David Beckham says leaving Man United was a good thing

Beckham rose to fame playing for Manchester United during the 1990s and early 2000s, before making a move to Real Madrid.

At the time he said he hadn’t wanted to leave the club but in hindsight realised it was possibly the best thing that could have happened in his life.

David Beckham was speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, brought to you by Sky Bet, when discussing this, with the full episode being available to watch here.

David Beckham said his life would have been completely different had he stayed at Manchester United (Image: Matt Crossick/PA Wire)

‘I didn’t want to leave Manchester United’

The 48-year-old spoke about his departure from 2003, stating that at the time he wanted to carry on in Manchester.

He explained: “Over the years the manager [Sir Alex Ferguson] had always made the right decision in his eyes for the team, and the club. That happened to me in the end, I didn’t want to leave Manchester United at the time – we’d just won the league again, but all of a sudden I get a phone call to be told that Manchester United had agreed a deal, and that was the end of it.  

“Even trying to speak to the manager after that, he didn’t want to talk to me. It wasn’t out of spite, he was on holiday, he didn’t want to be contacted, he’d made his decision and that was the end of it.

“It had happened notoriously over the years at Manchester United with Mark Hughes, Andre Kanchelskis, Paul Ince, and all these great players getting let go at a time where we felt they were in their prime, but the manager makes the decisions and that’s all that matters.” 

Beckham went on to play for Real Madrid, as well as LA Galaxy in the United States, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain before retiring.

David Beckham finished up his playing career at PSG (Image: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire)

Thinking about his career many years later he has reflected that leaving Manchester United was a benefit to him.

He said: “My life would be totally different [if I stayed at Manchester United]. I’d have still been living in Manchester, but I had the opportunity to go and play in Spain, learn a new language and culture.

“From there, move to America and have the opportunity to buy a team, then I went to Milan and ended my career in Paris. 

  “Culturally it’s something that I loved, having the experience of playing abroad. When I was growing up, I had no intention of leaving Manchester United but when It happened, it was probably the best thing that could have happened for my life, even though I didn’t want it.”

‘A lot of emotions’ went into David Beckham documentary

Beckham also discussed a recent documentary about his life that was released to Netflix saying a lot of energy went into it.

He said: “There was a lot of emotions that went with the filming that I’ve done over the last two years. I probably did about 45, 50 hours of filming which I didn’t expect to do.

???? “It felt like the right thing to do. I want something for my family to look back on.”

David Beckham speaks on his career & his life at the premiere of his Netflix Documentary ???? pic.twitter.com/sWDG18qagX

— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) October 3, 2023

“We’ve all seen the Michael Jordan documentary, and he does two interviews, and that was my idea – that’s what I was going to do and was going to be used as archive.

“But then it changed with Fisher Stevens, the Director. Suddenly, we did one interview, and he was like, ‘okay, this is different’, we need to do it in this way.’

“So, the range of emotions were unbelievable from my career, but then my family, the kids, my parents, all of that.”

Beckham is available to watch on Netflix right now.