David Beckham at 50: Why ‘Goldenballs’ is closer than ever to the knighthood he craves

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When you have David Beckham’s wealth, celebrity status and a social circle made up of Hollywood A-listers, why limit yourself to just one birthday bash?

Beckham’s celebrations for his 50th — a series of events on both sides of the Atlantic — kicked off in March with a party at Cipriani, an Italian restaurant in Miami that is so exclusive they do not share the menu (or prices) online.

Lionel Messi was among the 100-plus guest list, along with Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets — all players at the Inter Miami team that has Beckham at its forefront.

Photographs showed Beckham looking rather diminutive beside NFL legend Tom Brady and former basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, towering over him at 6ft 4in and 7ft 1in respectively. Hollywood stars Justin Theroux and Fisher Stevens were also at the black-tie event, as well as Grammy winner Marc Anthony, model Cindy Crawford and a slew of other actors, singers and celebrities.

More events are coming up (Beckham’s actual birthday is today) and no doubt he will be adding other pictures to an Instagram account that, numbers-wise, offers its own context into how the modern world views the man Pele once described as “more of a pop star than a footballer”. With 88 million followers, Beckham might be accurately described as one of the biggest icons on the planet. And, make no mistake, that is exactly how he wanted it.

“David’s a friend and someone I have a huge amount of respect for,” Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton told The Athletic yesterday ahead of Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix, which Beckham has regularly attended. “Growing up watching him — particularly as I was massively into football — and seeing his story and what he’s been able to do, particularly after his (playing) career, I joined his old management team (Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment) many years ago with the goal of trying to do something similar, and was really inspired by what he was able to do.”

The strange thing, perhaps, is that a good proportion of Beckham’s social media followers might not see Beckham as a former footballer. Some might not even know that he wore the colours of Manchester United, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Milan, the LA Galaxy and, 115 times, England’s national team. Or that the Spanish journalist Roberto Palomar once described him as having a “special hinge in his ankle which lets him place the ball wherever he wants”.

Those of us who dealt with Beckham as a footballer can see how the U.S. has changed him, how he has become a more confident public speaker and lost some of the occasional awkwardness, shyness even, that always seemed so incongruous to other parts of his life.

Yet Beckham is essentially the same at 50 as he was at 40: not your ordinary ex-footballer. He is part of the glitterati, the elite, the haves-and-have-yachts, mixing with the Royal family, clinking wine glasses with Hollywood’s finest, appearing in adverts for the Super Bowl.

One day he is in Los Angeles for a photoshoot, the next he is dining with his wife, Victoria, in Paris. Beckham is immersed in everything at Inter Miami. But then he is off globe-trotting again. Another modelling assignment, perhaps, or a TV advert to film, or a promotion for his new show, Beckham & Friends, where he watches live Champions League games with his celebrity pals. Or maybe a charity initiative with Unicef or one of the many other good-cause events he supports.

Beckham with Lionel Messi at Inter Miami, where he has a hands-on approach (Chris Arjoon/Getty Images)

It was Gary Neville, his friend and old Manchester United team-mate, who coined the phrase “attack the day”, rising at 5am every morning to cram in as much as possible before the inconvenience of sleep. But there is something extraordinary about Beckham’s energy, too.

“I like to be busy,” he told The Athletic in 2023. “I like to work. I’ve come from a working-class family in the east end of London. My mum and dad worked their backsides off. My dad (a gas fitter) was still working when he was 71, 72 years old.”

The people who know Beckham best talk about someone who shows absolutely no signs of slowing up and is utterly determined, with the help of some very skilful people around him, to keep building his own brand.

And yet, they will also speak about how, no matter how famous he has become, he has never lost sight about what, or who, is really important in life.

The story, for example, about how he changed his plans, having originally flown into London, when he learned that Kath Phipps, Manchester United’s long-serving receptionist, was desperately ill. Beckham drove straight to Manchester and stayed by her bedside for hours, holding her hand and reminiscing about his years at the club. Phipps, 85, died a few days later, but in those moments, her colleagues talked about Beckham’s human touch having the effect of “magic medicine”.

Other posts on social media are a reminder of why the Beckhams were once described by David Furnish, husband of Elton John, as “Mr and Mrs Everyday who suddenly got famous”. In one recent Instagram post, Beckham can be seen picking radishes from the vegetable plot in his garden. “Hands in soil,” he explains. “It’s good for the mind.”

He has, to put it into context, more than twice as many followers as Shaquille O’Neal and nearly six times more than Tom Brady. Mohamed Salah is the nearest Premier League player, with 64.7 million followers, but nobody else from England’s top division is particularly close. And this is a man who has not kicked a ball competitively for 12 years.

“There are very few footballers who have been regarded as both culturally relevant and in that celebrity sphere,” says Dan Haddad, head of commercial strategy at Octagon, a sports, music and entertainment agency. “We talk about Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo on this other level, but I don’t see any other active players being as relevant as Beckham is 10 or 15 years after their playing careers have ended.”

Against that kind of backdrop, perhaps this is also a good moment to consider Beckham’s influence in the U.S. and how, in particular, he has kept his promise to MLS commissioner Don Garber to grow the sport.

That promise was made in 2007 when Beckham signed up with the Galaxy to become the face of MLS and was handed the responsibility, in the words of Los Angeles Times writer Bill Plaschke at the time, not to win, but “to give his sport one last chance to work in the biggest place it doesn’t”.

That season, the league had 13 teams and an average attendance of 16,770. Beckham arrived as both an athlete and an advertising campaign. His new audience soon learned why he was nicknamed ‘Goldenballs’.

“Without doubt, MLS has more global awareness than at any other time in our history and has more legitimacy in the United States because of David,” Garber told the The New York Times in November 2007.

There were full-page adverts for Beckham’s arrival in the U.S. when he signed for LA Galaxy in 2007 (Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images)

“Every measure of our business has grown because of him. We have sold more than 300,000 Beckham Los Angeles Galaxy jerseys, which was 700 times the number of Galaxy jerseys sold in 2006. Merchandise sales overall have gone up two or three times. International TV sales have gone up from next to nothing to distribution in 100 countries, with live games in Asia and Mexico.”

Almost two decades on, MLS has 30 teams, the average attendance last season was 23,234, and Project Messi, overseen by Beckham, has brought the most iconic and spectacularly gifted footballer on the planet to its shores.

Inter Miami’s birth has been a big part of the story and, Beckham being Beckham, he has had a hands-on role in everything from recruitment to choosing the kit.

“In our first month at the club, David was at our side the entire time,” Tata Martino, the former Inter Miami manager, told The Athletic in 2023. “He was at every training session. He was at every game. He was very close to the team. He’s very friendly and respectful.”

Football has changed in the U.S. and perhaps, in time, that will be more widely recognised as Beckham’s legacy. But that does not mean everyone will be enthusiastically toasting his birthday. Beckham, celebrated as a gay icon, was accused of having elastic principles when he took Qatar’s millions to be an ambassador for the 2022 World Cup, in a country that bans same-sex relationships and has been accused of human-rights abuses.

Nobody should be particularly surprised, though, by the reports this week in the UK that he has a strong chance of being awarded the knighthood that he has craved for longer than he would probably wish to remember.

Beckham with his wife, Victoria, and King Charles III in February 2025 (Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)

Beckham will probably never be allowed to forget how his anger at being rejected for the award in 2013 was exposed four years later when his emails were hacked from a company associated with his then-representative, Simon Oliveira.

The messages, subsequently published by a variety of European newspapers, showed him taking aim at the honours committee, calling them ‘unappreciative c***s’ and insisting he didn’t ‘care about being knighted’. His exchanges also revealed UK authorities’ concerns over his tax affairs.

Now, though, it is being reported he might get his wish after all. In December, the Beckhams were invited to join King Charles and Queen Camilla for a banquet at Buckingham Palace to mark the state visit of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Beckham, awarded the OBE in 2003, has reportedly bonded with the king over their love of making honey. He has been close to princes William and Harry for some time and stood for 12 hours in the line of people to see the late Queen lying in state in Westminster Hall.

Arise, Sir Goldenballs — it just might be the birthday present he wanted above all.

Additional reporting: Phil Buckingham, Luke Smith

(Top photo: Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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