hear those words. He’s a Man United scout. His name was Malcolm
Fidgeon. He came back to the house and talked to my parents and
explained the club wanted to give me a trial in Manchester. The next
thing, a few days later, Malcolm was turning up in his brown Ford Sierra
to drive me up north.
I owe Malcolm a lot. He was United’s London scout and the person
who took me up to the club and looked out for me until I moved there
permanently. I went up that first time and then back for two or three
other trials. I loved it, staying up in Manchester for days or a week at
a time, playing soccer and talking about soccer from morning until night.
I did everything I could to make the right impression and worked as
hard as I could. Eventually, we were told they’d be interested in signing
me. One evening at home, the phone rang and Dad answered it. A
minute or two later, he came back in with this look on his face, like he
couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Of course, this was his dream as
well as mine beginning to happen.
‘That was Alex Ferguson.’
Everything went quiet.
‘He phoned to say they’d enjoyed meeting you, that you’ve got talent
and that they think your character is a credit to you, and to me and
Mum.’
And there was more.
‘He said you’re just the kind of boy Manchester United are looking
for.’
That was the first contact I had with the man who became the driving
force behind my career. Thinking back, for all my anxiety about whether
they would want me or not, maybe I wasn’t surprised that the manager
knew who I was. The summer before, I’d already had my chance to
play in front of a capacity crowd at Old Trafford.
I was ten years old when I attended the Bobby Charlton Soccer
School for the first time. I had seen a feature about it on Blue Peter.
Playing soccer in Manchester? With Bobby Charlton? I suppose Mum
and Dad’s only choice in the matter was how they were going to fund
it: I think Grandad paid in the end. It was a residential soccer school
for that first summer, with hundreds of kids from all over the world
staying in the university halls of residence while the students were on
vacation. It lasted the whole week and I played plenty of soccer, but
the rest of the time I felt a bit lost. Mum and Dad came up and stayed
with relatives near Liverpool, and I was on the phone to them every
evening. I had a toothache. I was homesick. And the week just passed
me by a little.
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 center. 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 field 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 field, 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 microphone 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 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, with Mark Hughes and Gary Lineker playing for the team. 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 soccer 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 soccer was an experience. And so was the rest of it.
蚂蚁加油更衣室打造完美球迷衫m
足球市场-更多更全的球星自传下载m
We’d go out every day with Barca’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 soccer club, was really impressive. The training facilities
were excellent, although the young kids trained on a gravel field,
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 field. Sometimes you can’t help yourself: with acres of grass and
the stands towering above, I started running up and down, kicking an
imaginary soccer 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 school vacations, 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, mocked me 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 uniforms. 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 field 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 seated on the top table with the
manager and the staff. They had a present for me: one of those 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:
‘Thanks, David. I’ll tell you what: I’ll sign you for Manchester United
using this pen’.
Remembering that, it might seem strange that there was ever any
