david beckham autobiography

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The autobiography of arguably the world’s most celebrated sports icon, David Beckham—a classic rags to riches saga of a boy, born into a poor East End London family, with prodigious talent and a father who believed in him and supported him until he became the most gifted athlete of his generation and his nation’s captain.

In his own words, Beckham talks about the pressures of celebrity, his controversial and celebrated career, his marriage to Victoria Beckham and family, and, of course, life as the world’s best-known soccer player. In Beckham , the ordinary guy who fate decided would be lifted to glory tells the story of how it all happened.

Beckham: Both Feet on the Ground: An Autobiography

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Tom Watt is an English actor, writer, and broadcaster. Television, film, and stage credits include EastEnders , Patriot Games , and Fever Pitch . Tom has broadcast about soccer extensively in the U.K. and the U.S. He co-produced the innovative children's sports series Rookies for Channel Four television and created the successful Row Z for BBC Choice TV. After presenting sports shows over the past ten years for BBC and independent radio and television stations, he is currently the lead presenter for BBC London's soccer coverage and hosts weekly programs for Arsenal's club TV channel.

As well as writing about soccer for every major U.K. newspaper, Tom is the author of several books about the game: The End , a groundbreaking oral history of Arsenal FC; A Passion for the Game , ninety firsthand accounts of life behind the scenes in English football; The Greatest Stage , the official history of Wembley Stadium; and, most recently, My Side , the bestselling autobiography of David Beckham. Tom also produces schoolbooks built around soccer, the latest of which, a twelve-book series called The Jags , was published earlier this year.

Chapter One

Murdering the flowerbeds.

'Mrs Beckham? Can David come and have a game in the park?'

I'm sure Mum could dig it out of the pile: that first video of me in action. There I am, David Robert Joseph Beckham, aged three, wearing the new Manchester United uniform Dad had bought me for Christmas, playing soccer in the front room of our house in Chingford. Twenty-five years on, and Victoria could have filmed me having a kickabout this morning with Brooklyn before I left for training. For all that so much has happened during my life -- and the shirt I'm wearing now is a different color -- some things haven't really changed at all.

As a father watching my own sons growing up, I get an idea of what I must have been like as a boy; and reminders, as well, of what Dad was like with me. As soon as I could walk, he made sure I had a ball to kick. Maybe I didn't even wait for a ball. I remember when Brooklyn had only just got the hang of standing up. We were messing around together one afternoon after training. For some reason there was a tin of baked beans on the floor of the kitchen and, before I realized it, he'd taken a couple of unsteady steps towards it and kicked the thing as hard as you like. Frightening really: you could fracture a metatarsal doing that. Even as I was hugging him, I couldn't help laughing. That must have been me.

It's just there, wired into the genes. Look at Brooklyn: he always wants to be playing soccer, running, kicking, diving about. And he's already listening, like he's ready to learn. By the time he was three and a half, if I rolled the ball to him and told him to stop it, he'd trap it by putting his foot on it. Then he'd take a step back and line himself up before kicking it back to me. He's also got a great sense of balance. We were in New York when Brooklyn was about two and a half, and I remember us coming out of a restaurant and walking down some steps. He was standing, facing up towards Victoria and I, his toes on one step and his heels rocking back over the next. This guy must have been watching from inside the restaurant, because suddenly he came running out and asked us how old our son was. When I told him, he explained he was a child psychologist and that for Brooklyn to be able to balance himself over the step like that was amazing for a boy of his age.

It's a little too early to tell with my younger boy, Romeo, but Brooklyn has got a real confidence that comes from his energy, his strength, and his sense of coordination. He's been whizzing around on two-wheeled scooters -- I mean flying -- for years already. He's got a belief in himself, physically, that I know I had as well. When I was a boy, I only ever felt really sure of myself when I was playing soccer. In fact I'd still say that about me now, although Victoria has given me confidence in myself in all sorts of other ways. I know she'll do the same for Brooklyn and Romeo too.

For all that father and son have in common, Brooklyn and I are very different. By the time I was his age, I was already telling anyone who would listen: 'I'm going to play soccer for Manchester United. 'He says he wants to be a soccer player like Daddy, but United? We haven't heard that out of him yet. Brooklyn's a really strong, well-built boy. Me, though, I was always skinny. However much I ate it never made any difference while I was growing up. When I was playing soccer, I must have seemed even smaller because, if I wasn't with my dad and his mates, I was over at Chase Lane Park, just round the corner from the house, playing with boys twice my age. I don't know if it was because I was good or because they could kick me up in the air and I'd come back for more, but they always turned up on the doorstep after school:

I spent a lot of time in Chase Lane Park. If I wasn't there with the bigger boys like Alan Smith, who lived two doors away on our road, I'd be there with my dad. We'd started by kicking a ball about in the back garden but I was murdering the flowerbeds so, after he got in from his job as a heating engineer, we'd go to the park together and just practice and practice for hours on end. All the strengths in my game are the ones Dad taught me in the park twenty years ago: we'd work on touch and striking the ball properly until it was too dark to see. He'd kick the ball up in the air as high as he could and get me to control it. Then it would be kicking it with each foot, making sure I was doing it right. It was great, even if he did drive me mad sometimes. 'Why can't you just go in goal and let me take shots at you?' I'd be thinking. I suppose you could say he was pushing me along. You'd also have to say, though, that it was all I wanted to do and I was lucky Dad was so willing to do it with me.

My dad, Ted, played himself for a local team called King fisher in the Forest and District League ...

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David Beckham

288 pages, Hardcover

First published December 4, 2013

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Beckham: Both Feet on the Ground: An Autobiography Hardcover – Oct. 14 2003

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Perfect for fans of the hit Netflix docuseries, Beckham .

The autobiography of arguably the world’s most celebrated sports icon, David Beckham—a classic rags to riches saga of a boy, born into a poor East End London family, with prodigious talent and a father who believed in him and supported him until he became the most gifted athlete of his generation and his nation’s captain.

In his own words, Beckham talks about the pressures of celebrity, his controversial and celebrated career, his marriage to Victoria Beckham and family, and, of course, life as the world’s best-known soccer player. In Beckham , the ordinary guy who fate decided would be lifted to glory tells the story of how it all happened.

• Print length 400 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harper
• Publication date Oct. 14 2003
• Dimensions 15.24 x 3.18 x 22.86 cm
• ISBN-10 0060570938
• ISBN-13 978-0060570934
• See all details

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Product description

From school library journal.

“Smashing. . .Beckham is a magnet for controversy” — Sports Illustrated

From the Back Cover

In England, where he spent ten seasons leading his storied club Manchester United and his nation to soccer glory, he is so wildly popular that his countrymen voted him the face they'd most want to see imprinted on their money. (Winston Churchill finished second.) In Japan, where he is worshiped as much for his headline-making fashion trends as for his ability to bend a ball around a wall of defenders, women styled their bikini waxes after the blond mohawk he sported during the 2002 World Cup. And in Spain, within days of his $41 million trade to Real Madrid, his new team received two million requests to buy his number 23 jersey. The legend of David Beckham -- soccer god, global sex symbol, style icon -- has been celebrated around the world, arguably more than Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan combined. Now, with the publication of his long-awaited autobiography, the man who inspired the surprise hit movie Bend It Like Beckham is set to conquer the last remaining outpost where soccer is not a national religion: the United States.

Beckham is a classic rags-to-riches saga: a boy, David, is born to a poor East End London family. He develops prodigious soccer skills, and his parents nurture him until he becomes one of the most gifted athletes of his generation. He grows up to marry Victoria -- a Spice Girl, "Posh" -- and enters a celebrity whirlwind of Princess Diana -- esque proportions. Together, the Beckhams are Britain's new royal couple -- their 240-acre estate outside of London is known as Beckingham Palace -- and their presence at parties or charity events guarantees endless tabloid stories and photos as well as adoring mobs that must be restrained by police barricades. Their life is as much a study in managing fame as it is in sports and pop phenomena.

In Beckham he talks candidly about the pressures of celebrity -- his wife and sons were the targets of a 2002 kidnapping plot; how he balances his roles as a devoted husband and besotted father with his globetrotting existence as an international soccer player; the behind-the-scenes stories of his most memorable career moments, such as the penalty kick against archrival Argentina in the World Cup that redeemed him to a nation who blamed him for their failure in the previous World Cup; the controversy surrounding his move to Real Madrid and the falling out with the man who shaped his career, Manchester United's famously combative manager Sir Alex Ferguson; and, finally, his love of America -- his first son was conceived in and named Brooklyn -- where, like the great Pelé, David can imagine playing out his final seasons.

So much has been written about David Beckham that it's easy to think we know everything about the world's most famous athlete, but only Beckham himself can set the record straight on his beliefs, his dreams, his loves, his fears, and, above all, his sense of who he is. Beckham is an intimate account of an extraordinary life, a life in which, against all odds, he has managed to keep both feet on the ground.

About the Author

David Beckham , who currently plays for Real Madrid, is the soccer world’s biggest star.

Tom Watt is an English actor, writer, and broadcaster. Television, film, and stage credits include EastEnders , Patriot Games , and Fever Pitch . Tom has broadcast about soccer extensively in the U.K. and the U.S. He co-produced the innovative children's sports series Rookies for Channel Four television and created the successful Row Z for BBC Choice TV. After presenting sports shows over the past ten years for BBC and independent radio and television stations, he is currently the lead presenter for BBC London's soccer coverage and hosts weekly programs for Arsenal's club TV channel.

As well as writing about soccer for every major U.K. newspaper, Tom is the author of several books about the game: The End , a groundbreaking oral history of Arsenal FC; A Passion for the Game , ninety firsthand accounts of life behind the scenes in English football; The Greatest Stage , the official history of Wembley Stadium; and, most recently, My Side , the bestselling autobiography of David Beckham. Tom also produces schoolbooks built around soccer, the latest of which, a twelve-book series called The Jags , was published earlier this year.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper; First Edition (Oct. 14 2003)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060570938
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060570934
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 681 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 3.18 x 22.86 cm
• #260 in Football Biographies
• #467 in Soccer Sport Biographies
• #577 in Golf Coaching

About the authors

David beckham.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Tom Watt is an actor, writer and broadcaster. If there's one thing that ties his work on football together, it's a love of helping other people -- players, fans and everybody else involved in the game -- to tell their stories.....

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5.0 out of 5 stars Life

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David Beckham: My Side: The Autobiography: My Side - The Autobiography Kindle Edition

David Beckham is one of the world's foremost media icons, his popularity transcending sport and cultural divides. This is his own in-depth account of his career to date, for Manchester United and England, and of his childhood, family and personal life.

This is Beckham's fascinating life story in his own words. His rise through the ranks at the biggest club side in the world. His complex relationship with United boss Alex Ferguson. The England story, from being vilified by the nation before returning as the prodigal son to eventually captaining his country. His acrimonious falling-out with his manager and departure from Old Trafford in June 2003. And starting a new chapter of his life on foreign soil in the glare of the world’s press.

Now from Beckham himself, we gain a vivid and eye-opening insight into the family man behind the famous footballer, the international model and fashion leader. He describes how he first met and then married ex-Spice girl Victoria Adams, and the upbringing of their two children Brooklyn and Romeo. How his family's every step is monitored by a posse of newshounds and paparazzi. Also, the influence of his parents, growing up as a shy youngster in the family home, and how their subsequent split affected him.

Intimate and soul-searching, this is the real David Beckham like we have never seen before.

• Print length 556 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Willow
• Publication date April 21, 2010
• File size 2104 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003IDMULI
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Willow; Enlarged Ed edition (April 21, 2010)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 21, 2010
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2104 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 556 pages
• #2,253 in PC-compatible Games
• #7,111 in Sports Biographies (Books)
• #38,383 in Biographies & Memoirs (Kindle Store)

About the authors

David beckham.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Tom Watt is an actor, writer and broadcaster. If there's one thing that ties his work on football together, it's a love of helping other people -- players, fans and everybody else involved in the game -- to tell their stories.....

Customer reviews

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