David Beckham, who is celebrating his 50th birthday today, can look back on his first half century with considerable satisfaction.
At the age of 50 a man knows what his life looks like.
And at the age of 50, David Robert Joseph Beckham National Treasure, International Icon, Happy Family Man, businessman and brand-one of the most successful British brands in history, above that with Rolls-Royce, The Rolling Stones and our Royalty.
A few days before Beckham turned 50, I walked through the Bond Street in London and there he was, seductively glowing out the window of the boss, the Brad Pitt of Chingford, frowning seriously, still torn and still hot, every centimeter looked like the man who wants to be every woman and every man wants to be.
Think about it for a business such as Boss has the choice of young, fit, 20-I-like football players who are currently adorning our Premier League, or Serie A, or La Liga, or the German Bundesliga.
But Boss does not want a superstar footballer who is in the twenties.
It wants Beckham to promote his boss bomberjack, boss leather trainers and boss cotton mix jacket with zipper closing because in the ripe age of 50-David has an aura and charisma, and a picture where nobody comes to the neighborhood 20 or 30 years younger.
Blew him away
David Beckham has been on our national landscape for so long that it is easy to miss how unique he is.
This is not only a man who became fabulously successful, who transcended his sport, who parlayed a talent for kicking a ball in an industry of several millions of dollars.
He is the golden boy who became the man whose dreams came out. All.
When he kicked a ball in the backyard of his parents in Chingford, “killing the flower beds”, “as he remembers, he dreamed of playing for Manchester United and England (his instinctive patriotism cannot be overestimated).
All football-crazy children have a similar dream. But for David Beckham, the dream came out of Hij played 265 games for his beloved Manchester United in a 12-year career and appeared 115 times for his country, 59 times with the Captain's bracelet. The dream came true.
And when he was a young football player in Manchester, breaking in the first team of Alex Ferguson, he watched TV in 1997 when he saw this woman – this girl, this vision – who completely blew him away and knew he had to get her in his life.
“It was not a love at first sight,” he wrote in his autobiography, my side, about the first time he saw Posh Spice perform with her fellow herb girls. “It was faster than that.”
So that dream came true too. He won the heart and hand of Victoria Adams.
Posh and Becks were the Romeo and Juliet van Britpop and married on July 4, 1999 under Great Pomp and Splendor in Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland, accompanied by their first child, four -month -old Brooklyn.
And later, as the years passed and his legs began to feel the ruthless time, David dreamed of cracking America – an impossible dream for an English football player.
Unbelievable, his American dream also came out-first as a player at La Galaxy (where they founded a statue of him), and later as co-owner and president of Inter Miami.
David Beckham was born in Leytonstone, the week in 1975 that Oh Boy by Mud No1 was in the charts. His mother Sandra was a hairdresser and his father Ted was a kitchen fitter.
His parents were Cockney Reds – Die Strange Lost Tribe from Greater London Voetbalfans who promise their football faithfulness to a club halfway through the M6.
Beckham's middle name of Robert had a tribute to Bobby Charlton from United, and by the age of three, David Manchester United Replica Kit got kit for Christmas.
He was always crazy. “I love football more than anyone else,” he writes in his autobiography, and it is probably the most revealing rule in the book.
In many ways he was an ordinary child from an ordinary working-class house on the outskirts of East London and Essex.
The dreams he had were also normal – to be a football legend, to love a famous beauty, to remain silent. But all his big dreams come true for David Beckham.
So it is a shock to remember that the crucial moment of his gilded, golden life was a living nightmare that David Beckham could have bury quite easily forever.
When he was sent away in the 1998 World Cup in the England match against Argentina, it traumatized the nation.
The match was nice on 2-2 in the second half when Diego Simeone was violent from behind in Beckham, salted salt in the wound by pushing Becks into his back and giving his smooth blonde locks a cunning tugboat.
Beckham responded his boot slightly dirty diego on the calf and sneaky simeone went down as if both vessels of a 12-drill shotgun were fired in his brain at a point with a point with a point.
Red card for Beckham. Trauma for England – the team, the nation.
And we can now see that the aftermath would not have been so virulent, and the return against Beckham as hysterical as he didn't look like the man who had everything – appearance, money, talent, the spice girl.
And, crucial, if England had not been so painful in the neighborhood of beating the gifted cheats of Argentina.
The ten men of England were lions, who pushed Argentina all the way to a penalty shoot-out, who lost in the timely tradition England.
Brutal aftermath
And it felt like we would have won if our golden boy had stayed on the field. It felt like 1998 could have been the year that the Spirit of 1966 was laid to rest.
Beckham was blamed at home. And in all honesty he earned some debt.
But he never earned the death threats, or the image that was strung on a lamp post outside Upton Park, or the mean abuse that followed him for the following season, and then.
If he had behaved like a spoiled Snotaap as a 22-year-old at the 1998 World Cup in France, Beckham would now carry himself as a man.
He was a pin-up before 1998. In the aftermath he started the long, hard way to become a hero. A lesser soul would have been withdrawn from England's shirt.
Beckham remained proud to put it on and to endure the abuse of a section of England fans.
He eventually silent the critics in October 2001 when he bowed and a free kick of 30 meters against Greece, who dragged his country to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
Even at the age of 50, Beckham is about the 1998 World Cup and his brutal aftermath.
They thought it was all over. But they could not cancel David Beckham. Family is everything for him.
That sounds like a cliché of the Wenscard, but it applies to David Beckham. And it has always been from Chingford to Miami.
Ted and Sandra Beckham were fanatically supporting parents, as laser -oriented on the future success of their son as the father of the Jackson 5, who devoted all their free time to their son's football dream.
“My parents knew how much I loved football,” he writes. “If there was a way for me to get to a game, they did everything to make it happen. Whether it was playing or coaching, I would have my chance.”
And it was his own family with Victoria who gave him comfort and support when he was public enemy number one.
Beckham heard that he would become a father on the day England landed in Saint-Étienne prior to the game Argentina.
While his world imploded after his broadcast, he flew to the US to be with his pregnant herbal girl. He was a father at the age of 23.
Family has endured him. But family life has not always been easy.
The biggest source of personal pain in his life is almost certain that Sandra and Ted Beckham are now separated, a situation that hurts him to this day.
And the requirements of football have set tribes on his own marriage.
Only live in Madrid when he became a Galactico in Real Madrid in 2003, and then, after he came to La Galaxy in 2007, his family only left Los Angeles – where Victoria and the children were great – to play for AC Milan in a ruthless attempt to support his career in England. They survived all.
And rather incredible, Mr. and Mrs. Beckham – who used to be Posh and Becks – celebrated their silver wedding anniversary last year.
If this country loves David Beckham, then it is because millions of us feel that we have seen him grow up. There is a showreel of its biggest hits in our national consciousness.
Getting famous at night for the purpose of his own half against Wimbledon on the first day of the season in August 1996.
Great celebrity
The paparazzi who chased Posh and Becks as if they were the Charles and Diana of Show Business.
The hairstyles. The Sarong.
The impossible precision of his steps, the Roy of the Rovers quality of his curved goals with the IS-like Beckham. The tattoos. Modeling from underpants to well in middle age.
The time that he was in the wrong end of his manager's hairdryer and opened his eye by a Schoolaars.
“He is such a big celebrity,” said Alex Ferguson of David Beckham in 2007, “football is only a small part.”
Fergie was a father figure for the boy who became a man, a mentor for the player who was part of the generation of United's Golden “Youny-Veever-Win-Anything-Withby-WITH-Kids”.
But Fergie is wrong. For David Beckham, football is the basis on which he built a rich, an industry, a legend.
Our lasting memory of him will, I suspect, when he stood in line for 12 o'clock to see the deceased Queen Elizabeth.
Beckham-our greatest celebrity who can enter into all B-lists in the VIP queue.
But the boy from Chingford – this Patriot, this monarchist, this Englishman – came in line with the people.
So happy birthday, David Beckham. What do you give the man with everything?
The knighthood he has earned will happen one day.
But I suspect that – just like one of his spectacular goals – it will happen when the world expects it least.