David Beckham is preparing for life after soccer.
Following this season, he has two years remaining on his contract with Real Madrid. He arrived at the club 20 months ago, and he’s won nothing. He’ll turn 30 in May, and he knows Madrid fans are demanding and impatient.
”I’m happy at Real Madrid and want to stay at Real Madrid as long as I can,” Beckham said on Monday. ”But in football and life, you never know what is going to happen.”
Knocked out of the Champions League last week and with little chance to win the Spanish league — Madrid trail FC Barcelona by 11 points — Beckham knows the Galacticos may be breaking up.
Luis Figo (32) may be the first to go. Zinedine Zidane is a few months older than Figo. Even Raul Gonzalez, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo are vulnerable.
”The team hasn’t won anything in the last season, and it’s looking tough this season,” Beckham said. ”People look at why it’s not happening. Sometimes you get brought into that, and sometimes you don’t.
”A club like Real Madrid needs to win trophies. It doesn’t matter whether one or two of the so-called Galacticos perform. Everyone has to perform and we have to win.”
The England midfielder is bracing himself. He figures he has two options when he retires: becoming a manager, or choosing something different.
”Management has never been a thing for me and never will be,” he said. ”I’m just one of those players who has never fancied going into management.”
So it’s option number two.
Beckham is setting up a soccer school with ”several million” of his own money. On Monday, he unveiled plans for the David Beckham Academy, which opens this summer next to the Millennium Dome in east London — the area where he grew up.
”There is that certain kind of buzz when you step on a football pitch,” Beckham said. ”I want to be able get that same kind of buzz with the soccer school.
”I’ll play up to the point where I feel my legs are getting too old and I can’t do it any more at the top level. When that time comes, that’s when I’ll go into the soccer school.”
Beckham has hooked up with the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which is developing the vacant Millennium Dome into a 26 000-seat arena and entertainment complex.
Built next to the Dome on a horseshoe bend in the Thames, the academy will have two full-size fields, indoor facilities, classrooms and a dining area. The school will be open to boys and girls, ages eight to 15.
About 15 000 are expected to enrol, with 10 000 enrolling for free. Others will pay a £250 fee for a five-day training camp.
Dressed in a white track suit and wearing his hair long again, Beckham spoke softly as 20 students from his old school ran through basic drills with several hundred photographers and reporters crowding around.
”That was a good one, mate,” said Beckman, encouraging one student.
”David has never lost touch with the school and the friends he had there,” said Clive Moore, the head teacher at Chingford Foundation School — Beckham’s old school.
”I was in charge of discipline in the school when he was at the school, and I can tell you he was never, ever sent to me for anything.”
Anschutz is planning to open a sister academy later this year in Los Angeles.
”We chose him [Beckham] because he has this unique platform,” said Timothy Leiweke, president and CEO of Anschutz.
”He’s widely recognised around the world as one of the most brilliant football players ever,” he said.
”It was just a natural partnership,” added Leiweke, who watched Beckham tutor children recently in Los Angeles.
”I saw the sheer joy he has working with the kids — the joy that he brought out of the kids. It was something that was natural for us to do as a part of what we were doing at the Millennium Dome.” — Sapa-AP