Page 39 - Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography

we get the twenty-five,’ I told Peter. I believe it was £18 million down, with add-ons, that we
eventually received.
David hadn’t disappeared from the team altogether. We won the title with a 4–1 win against
Charlton at Old Trafford on 3 May 2003. He scored in that game and again at Everton on 11 May as

our season ended with a 2–1 win. A free kick from 20 yards was not a bad way for him to depart on a
day when our defence was hounded by a young local talent called Wayne Rooney. David had played
his part in our victorious League campaign, so there was no reason to leave him out at Goodison Park.
Maybe he wasn’t mature enough at that time to handle everything that was going on in his life.
Today, he seems to manage things better. He is more certain of his position in life, more in control.
But it was reaching the stage back then when I felt uncomfortable with the celebrity aspect of his life.
An example: arriving at the training ground at 3 p.m. before a trip to Leicester City, I noticed the

press lined up on the road into Carrington. There must have been 20 photographers.
‘What’s going on?’ I demanded. I was told, ‘Apparently Beckham is revealing his new haircut
tomorrow.’
David turned up with a beanie hat on. At dinner that night he was still wearing it. ‘David, take your
beanie hat off, you’re in a restaurant,’ I said. He refused. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ I persisted. ‘Take it
off.’ But he wouldn’t.

So I was raging. There was no way I could fine him for it. Plenty of players had worn baseball
caps on the way to games and so on, but none had been so defiant about keeping one on during a team
meal.
The next day, the players were going out for the pre-match warm-up and David had his beanie hat
on. ‘David,’ I said, ‘you’re not going out with that beanie hat on. You’ll not be playing. I’ll take you
out of the team right now.’
He went berserk. Took it off. Bald head, completely shaved. I said, ‘Is that what this was all

about? A shaved head that nobody was to see?’ The plan was that he would keep the beanie hat on
and take it off just before kick-off. At that time I was starting to despair of him. I could see him being
swallowed up by the media or publicity agents.
David was at a great club. He had a fine career. He gave me 12 to 15 goals a season, worked his
balls off. That was taken away from him. And with that being taken away from him, he lost the chance
to become an absolute top-dog player. For my money, after the change, he never attained the level

where you would say: that is an absolute top player.
The process began when he was around 22 or 23. He started to make decisions that rendered it
hard for him to develop into a really great footballer. That was the disappointment for me. There was
no animosity between us, just disappointment, for me. Dejection. I would look at him and think: ‘What
are you doing, son?’
When he joined us, he was this wee, starry-eyed kid. Football mad. At 16 he was never out of the
gymnasium and couldn’t stop practising. He loved the game; he was living the dream. Then he wanted

to give it all up for a new career, a new lifestyle, for stardom.
From one perspective it would be churlish of me to say he made the wrong decision, in the sense
that he’s a very wealthy man. He’s become an icon. People react to his style changes. They copy
them. But I’m a football man, and I don’t think you give up football for anything. You can have
hobbies. I have horses; Michael Owen had horses; Scholes had horses. One or two players liked art. I
had a lovely painting in my office that Kieran Richardson did. What you don’t do is surrender the nuts

and bolts of football.
A year prior to leaving us, of course, David had taken part in the 2002 World Cup in Japan and