Affair claims, beekeeping and that red card: What we’ve learned from David Beckham’s Netflix documentary

By Issy Ronald, CNN

(CNN) — One of the most recognizable people in the world, David Beckham has a well-trodden story: a former England soccer captain, married to a Spice Girl and now the owner of Major League Soccer club Inter Miami.

“Brand Beckham” swept the world in the 1990s and 2000s, propelling David and Victoria Beckham to an international stardom reserved for those who transcend the bounds of their celebrity careers and become pop culture icons of their era.

It seems impossible to learn any more about Beckham but there are several revelations contained in the eponymous Netflix documentary released on Wednesday, directed by “Succession” star Fisher Stevens who sketches a complex portrait of the soccer star.

Victoria Beckham is ‘not into football’

While already independently famous, the marriage between “Posh and Becks” catapulted both of them into another sphere of celebrity, uniting the worlds of soccer, pop culture, music and later fashion.

But, as it turns out, Victoria Beckham is “not into football” and never will be, she says in the documentary, despite marrying one of the sport’s most recognizable figures.

Both of them recall their first meeting and the early days of their fledgling relationship, meeting in car parks and kissing in cars in an attempt to keep it a secret. “It’s less seedy than it sounds,” Victoria quips.

She gave her number to her future husband written on a plane ticket after attending a Manchester United game with fellow Spice Girl Mel C.

Victoria and David Beckham address affair allegations

But the image of a blissful marriage cracked in April 2004 when the now defunct British newspaper “News of the World” printed allegations that Beckham had had an affair after his transfer to Real Madrid.

While the couple don’t directly address the content of the allegations in the documentary, they each speak about the impact that it, and the media coverage, had on their marriage.

“I don’t know how we got through it in all honesty,” Beckham said haltingly in the documentary. “Victoria is everything to me. To see her hurt was incredibly difficult… what we had was worth fighting for.”

For her part, Victoria says that “it was the hardest period” in their marriage because “it felt like the world was against us… and we were against each other.”

Beckham’s depression after 1998 World Cup red card

For all the magical moments that Beckham enjoyed on the soccer field, there was one incident that threatened to overshadow his career: when he was given a red card for tripping Diego Simeone during England’s round of 16 match against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup.

England went on to lose that match on penalties and crashed out of the World Cup, unleashing a tidal wave of abuse towards Beckham.

It was “public bullying on another level,” Victoria said, saying that it left her husband “clinically depressed” and “broken.”

Beckham’s friend and business partner, David Gardner, said he remembers people spitting at and barging into the soccer player in the street or banging on their car windows at traffic lights.

The abuse, Beckham said, left him feeling “very vulnerable and alone,” during that time but that he “finds it hard to talk through what I went through because it was so extreme… the whole country hated me.”

He added that he still beats himself up about the red card 25 years later.

David Beckham enjoys beekeeping

After retiring from football, Beckham has become a co-owner of Inter Miami and found some other ways to occupy his time too, including beekeeping and cooking.

The series begins with him beekeeping, harvesting honey from a hive of bees that flows into an old jam jar. Beckham jokes that it should be called “Golden Bees” – an apparent allusion to his one-time nickname “Golden Balls” – while his wife, he says with a wry smile, thinks it should be called “DB Sticky Stuff.” Lego is another of his hobbies, he tells documentary director Fisher Stevens.

Coming full circle, the four-part documentary ends with him cooking with his family in a sunroom, a place where he “potters around” on a Saturday, spending the day grilling while watching football on his iPad.

The pop star photoshoot as Victoria gave birth

Sometimes, professional commitments impacted on important moments in Beckham’s family life. One example is when he had to break the news to his wife that the birth of their third son, Cruz, would clash with his photoshoot with pop icons Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez.

“I was like… seriously, I am about to burst. I’m on bed rest. Are you kidding me?” Victoria says 18 years later in the documentary. “You’ve got a damn photoshoot with Jennifer Lopez, who is gorgeous and not about to have a baby. So I had my C-section and I remember lying there, don’t feel at my most gorgeous, let’s just say.”

On the front pages of the newspapers, Victoria remembers, was a photo of Beckham standing between Beyoncé and Lopez with the headline “What would Posh say?”

“Let me tell you what Posh would say,” she says in the documentary. “Posh was pissed off.”

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