12 of the Biggest Revelations in David Beckham’s Netflix Docuseries

Despite one being a Spice Girl and the other playing for the biggest soccer team in the country, their first dates weren’t in fancy restaurants or lavish settings. Instead, they met in car parks. The couple first met at the Manchester United players’ lounge, and Victoria noticed how close he was to his family, talking to his parents at the bar. “That first time that I speak to her, I just fancied her,” David says, as Victoria adds, “I just fancied him. It was as simple as that.”

They were told to keep their relationship under wraps at the beginning, so they met in car parks. “And that’s not as seedy as it sounds,” Victoria says.

“The first kiss that I ever had with Victoria was in the BMS in a car park,” David laughs. “Classy.”

Growing up in Chingford, Essex, David’s mom, Sandra Beckham, was a hairdresser and his dad, Ted Beckham, was a kitchen fitter. With a modest upbringing, soccer was his passion. And so suddenly getting a professional athlete’s salary was a novelty – and David liked to spend.

“I like nice stuff,” he says, proving his love of fashion and watches superseded meeting Victoria. His former teammate, Phil Neville, says: “David used to get his salary on a Friday and then spend it on Saturday – all. And then spend the next five days waiting for his next salary to get him to get the jeans to match. That was him. Have money, spend it.”

David also admits that he signed a contract with Adidas for £50,000, and straight after, he “went and bought an M3 [car] for £50,000.”

Once David and Victoria started dating, it was clear he was besotted with her. “He was on the phone to Victoria every second,” Manchester United teammate Gary Neville says. But their relationship was starting to rile up football manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

“I knew the lengths he was going to see Victoria,” Gary adds. “He was like an addict. He would drive four hours to spend 20 minutes with her.”

Hours before that infamous 1998 World Cup Game that saw David get sent off while playing for England against Argentina, he actually discovered he was going to become a dad for the first time. Victoria was in Brooklyn, NY – the place that was to become the namesake of their firstborn – when she made the call. “I told David the night before the game. The game. The game. THE game,” she says. “He was so, so happy, we both were, and there was never any doubt in my mind that I should tell him. I mean, it was what we wanted, and he could not have been happier.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it, just because I can’t,” David says of the period after the game. The press and public were gunning for him as many blamed David’s actions as the reason England didn’t progress in the tournament.

“I find it hard to talk through what I went through because it was so extreme. The whole country hated me,” he says. “Wherever I went I got abused every single day. 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 that they said. It’s difficult.”

David stopped eating and sleeping as he struggled with his mental health. “He was absolutely broken, he was in pieces,” Victoria says. “He was really depressed, absolutely clinically depressed. It pained me so much. I still want to kill these people.”

Brooklyn was born in March 1999. As Victoria had a C-section and needed to stay in hospital for the night, David slept by the door. “I’m sleeping with my head against the door because I was paranoid someone was going to steal him,” David says. “It’s meant to be a happy moment and it was a happy moment, of course, but I was worried. I didn’t want him to come into this life at a time when I was going through what I was going through.”

The couple got married on July 4, 1999, in Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland. The pair changed on their wedding day into matching purple outfits. “I tried to think back to when I decided to wear a purple suit. I don’t know when that happened,” David says. “I think I just took Victoria’s lead on it, but what were we thinking?”

Yet Victoria stands by the decision. “It was fun,” she laughs. “We weren’t worried about what people were going to say. I mean, how lovely to be that way when you just don’t really care. You just want to express yourself, that was who we were.”

Over the years, David has become known for his multiple hairstyles. His signature blonde curtains became a buzz cut which then became a mohawk, braids, a man bun, and so on. And there was one man who wasn’t happy about it: Sir Alex Ferguson. After wearing a hat and refusing to take it off before a match, he revealed his shaved head just as he walked onto the pitch. “I never did it to create a tension, I’m not that person,” he says.

Victoria stood by his hair choices. “David was going from a boy to a man so it’s only natural you’re going to start flexing your muscles, right? And don’t all kids rebel against their parents,” she says of the Manchester United coach being a father figure to David.

After a rocky ending at Manchester United, David signed to Real Madrid, and suddenly, the family were uprooted to Spain. “I’m not sure how happy Victoria was about it, but I said to her we have to look at this like this is forever,” David says. Although Victoria added the move was “less than ideal”.

David admits the move left him feeling lonely without his family there the whole time. On top of that, Victoria was often vilified for not liking Spain, which she completely denies. “It was never about Spain. It was the family we had to really think about,” she says. “I had two children, Brooklyn and Romeo, and this is what nobody seemed to take into consideration, when I was getting criticized for not being in Spain right from the beginning. A kid has to go to school. I knew I couldn’t go to Spain until I had a school for Brooklyn. I was doing Monday to Friday in London and then jumping on a plane to Spain, but everything I did was fabricated, taken out of context.”

Victoria adds: “Did I resent David? If I’m being totally honest, yes I did. It was probably, if I’m being honest, the most unhappy I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

We all know David loves his clothes, but his organization skills are shown on full display in the documentary. He sorts his wardrobe into sections and has a rail in which he hangs up his outfits for the week ahead. ‘It used to just be the night before,” he says, before revealing this level of organisation is his new obsession.

He can even tell that someone has been looking in his wardrobe because the hangers aren’t straight.

In April 2004, while David was in Spain and Victoria was still residing in London, news broke that David had allegedly had an affair with his assistant, Rebecca Loos. The allegations were denied, but it rocked their marriage. “It was the first time that me and Victoria had been put under that kind of pressure in our marriage,” David says.

Both visibly emotional talking of the toll this took on their family, Victoria explains: “It was the hardest period for us because it felt like the world was against us and, here’s the thing, we were against each other if I’m being completely honest. Up until Madrid, sometimes it felt like us against everybody else, but we were together, we were connected, we had each other. But when we were in Spain, it didn’t really feel like we had each other either and that’s sad.”

While the press interest in them grew even further, they were followed by paparazzi as more stories broke of there being cracks in their relationship. “I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was and how it affected me,” Victoria says. David explains they were drowning as a couple.

So how did they survive the turmoil? “I don’t know how we got through it, in all honesty. Victoria is everything to me, to see her hurt was incredibly difficult, but we’re fighters and, at that time, we needed to fight for each other. We needed to fight for our family and what we had was worth fighting for,” David adds. Before closing the chapter, declaring, “Ultimately, it’s our private life.”

Pregnant in Spain, Victoria was booked in for a C-section in a hospital, but David almost didn’t make it because he had a photoshoot booked in with Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé. “So I had my C-section and I remember lying there, I don’t feel at my most gorgeous, let’s just say, and I remember someone showing me the front page of the newspaper which was a gorgeous picture of David between Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé and the headline was ‘What would Posh say?’ Let me tell you what Posh would say. Posh was pissed off!” Victoria says.