David Beckham’s end at Manchester United was ugly. The slow, but steady deterioration
of his relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson manifested in squabbles, headlines and – famously
– a flying boot and a cut above the eyebrow.
Beckham had once enjoyed an almost paternal relationship with his manager, but by 2003
his celebrity, his lifestyle and – what Ferguson perceived to be his dwindling focus
– had conspired to create a brooding hostility.
Having previously been assumed unsellable, the England captain was suddenly on the market.
This is the story of how – and why – Real Madrid pounced.
When Florentino Perez was elected to the Real Madrid presidency for the first time in 2000,
he inherited a club in a mess. Real were nearly €280m in debt and, despite having just won
the Champions League for the second time in three seasons, they had become ideologically
dull.
The Galactico era was the response to that. It was also inspired by Perez’s rejection
of team-building orthodoxies and his belief in the primacy of talent alone, but it was
fundamentally an attempt to twine the club around the notion of fantasy, with the aim
of becoming football’s biggest spectacle.
First, it needed the right players. Perez had been elected on a pledge to sign Luis
Figo from Barcelona. If he failed, he had promised to pay for entire year’s worth
of season-tickets out of his pocket. Figo signed, of course, and would be followed by
Zinedine Zidane in 2001 and Brazilian forward Ronaldo in 2002. It was optimistic and aspirational;
more than anything, it was highly seductive, and while the football could often be flawed,
it was just as often fabulous.
As a result, whatever else the Galacticos era may have been and whatever its tactical
deficiencies were, it naturally spoke to the ego of the world’s best players. Perez created
a stage on which they wanted to perform. So, given Beckham’s image and ease with the
spotlight, to say nothing of the chance to play with Raul, Figo, Zidane and Ronaldo,
it naturally caught his eye.
The courtship between him and Real was relatively smooth, even though it depended on the growing
hostility at Old Trafford. Tension between Beckham and Ferguson had been brewing for
some time, but 2003 was the point of no return. Following a 2-0 loss to Arsenal, the two would
have their famous flare-up in the dressing room. Ferguson kicked a boot at Beckham, cutting
him just above the eye; the photographic evidence was splashed over the British tabloids.
Then, six weeks later, United faced Real Madrid in a Champions League quarter-final. They’d
be badly outplayed in the first-leg, losing 3-1, but it was Beckham who paid for the performance
with his place, watching on from the bench as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer started on the right-wing
for the return game. Beckham would come on, score twice, and inspire a dramatic 4-3 win,
but it wasn’t enough. United were out and Real were sashaying into the semi-final – and
did so having piqued Beckham’s interest along the way.
As ever, accounts of who contacted who and when are vague, but the conversation was initiated
by Beckham’s representatives in April 2003, prior to that second-leg. Before the end of
the month, Jose Angel Sanchez – who had arrived as marketing director upon Perez’s
election - would meet with Peter Kenyon, United’s CEO, at a European football summit in Belgium.
By June, after a meeting in Sardinia, the two would strike an agreement.
The price for Beckham would be just under £25m, not including future fees. According
to reports, Perez had been prepared to pay more than double. Given the £54m he had spent
on Luis Figo, the nearly £70m on Zidane and the £40m he’d parted with for Ronaldo,
all in successive summers, that seems fair to assume.
From Real’s perspective, it was strangely easy – or, at least, it was after one unexpected
road-bump. Prior to Sanchez and Kenyon reaching their agreement, United had released a statement
announcing that an agreement had been brokered with Joan Laporta, a candidate in the upcoming
Barcelona presidential election.
Real were bemused, but Beckham was furious – and a retaliatory statement from his representatives
announced that he no intention of meeting with Laporta or Barcelona, and that he felt
as if he was being used as political pawn. Even now, almost two decades later, it’s
a difficult episode to explain or justify.
The relatively low fee agreed with Real also suggests a mistake by United. Years later,
Beckham would own some of the responsibility for how his career in England ended. But regardless
of whether Ferguson was right to sell him or not, his determination to be rid of the
player likely weakened the club’s bargaining position.
Without question, the fee was low for the game’s most saleable asset. But if Manchester
United weren’t aware of what they were giving up, Real were certainly sure of what they
were getting.
In April of 2003, The Guardian reported that the club were conducting market research on
Beckham’s commercial appeal. The conclusion was compelling. Not only was he an obvious
commodity within the game and the footballing face of ADIDAS, but he also promoted tangentially
related products like Pepsi, Vodafone, BrylCreem and Marks & Spencer, which proved his reach
beyond the sport. He was also the first man to appear on the cover of the women’s magazine
Marie Claire, which demonstrated just how broad his appeal really was.
Of particular interest to Perez and Sanchez, though, was Beckham’s effect in Asia. Manchester
United had long been touring in that part of the world but the previous summer’s World
Cup in Japan and South Korea had inspired a local psychosis; Beckham caused a frenzy
wherever he went.
So, shortly after completing his transfer, Beckham arrived in Japan for a promotional
tour. He would be greeted by hundreds of fans at Tokyo airport and, later, a supposedly
secret visit to a downtown ADIDAS store attracted thousands, trapping Beckham inside and disrupting
the traffic.
He was a star. Even prior to his move, Beckham had endorsed beauty products, engine oil and
mobile phones in Asia. In 2002, a confectionary company even built a 10ft statue of him out
of chocolate and displayed it in a Tokyo shopping district.
That kind of appeal was precious for Perez and Sanchez, particularly with their ambitions
of Asian expansion and their (ultimately unrealised) attempt to launch a theme park in the Middle
East. It provided an immediate dividend, too, with the club earning an estimated €10m
Euros from a 2003 pre-season tour which passed through Hong Kong, Bangkok, Beijing and Japan.
Also precious was the clause in Beckham’s Real contract, standard in all the deals Perez
struck with his Galacticos, which entitled the club to a 50% share of his image rights
– and that was an image which became more valuable once it was was cloaked in Real’s
famous white shirt. In White Angels, John Carlin’s study of the Galactico period,
the author describes a conversation with Jesus Gasanz, then President of Audi’s Spanish
division, which provides vivid testament of just how powerful Beckham and Madrid were
in concert.
In the 36 hours after the transfer was completed, during which Beckham was ferried between his
medical and ceremonial appointments in an Audi, the coverage the company received was
so substantial, Gasanz claimed, as to repay the investment made in their three-year partnership
with the club.
It’s the kind of anecdote which vindicates the Galacticos project, but unfairly colours
Beckham’s sporting reputation. Financial results from the time, which show Real Madrid’s
revenues rising from £93.2m in 2001 to £186.4m and the top of the Deloitte money list by
2005, also depict him – quite wrongly – as a convenience signing, made solely with commercial
imperatives in mind. That’s especially true given that he would win just one La Liga title
during his four years in Spain.
But that’s really to misunderstand David Beckham, or to fail to recognise the rare
balance he struck between the sporting and commercial worlds. It’s also to misinterpret
what the intention of the Galactico project was, or why Beckham was so integral to its
concept.
That period of Real Madrid’s history may not have been laden with silverware, but it
still produced a financial revolution, as well as the spectacle and the sense of fantasy
that Florentino Perez had dreamt of restoring.