Bending it with Beckham

David Beckham dribbles the ball within his side’s half, looking up to see the opposing keeper leave the goal behind.

I got acquainted with David Beckham in a manner unlike most fans or followers. My neighbor got FIFA for the Playstation and we played a friendly match at home. I chose the team that had my favorite color, Manchester United. Football was the first sport I played, at the age of six, but I was clueless about international football until that video game came.

He slows down...

 The friendly match was against Arsenal. I don’t remember the scoreline, but I do remember making insane passes with player number seven to strikers in the box who turned out to be either Solksjaer or Cole.

But when I finally got the ball into the goal from a distance using David Beckham, that made him an instant favorite for me.

Between that FIFA video game match and YouTube’s birth, I had never seen David Beckham play. I’d just imagine him as I listened to batchmates who slept extremely late (my school was football crazy in a basketball world) tell stories of how his free kicks would bend, how he scored when Manchester United beat Real Madrid at home, but failed to progress at the Champion’s League anyway.

I read up on Manchester United, replaying that FIFA game again and again. Then I borrowed a copy of FIFA 2004, only to find out that Beckham was no longer Manchester United’s number seven, but a certain Cristiano Ronaldo.

He moved to Real Madrid. I heard about that move but forgot about it until that moment.

...takes aim...

YouTube was born, and I had a lot of catching up to do. I also caught some football games on cable when I started staying up late. But I couldn’t catch La Liga. While I looked for the games that I only saw in my head, Manchester United’s new number seven was growing on me.



Later on, I found a video uploaded in 2006, David Beckham’s free kick against Ecuador in a World Cup match. It was more simple than I imagined, but my friends said I hadn’t seen his best kicks yet and that I should keep looking. I also tried staying up for the World Cup on TV, but I don’t remember catching Beckham play: I’d fall asleep most of the time.


But I didn’t miss anything, even Zidane’s red card exit at the World Cup final, thanks to YouTube.

…and strikes.

By 2009, I finally saw a live La Liga match on TV. Beckham had already gone to LA Galaxy and no longer played for Real Madrid, but Cristiano Ronaldo did.

Until then, I settled for reading Real Madrid match recaps and looking up La Liga games and clips on YouTube before they were removed (some are still there). So I saw the former Man U star make that insane half line assist to Ronaldo (the fatter one), and was introduced to pre-AC Milan Ronaldinho and young Messi.

But I still wanted to watch David Beckham live on TV, not on a YouTube replay.

The ball floats...

In 2011, I was a few feet away from David Beckham.

“Mr. Photographer, are you ready?”

He talked to me, like he did to kids he taught in a small football clinic: small lines, casual. LA Galaxy was in Manila, and thanks to a friend, I found myself next to the pitch (media was restricted to the grandstand). Each LA Galaxy player stayed on one station as kids moved between areas in batches, with one photographer positioned per station.

David Beckham was stationed right in front me. I was floating.

In my circle, I called him Daddy Becks, because his Posh Spice of a wife Victoria is a mom I’d love to fistbump. I followed his traces on TV and online and finally, at Rizal Memorial Stadium, I caught up to the man who introduced me to Manchester United, Real Madrid, and to international football.

I never imagined seeing him in the flesh, let alone taking his photo, and for a few minutes of his life, exist in his world.

Because he had always existed in mine.

...it goes above the keeper...

I borrowed a telephoto lens from a friend and covered the LA Galaxy friendly versus the Azkals. I didn’t capture David Beckham’s goal because he was on the other side, I saw it through my viewfinder, but I did catch local football star Phil Younghusband strike as the England legend looked on.

Last December, I got FIFA 13 on my iPod Touch and immediately signed Beckham back to Manchester United in Manager Mode. This year, the actual player moved to Paris Saint Germain after a back-to-back cup victory with the LA Galaxy, moving on to win France’s Ligue 1. This month, he announced his retirement from professional football, and I joined his many other fans and followers in reliving his best kicks on YouTube.

Before the big retirement announcement, I played football with my old high school batchmates. One of our chats led to Beckham’s goal from the midfield against Wimbledon in 1996. When I got home, I loaded YouTube, looked for it and fell under Beckham’s spell anew.  

...and hits a fan seated in front of a computer hundreds of miles away, more than a decade after making that insane goal from deep in the midfield. - AMD, GMA News