David Beckham - David Beckham - My Side

I was desperate to have another go, so I went back the following summer. Things went a lot better. There were skills competitions on each of the courses, which used to run all through the summer, and the winners each week went through to a Grand Final back in Manchester in December. I made it through to that final and it turned out to be a fantastic weekend, for all of us. Mum and Dad stayed with me at the Portland Hotel in the city centre. I had my own room, twenty floors up, with this huge plate-glass window overlooking the city below. I think they were a bit nervous about that. On Saturday morning, we had to register and then go over to United’s old training ground, the Cliff, for the first part of the competition which was held in the indoor sports hall: ball-juggling, target shooting and short passing. I think I was in the lead already by the time we broke off for lunch.

The second part of the competition was staged out on the pitch at Old Trafford. I was so nervous I don’t think I’d eaten for a couple of days. Mum and Dad were there, probably feeling worse than me. That afternoon, United were playing Spurs, and by the end of the competition there must have been about 40,000 supporters in the ground. I was so excited to be out on that pitch, I wasn’t even thinking about winning. They introduced each of us to the crowd before we did the dribbling and then the long passing. I can still remember when they announced ‘David Beckham’ and said I was from ‘Leytonstone’ – all the Tottenham fans started cheering. Then the guy on the tannoy said: ‘And David is a massive United fan’. All the Spurs fans started jeering and the rest of the ground, the home supporters, began applauding. To be fair, I got a decent reception from both sets of fans when the announcement was made that I’d won.

We went up to the Europa Suite in the main stand where Bobby Charlton was doing the presentation. It was all quite an experience for an eleven-year-old. I know Mum and Dad were very proud; people were coming up to them saying how well they thought I’d done. Maybe, though, it didn’t overwhelm me completely. I think the function was still going on, but I drifted away into a corner because the game had started and I wanted to watch it on one of the televisions. It had been some afternoon. It was some prize too: a fortnight’s training with Barcelona at the Nou Camp in Spain.

I couldn’t wait to get over there. Terry Venables was the Barcelona manager, while Mark Hughes and Gary Lineker were on the playing staff. Me and two other lads were joined by Ray Whelan from the Bobby Charlton Soccer School. The four of us were put up in what looked like a farmhouse – a pretty luxurious one – at the heart of the Nou Camp complex. I think that building had been there even before the football club was and you could sense the history of everything that had happened since: there were pennants and memorabilia on the walls, dating way back, alongside pictures of famous players from Barcelona’s past. This was a place where legends had been born.

The farmhouse was right next to the first team’s training ground, in the shadow of the stadium itself, and we stayed there with the boys from other parts of Spain who were with Barcelona’s youth team. I was still only eleven and saw one or two things that I wasn’t used to from life in Chingford: in the evenings, prostitutes would walk up and down outside, on the other side of the railings, and all the older Spanish boys would be leaning out of the windows whistling at them. We used to have this hot chocolate drink at night that I liked so much I drank two one evening and made myself sick. I went to the toilet, turned the light on and saw a cockroach crawl across the floor. What was I doing here? The football was an experience. And so was the rest of it.

We’d go out every day with Barça’s youth teams and reserve players. The training was amazing. The only catch was that Ridgeway had a Cup Final against a team called Forest United, at White Hart Lane, at the weekend. I was devastated at the prospect of missing that game; there was also my grandad, who was such a big Spurs fan and wanted to see me play there. He ended up paying for me to fly home for the game and then back to Barcelona again. There wasn’t a happy ending, though. Forest United had a young Daniele Dichio playing for them, aged twelve, already seven foot tall and growing a beard. They beat us 2–1 that afternoon. Then I was straight on the plane and back to Spain, on my own and not really sure if I fancied another week away from Chingford.

Barcelona, the football club, was really impressive. The training facilities were excellent, although the young kids trained on a gravel pitch, which I wasn’t used to and didn’t really enjoy. The first team had an immaculate surface to play on, and the reserve team had a 20,000-seater stadium all of their own. We were taken inside the Nou Camp one day. You come up from the dressing rooms, past the club chapel that’s off to one side in the tunnel, and then up a flight of stairs onto the pitch. Sometimes you can’t help yourself: with acres of grass and the stands towering above, I started running up and down, kicking an imaginary football and pretending to be Mark Hughes. What would it be like, to be out there actually playing a game?

All the boys who I was training with were probably sixteen and seventeen. The two lads who’d finished second and third at Old Trafford were fifteen and nineteen. Everybody was really friendly but, at first, it was like: What’s this child with the spiky hair and the funny accent doing here? Once we got started, everything was fine. Obviously, none of the coaches or the other players spoke English but, if we were playing, we could make ourselves understood. It was the first time I’d been in a professional set-up, training with professional players. It opened my eyes. We’d watch the first team most days and, one time, we went out and were introduced to Mr Venables and the players. Of course, I’m quite good friends with Mark Hughes now. He often laughs about that time in Spain: the Barcelona players didn’t have a clue who we were. I still have the photo of me, Mark, Terry Venables and Gary Lineker that was taken that afternoon.

It was an exciting time. I was training with Spurs, and United had let me know they were more than just interested. I went up to Manchester a few times in the holidays, always with Malcolm Fidgeon in that brown Sierra, and hooked up with the team when they came down to London to play. The club in general, and Alex Ferguson in particular, did their best to make me feel a part of it all. The older players, like Bryan Robson and Steve Bruce, gave me some stick about those times once I eventually joined the club. I was at pre-match meals and I’d be in the dressing room after games, helping clear away all the kit. One afternoon, when United were away to West Ham, they invited me to come along as the mascot. I was given a United tracksuit and there I was, at Upton Park, warming up on the pitch with the likes of Bryan Robson and Gordon Strachan. Then they let me sit on the bench for the game. I even spotted myself on Match of the Day that evening.

United seemed pretty keen on me. Of course, I was so keen on United that it was almost embarrassing. I used to wear my hair spiky, wanting it to look like Gordon Strachan’s, and the day of that West Ham game I took him a tub of hair gel as a present. He got some grief about that; and so did I a year or two later. Another time before a game in London, they invited me and Mum and Dad to have an evening meal with the squad at the team hotel at West Lodge Park. Never mind that I ordered a steak and then couldn’t understand when a piece of tuna was put down in front of me. I was sat on the top table with the manager and the staff. They had a present for me: one of those big padded bench coats. It was about six sizes too big for me. You couldn’t see my hands at the ends of the sleeves and it trailed round my ankles, but I didn’t take the thing off for a week. Better still, I had a present for the boss: a pen. Alex Ferguson took it and looked at me: