – from David himself to Manchester United’s receptionist Kath Phipps – that fame had “not changed” Beckham before cutting to Ferguson. “He changed,” the legendary United manager insisted, “there’s no doubt about that.”

While the familiar story of the flying boot is dredged back up, it’s also revealed that Ferguson refused to speak to Beckham after he was publicly put up for sale in the summer of 2003. For such a revered man-manager, Ferguson seems to have been incapable of dealing with Beckham.

Lionel Messi’s move to Beckham’s Inter Miami has softened the view of superstars rocking up in MLS, but the documentary on the club’s co-owner captures quite how shocking it was for a member of the European elite to head for America in 2007.

Beckham glumly recalls leaving Real Madrid to play in a team that included a pool cleaner and a gardener. Fabio Capello, Beckham’s manager in Spain and the future England boss, called it a move from reality.

Landon Donovan is wheeled out to explain his claims that Beckham “wasn’t committed” to the project initially. In a rare example of probing questions, Beckham is faced with the reality that he not only left the LA Galaxy for a loan with AC Milan at the earliest opportunity, but he also tried to stay in Italy.

The social scientist Peter Drucker famously opined: “The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not said.”

Aside from entertaining sojourns into metatarsal mania or the world of WAGs, the documentary – which was made by Beckham’s own production company – conveniently skips over some awkward topics.

Any mention of Beckham’s hotly controversial support of the 2022 Qatar World Cup – which severed his ties with many members of the LGBTQ+ community – is conspicuous by its absence.

Even when the thorny topic of Beckham’s alleged affair is raised, there is no denial, only the insistence: “Ultimately, it’s our private life.”

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