David Beckham reveals truth behind infamous Cornrows haircut & how he still thinks about World Cup red card every week
ROM curtains and a mohawk to ponytails and a bleached buzzcut, David Beckham is almost as famous for his haircuts as his football.
But there is only one he regrets: Cornrows ahead of a meet ’n’ greet with Nelson Mandela.
The former England captain revealed he had the haircut — which in today’s woke world would be billed as “cultural appropriation” and has landed celebs including Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian and Adele in hot water — on a rosé-fuelled whim while on holiday in the South of France.
Becks said: “We were there with family and one of Victoria’s friends who is a hairdresser.
“I asked if she could do something with my hair and she said, ‘Do you want cornrows?’ and I said, ‘Yeah. I don’t know what they are. But yeah’. It was painful having them done but I liked them.
“People ask if I have any regrets about my hairstyles and while I don’t regret any of them, I do sort of regret the cornrows.
“I had them put in on the Saturday and on the Monday I flew to South Africa with the England team for a match.
“I got to meet the great Nelson Mandela. And the picture that I’ve got of Nelson Mandela is me holding his hand with cornrows in my hair. That’s my only regret.”
Continuing in one of his most candid ever interviews, Becks revealed that he now tries to live his life without regrets,
Tough moment
Even his infamous red card for kicking Argentina’s Diego Simeone during the 1998 World Cup, after which England crashed out of the competition, is something he only wishes hadn’t happened — but is an incident that he believes he learned from.
“There’s nothing that I regret in my career,” said the 48-year-old. “I still think about that incident most weeks. It still affects me but I think it happened for a reason.
“It is a tough moment in my life. It was a tough moment for my family.
“I’m going to try not to get emotional . . . but I was young and I made a mistake. I did something stupid and silly and I honestly suffered for that.
“It turned me into a little bit of a cold person with certain situations. I couldn’t drive or walk in London.
“I couldn’t go to restaurants. I couldn’t go to bars. Friends didn’t want to walk with me because they knew I was getting abused.
“If I stopped at traffic lights, people would hit the window or spit at it, and these things happened for quite a few years.
“It was a difficult moment and I think that’s what made me as a person, as a player.”
Becks also revealed how the tough love he received from his dad Ted, a gas fitter, helped make him the man he became.
“I used to probably end up in tears every time I got in the car with him after a game,” he recalled.
“When we won a game or lost it, whether I played good or bad, he would always tell me the things I should be doing and the things I wasn’t doing.
“As a kid, it’s difficult. But then I realised, quite a few years later, playing for the teams that I played for, that I had got through those difficult moments in my career because my dad was so hard on me at a young age. And I’m thankful for that.”
Praise was so rare — even when Becks became a star player for Manchester United and England — that the footballer can still remember one of the few times that it came.
He said: “The first time that I can remember him saying to me, ‘Boy, you made it’, or ‘You’ve done well’ was when I won my 100th cap for England (in 2008) in Paris.
“We were out celebrating and my dad put his arm around me and just said, ‘You did well, boy!’ And I asked him, ‘What, tonight or in general?’”
David admitted that when it comes to his own kids — influencer Brooklyn, 24, footballer Romeo, 20, musician Cruz, 18, and Harper, 11 — he hasn’t managed to be quite so strict.
He said: “I try to be as firm with the kids as possible but it’s nowhere near what my dad was like.
“I’ve only said no to my daughter once. Harper is a dream, but the last time I said it, her bottom lip started to quiver and I thought, ‘Never again’.
“I try to not be tough with the boys but encourage them, especially when it came to football. I asked if they could try out at the Arsenal academy and they all ended up being there for a few years but gradually they all stopped playing.
“It wasn’t obviously because I was hard on them but because I don’t think that over the years they could handle the pressure of being my son.
“With Cruz, I remember he was playing one game down at the training ground and I knew that he liked football but he loved music.
“So as I’m watching the game I’m thinking, ‘Where is Cruz?’ And I looked at the other end and he was breakdancing on the pitch, so I wasn’t surprised that he went in that direction.
“With the kids, whatever they want to do, I support them, and I’ll always give them encouragement.
“I’ll be there to pick them up, drop them off. I always do that. I just want them to be happy and I want them to be polite and humble. And that’s how me and Victoria brought them up.”
He added: “I’m glad we live in a world where players who have had to face certain things can come out and say, ‘I’m not feeling great today’.
“I want that with my kids — for them to be comfortable enough to come to me and say, ‘I don’t feel great today’. And I can talk it through with them.
“If I’d turned to my dad and said, ‘Dad, I’m not feeling great’, I know he’d say to me to get out there and ignore it and just get on with it.”
David was speaking to producer pal Ben Winston — who was behind James Corden’s The Late Late Show — in front of a crowd of 600 at St John’s Wood Synagogue in North London to launch a charity funding teaching fellowships in the name of Ben’s mother Irma, who died last year. Irma — the wife of acclaimed biologist Lord Robert Winston — was an educator, and the discussion, titled Lessons In Leadership, ranged over David’s life and career.
His maternal grandfather Joseph was Jewish, and David, who used to be known as a fan of a particular kosher restaurant in Golders Green, North London, said he was a proud member of the Jewish community.
“My grandfather always made sure we would keep up with certain traditions,” he said.
“Every Saturday morning I used to go and see them, and my grandmother would be preparing the chicken soup and matzo balls and latkes. It was always about the family coming together.”
In terms of his leadership idols, he talked a lot about his former gaffer Sir Alex Ferguson, who took an interest in his career from the time he joined the Manchester United Academy aged just 11.
He recalled how impressed he had been that Sir Alex knew not only the name of every cleaner and cook at Old Trafford but also those of their family members.
Admitting Manchester United was still his favourite team, he revealed he couldn’t watch them for three years after being told he was being sold by his former mentor Fergie.
Acknowledging the toll his career had on his family — as he moved to teams in Spain, LA, Italy and Paris — he admitted that wife Victoria cried when he told her, shortly after he had announced his retirement, that he had been offered a contract with Paris Saint-Germain.
“It was the first time Victoria could choose where we moved to, because before that the family had to move with me,” he recalled. “So she decided to move back to London, where her business is.
“On the way back to London my phone rang and it was the PSG president.
“When I had to explain to Victoria she burst into tears because she’d obviously felt that, after all of this time, she had me back. But she knew I’d been offered an opportunity to win another trophy.
“She’s an incredible woman. I don’t think I’ve met anyone that works as hard as her.
“She is committed to not just our family but her business as well, and she’s having so much success that has come through hard work over the years.”
Now a leader himself as a co-owner of football team Inter Miami in the States, David has just pulled off an amazing coup by signing superstar Lionel Messi.
“It was a massive moment for us,” he said with a smile. “My dream from the word go was to bring the best players in the game to the team, wherever they are in their career. So there are exciting times ahead.”
But in the meantime, he hasn’t finished playing with his hairstyles.
“It’s never been about attention, I just like playing around with my hair,” he insisted.
“The other night it was really hot in London and I thought I’d just shave my hair off.
“And my team were like, ‘You have a few shoots this week, so please don’t shave it yet’.
“But that made me want to shave it off even more . . . ”
- To find out more about the charity Becks was supporting go to peoplesfundraising.com/donation/lira-winston-fellowship.
