David Beckham RETIRES (…finally)

So, Goldenballs has tried his best to steal the limelight from his old boss, Sir Alex Ferguson, by announcing his retirement. At the ripe old age of 38, Becks has decided to call it quits after 20 long years. We take a look back at some of the most notable moments of his career.

Beckham is best known for playing for Man United, being part of the team that were originally written off as ‘you can’t win anything with kids’, that team contained Scholes (retired for a 2nd time this year), the Nevilles and Ryan Giggs. After starting with a loan period at Preston North End, he eventually left the Reds in 2003 for Real Madrid to join the Galacticos of Zidane, Figa and company, yet only won 1 league title in 4 years and no Champions League trophy. He then moved on LA Galaxy for footballing reasons (really?) where he won multiple trophies. He has finished career at PSG purely for media reasons to be honest with the last minute transfer, the earnings to charity and only signing a 6 month contract. Beckham has done a huge amount of work for charity including appearing on Comic Relief when he had a half decent haircut

When the ‘super couple’ were announced, his own fans greeted him with the lovely cheer of ‘Does she take it up the a***?’. They have since gone on to scar their own children for life with terrible names and some awful choice of advertising – talk about cringy.

David managed to prolong his England career with several cameos thanks to Fabio Capello seemingly intent on making him the most capped England player as a reward and for no footballing reason. His greatest moment in an England shirt is most probably ‘that’ goal, yeah you know the one, 2-1 down against Greece (when they could afford flights) , last minute of the match, and he pulled off this trademark stunner:

But his England career was not without controversy; he became the first player for the Three Lions to be sent off as captain twice, and most memorably against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup with a kick Luis Suarez would be proud of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rsc-7TZ9T8

He was all set to represent Team GB at the 2012 Olympics, being named in the provisional squad and after helping London to get the games, he was widely expected to be picked, unfortunately Stuart Pearce didn’t get the memo. Giggs, Micah Richards and loudmouth Craig Bellamy were selected instead and GB’s exit was blamed on the non-selection of Beckham by Robbie Savage (not the most reliable source I know).

Becks was also known for his looks, his modelling career (as seen above) and his haircut (too many people got a mohawk because of him) especially made him as much of a talking point on the front page of the tabloids as on the back of them. So the shock when Beckham appeared with a scar above his eye broke the hearts of women and became the talking point down the pub for the men, for what really was the tiniest of things, the result of an extreme Fergie hairdryer treatment involved a flying boot.

So his career wasn’t exactly without controversy but he was bloody good, he was a different type of winger, less about skinning opponents and more about using beautiful right foot to land the ball on a six pence or in the top corner of the net. For all his efforts he definitely deserves a biscuit or two and maybe he could give the rest of the packet to his missus.