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‘You may have signed for Man United, but you haven’t done anything yet.’

‘You know I’m Man United, but I don’t want that to put pressure on you. If you decide to sign for somebody else, I won’t be upset.’

Dad had always made that clear to me. Of course, I’d always known he was lying about the last bit. So the day I signed at Old Trafford was as fantastic for him as it was for me. By the time we left Mr Ferguson’s office, Mum was in tears. She was happy for me but she knew it meant that, sooner rather than later, I was going to be leaving home. She’d put so much love and so many hours into a kid who was mad about football; and the moment we’d got to our destination was also the moment she was going to have to get used to the idea of her boy heading north to start a career.

She did a fair bit of crying in the months between me signing up and starting my YTS at United. But I knew, deep down, she was as proud of me as my dad was. Not letting my parents down meant everything to me. They never made me feel like I owed them for the support they’d given me, but I felt I had to do all I could to make sure they didn’t end up disappointed. Think about it: if I let them down, it would mean I’d let myself down as well. It’s never been a case of me having to match up to their expectations. It’s just that I’ve taken my parents’ expectations of me and made them the starting point for what I expect of myself. Even now, when my own family and career mean I don’t see as much of them, I think I still judge myself by the standards I learnt from Mum and Dad.

What could have been more exciting than that day? Everybody shaking hands, me in my blazer and club tie, a United player; or, at least, a lad from Chingford who’d just taken the first step towards becoming a United player. Out in the corridor, Dad and I met up with the United captain, Bryan Robson. We’d spent hours in front of the television watching videos of this man, our absolute all-time hero. Dad had tried to hammer his qualities into me: courage, commitment, energy, vision and the ability to inspire players around him.

I’d met Bryan before, but this was the boss introducing me to him as United’s latest signing:

‘Congratulations, David. You’ll find out for yourself but, I’d say, you couldn’t be joining a better club.’

I don’t remember us driving back to London at all. At least Dad didn’t forget we were on a busy motorway. I couldn’t have thought about anything else that evening, and I didn’t want to. I’d just lived through the happiest day of my life.

Although I’d done the adding up in my head and got the answer I wanted, that first contract at Old Trafford wasn’t actually for six years but for four. It was against regulations, anyway, for a boy signing schoolboy forms to have full professional terms set out there and then: I was only thirteen, after all, and so much could change before I turned eighteen. The rules were there to protect youngsters from getting trapped somewhere they didn’t want to be; not that there was any chance of that happening to me. United told me that, if everything went well, I could expect to sign as a professional in four and a half years’ time.

In a really important way, I think that bit of uncertainty was best for me and for all the other lads who joined the club at the same time. I knew I was wanted. But I also knew that I had to prove myself over the next four years. If I’d known all along that achieving the ambition of becoming a professional player at United was already settled – down on a piece of paper in black and white – who knows if it wouldn’t have taken the edge off my determination to take the chance I’d been given? I think that extra hunger has had a lot to do with my success and the team’s success in the years since: all the boys who’ve come through at the club will know what I mean. The day I signed didn’t feel like the day I’d made it. The hard work was just starting. I wanted a challenge and Manchester United was the biggest challenge there was.

I knew I was in good hands. Even before I signed at United I had the feeling I was joining a family. It’s about there being really good people everywhere at the club. I don’t just mean the ones everybody would know about like the manager or the players, but people like Kath Phipps, who still works on Reception at Old Trafford. I can still remember, when I was just a boy, every time I went up to a United game she’d be there. She’d lean across her desk and give me a little kiss and the programme she’d saved for me. Later on, Kath used to help me with answering my mail. She’s part of United and she was with me right through my career there.

Whenever I came up to Manchester to train or to be at a game, I’d be looked after by Joe and Connie Brown, who had an office at the ground. They would take me – and Mum and Dad, if they were with me – around Old Trafford, take us for a meal, show us down to the dressing rooms and introduce us to the players and staff. Joe and Connie made me feel really welcome. Joe was Youth Development Officer at United. He was responsible for young players’ expenses and travel arrangements but that job stretched to him and Connie taking care of just about everything when youngsters from outside Manchester and their families spent time at the club.

Then, when it came to the football, there was Nobby Stiles. I worked with Nobby after I joined the club, too, but I first met him during the weeks when I came up to train in the school holidays. He was the coach I remember most clearly working with back then. Nobby was really hard, just like he was as a player, but I think he cared more about the youngsters he worked with than anything else in the world. Dad knew all about Nobby as a player, of course, for United and as a World Cup winner with England: he and Dad got on really well, even though every now and again Nobby would have to catch himself about his language when he was getting carried away during one of our games:

‘Excuse me, Mr Beckham. Excuse me, Mrs Beckham.’

Not that Dad was too worried about that:

‘No problem, Nobby. You carry on.’

Nobby was great with us and he was great with our parents as well. He knew mums and dads needed to be involved, not treated as if they were in the way. If you watched videos or heard stories about him as a player, you’d never believe how gentle he was with the boys, or how polite he was with the parents. No-one took liberties with Nobby, mind. For all that he didn’t look a big man and used to wear these huge glasses when he was coaching, he still had something about him you respected straight away. Fifteen years later, he would still come straight up and give me a big hug like nothing’s changed since. Kath, Joe and Connie, Nobby Stiles: they all had jobs to do but they also made United a place that felt like home.

I could have moved up the year after I signed schoolboy forms, in August 1989, and finished my last two years of school in Manchester but, in the end, we decided I’d stay in London until I started full-time as a YTS trainee at United. That meant I could be at home, with my friends and family, while I turned fourteen and fifteen. And I could keep playing for Ridgeway Rovers, which by then had become a team called Brimsdown: we were the same players more or less, just the name had changed. United were happy for boys to get on with their lives and play for their Sunday League teams until they moved to the city. Malcolm Fidgeon would come and watch me play for Brimsdown and, as long as I was enjoying my football and playing regularly, that was enough. The time for United to take all the responsibility was still a couple of years’ away.

I used to go up to Manchester two or three times a year to train during the holidays. In the summer, I’d be up there for the whole six weeks. I loved it and didn’t want to do anything else with my time off school but play and train and be at United. Those summers were fantastic. Boys could come up for a week or two weeks. Me, I wanted to be there for as long as they’d let me. There would be thirty or so of us together at a time, all looked after by Malcolm and the rest of the coaching staff, in halls of residence. I’d think about the place where I’d stayed in Barcelona; that lovely old house with the mountains rising up behind us. This was a bit different: a concrete block in Salford, stuck on top of a hill and freezing cold whatever the weather was like outside. You shared a room with another young player, the facilities were basic but at least there was a snooker table and a table tennis table for us to use in the evenings.

Not that where we were staying made much difference to me. We’d go to United’s second training ground at Lyttleton Road every day and train morning and afternoon. Then, in the evenings, we’d live it up: trips to the pictures, fish and chip nights, all the glamorous stuff. I met other boys who had signed at the same time as me, like John O’Kane, who I spent a lot of time with back then. John was from Nottingham. He was a massive prospect at United all through our first years there together, a really good player. As a person, he was very relaxed. Maybe it was because he was so laid back that it didn’t really work out for him at United. He ended up leaving to go to Everton, the season we went on to do the Treble, and is playing for Blackpool now.

Lads would come from everywhere for those holiday sessions. Keith Gillespie, who’s now at Leicester, came over from Ireland. He was a lovely lad, and I used to get on really well with him. Colin Murdock, who’s just moved from Preston to Hibs, came down from Scotland. We were all miles from home, in the same boat, and that made it easier for us all to get on, even if, in the back of our minds, we knew we were in competition with each other as well. The football was what mattered above everything and it was a new experience, training day in day out and being introduced to more technical coaching. It couldn’t have been more different from Sunday League. All the time I was with Ridgeway, I’d tried to imagine what it would be like and this was it: football was my job. I didn’t have to do anything else.

I had two years to get ready for moving up to Manchester permanently. I’d had plenty of trips away with Ridgeway and representative sides when I was younger, too. But neither of those things made it any easier when it came time to leave home. Of course I was excited and it was never a case of having second thoughts but, even so, it wasn’t easy to go. I was very nervous about what lay ahead of me. Mum and Dad said they’d be up every weekend to see me play, that they wouldn’t miss a game, and I knew they’d keep to their word. Promises count for a lot in the life of a family. Nowadays, I wouldn’t dare forget if I’ve told Brooklyn I’ll get him something or do something for him: he’ll remember even if I don’t. Back then, I knew I could rely on my parents to be there when I needed them.

Being away for a week or a month is completely different to moving away from home for good: I was fifteen and a half. Where you end up staying in digs as a young player is so important, especially when you think about how much else you’re going to have to find out about when you begin your working life, full-time, at a big club like Man United. Every club has a list of landladies they use and I’ve often wondered whether it’s just chance who you end up with, or whether they try to fix boys up in places they know will be right for them. Looking back, I think I was pretty lucky although it was a while before I found myself somewhere that really felt like home.

My first digs were with a Scottish couple who lived in Bury New Road, next to the fire station. They were lovely people and very good to me and the other boys who were there. Being young lads away from home for the first time, there was a bit of backchat and mucking about that went on: late-night kitchen raids for snacks, that kind of thing. We had fun. When I left, it was because of a strange incident that was completely out of keeping with the rest of my time there. I’d gone down the road to the garage to get some chocolate and forgotten my key. I got back and knocked on the door, which was answered by the husband, Pete. He asked me where my key was and, when I said I thought I’d left it upstairs, he gave me a little clip round the ear. I wasn’t too happy about it and I remember, that evening, my Dad was on the phone to him. I was on the other side of the room and I could hear Dad shouting down the line. That was the end of that arrangement.

I moved down to a place on Lower Broughton Road, with a landlady named Eve Cody. I got on really well with her son, Johnny, and was very happy there for almost a year. I shared a room with John O’Kane, who I already knew quite well from the holiday sessions at United when we’d still been living at home. I have to admit that, around that time, John and I used to struggle to get to training on time. It wasn’t that we’d be out late at night; we were just both lads who loved our sleep. And we were lodging further away than some of the others like Keith Gillespie and Robbie Savage, who were almost next door to the Cliff. It’s not surprising, I suppose, that early on there was a bond between us lads who were staying in digs, as opposed to the Manchester boys who were all still living at home.

After a while, the club changed us round and it was then that I moved in with Ann and Tommy Kay and, as friendly as the other places had been, I wished I could have been there from the start. It was made for me. I was still homesick but Annie and Tom were like a second mum and dad, so loving and caring. The food was great as well. The house was almost directly opposite the training ground, so I could roll out of bed and walk to work in a couple of minutes. Just what you need when you’re a teenager who can’t get up in the morning.

I shared a room with a lad named Craig Dean, who had to retire before he really got a chance to do anything, because of an injury to his spine. After a few months, Ann gave me Mark Hughes’ old room, which looked out over the playing fields next door to the Cliff. I loved that room. It was the kind of size that meant, somehow, it felt like your mum and dad’s room: big fitted wardrobes with a dressing table and mirror to match and a proper double bed pressed up to the wall in the far corner. I brought along the stereo my dad had bought me before I moved to Manchester and went out and bought a nice television. I thought I had everything I could possibly need. I was really happy. The Kays made me feel like I was part of the family. Ann and Tom had one son of their own, Dave, and they made me feel like another. I know Ann has kept a box of old coins and things I left behind when I moved out and got a place of my own, and I’ve always tried to make sure I visit now and again.

I was lucky, as well, when I first moved up to Manchester that I met a girl named Deana who I went out with for the best part of three years. I wasn’t chasing round like a lot of teenagers away from home for the first time. The romance with Deana was something that helped me feel settled: my first real relationship. We had a lot of fun together, whether it was going out or just being alone in each other’s company. It was also a time for finding out the things that were trickier.

After training one afternoon, I went off to the snooker club with Gary Neville, Keith Gillespie and John O’Kane even though the original plan had been for Deana and I to meet up. I had my back to the door of the club and was leaning across the table to make my shot. Suddenly I glanced up and saw the colour draining out of John’s cheeks. He was looking back over my head; I turned round to see Deana in the doorway behind me. The two of us went out into the car park so I could make my apologies, and that would have been that except, for some reason, I made the mistake of looking up at the first floor window of the club. Gary, Keith and John were standing there. I couldn’t hear them but I could see their shoulders jigging up and down, the three of them giggling at the spot of bother I’d got myself in. I couldn’t help myself: I started giggling too. I couldn’t blame Deana at all for turning the rest of that day into a very long, very sorrowful one in the life of one teenage boy.

I have so many good memories of my times with Deana and also with her family. They were so welcoming: it was as if I just had to turn up on the doorstep and the next thing I knew we’d be in the kitchen; the kettle would be on, and there’d be something to eat on the way. It was very warm. Without making a big thing of it, Deana’s mum and dad made me feel like I was part of the family. Her dad, Ray, was a Liverpool season ticket holder and I went to watch games at Anfield with him from time to time. Away from my own dad, I suppose I hooked onto Ray. He sometimes took me down to the pub. A couple of halves, of course, and I’d be rolling a bit. We’d wander back to the house together for some dinner. This was me really finding out about life as a man: out getting tipsy with my girlfriend’s dad. It was a lovely time in my life and I’ll always be grateful to Deana that she’s never spoiled it. I know she’s been offered money since by the papers to tell stories about me and always turned them down flat. I know that’s because of the kind of person she is and I hope, as well, it’s something to do with her getting a good feeling, like I do, when she remembers us being together.

Life in Manchester away from football was just part of what was totally new to me. There was this group of local lads for a start. Gary and Philip Neville, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes were all from around Manchester, so they’d been training at United since they’d signed schoolboy forms, although they hadn’t been at the holiday sessions I’d attended over the previous couple of years. I wasn’t aware of it at the time but I think, to start with, they weren’t sure about me at all: Gary says they had me down as a right flash little cockney. I can understand why. It wasn’t because I was loud or anything but, when we were getting handed out our kit, I’d always end up with the nicest tracksuit and the best-fitting boots. I happened to get on really well with the kit man, Norman Davies, and he just looked after me. I’d known Norman for a long time already from going to the games as a kid and, maybe, this was my reward for helping him clear up dressing rooms for the first team at places like Upton Park all those years ago.

I was from London and the other boys were from the Manchester area but it was surprising how much we had in common. Apart from loving football and having the ambition to play for United, there were things in our backgrounds that brought us together as well. Gary and Phil’s mum and dad, for example, were so much like my parents. They’d be at every game too. I think the Nevilles and the Beckhams had the same sort of values and saw life in much the same way. I know the four of them took to each other straight away and I’m sure the similarity in our upbringings had a lot to do with why Gary and I became such close friends.

Gary, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes had all played together for the same Sunday League team. Boundary Park must have been a northern version of Ridgeway Rovers. Not only was the team successful, it had the same spirit and sense of loyalty that we’d had at Ridgeway. Those boys had been learning to approach football in the right way, picking up good habits, at the same time as we were. It was natural that a sense of togetherness grew pretty quickly at United. Quite soon after we started, we went off to Coleraine in Northern Ireland for a tournament called the Milk Cup. Teams came from all over the world to compete, and that was the first time we represented the club as a group.

We had a brilliant time. We were all about sixteen, on a tour together and getting to know each other, as players and as people. The Milk Cup competition is still going. As well as the games, there’s quite a lot of ceremony: I remember us being paraded through the streets of the local town, trying to look sharp in our Manchester United tracksuits. Nobby Stiles was in charge of the trip, along with a physio named Jimmy Curran. Nobby knew me and trusted me, and he made me captain for the tournament. It was some team: as well as the players who are still at Old Trafford, there were plenty of others who went on to have good careers elsewhere. Ben Thornley was our best player on that trip and got the award for Player of the Tournament. He’s done well since leaving United, despite some shocking injury trouble over the years. With Gary, Phil, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt playing alongside the likes of Ben, Keith Gillespie, Robbie Savage and Colin Murdock, it’s no wonder we won the cup. We stayed at a hotel owned by Harry Gregg, who was a United great himself. He survived the Munich Air Crash and he loved having the United youngsters around the place. The Milk Cup was the first silverware any of us ever won as United players.

Every single day was an exciting one back then. Before I’d left home to start as a trainee in Manchester, Dad had drummed one thing into my head.

‘You may have signed for Man United, but you haven’t done anything yet. When you’ve played for the first team, then we can talk about you having achieved something. Until then, don’t start thinking you’ve made it.’

Did he need to tell me that? Well, it did no harm to know Dad would be around to keep my feet on the ground. But I hadn’t been running around boasting, telling everybody that I had signed for United. I’d just been looking forward to going and couldn’t wait to start work. Once I did, of course, I realised what Dad had meant. I’d been to United’s old training ground, the Cliff, as a boy to watch the first team train. Now I had to be there for training each morning myself, along with the senior players. It dawned on me straight away that the most important thing wasn’t being at United. It was working hard enough to make sure they’d let me stay there.

Come to think of it, there was never any chance of us not working hard; not with coach Eric Harrison in charge. If I think about the people who’ve really shaped my career, that has to mean my dad and Alex Ferguson – of course – but it’ll also mean Eric. Even now, a dozen years on from first meeting him, I look to him for guidance and advice. He’ll tell me what he thinks, not what he thinks I want to hear. And, like every other boy he worked with at United, I know he’s always cared about me. Back then I was sure he had my best interests at heart. I still feel exactly the same.

Eric could be scary, though. We knew about his reputation and I was a bit anxious beforehand because of that. But I soon found out what a brilliant coach he was. Everything he did with us was spot on: the sessions he ran, how hard he made us work, how he understood how we were feeling and how much he made us believe in ourselves. Eric might have had a talented group of lads to work with, but the credit goes to him for turning us into footballers and, during the next three years, turning us into a team.

That fierce reputation, though, it’s all true. When Eric was angry with you, he could dig you out worse than anybody I’ve ever known. We were younger then, obviously, but I’d say the volleys you got from Eric were even more terrifying than the manager in full flow. I remember when we had matches at the Cliff, Eric had an office with a big window that looked out over the pitch we used. If you made a mistake or did something you knew you shouldn’t have done, you’d hear this furious banging on the glass. You didn’t dare look up in that direction because you knew it would be Eric, not best pleased. But you’d have to have a quick glance. And if you couldn’t actually see him shouting from behind the window, that’s when you knew there was real trouble and it was time to disappear over to the other side of the pitch. It meant Eric was on his way down.

When Eric was pleased with you, it made you feel great. If I heard him say: ‘Great ball, David’ once in the morning, that would set me up for the rest of the day. Likewise, if he criticised something, you thought a long time before doing it again. I remember one session when, every time I got the ball, I was trying to pick someone out with a sixty-yard pass. Even when I was young, I was able to see what was going on ahead of me and could strike the ball a very long way. That particular day, though, nothing was coming off and Eric wasn’t impressed.

‘David. What are you playing at? Hitting those flippin’ Hollywood passes all day?’

Hollywood passes? I’d never heard that before. I knew exactly what he meant, though. And I thought twice before I hit the next one. Truth is, I still love playing those long balls; they’re a part of my game. But, even now, whenever one doesn’t make it, I imagine Eric, shaking his head and grumbling: ‘flippin’ Hollywood passes’.

It’s not always been true with Alex Ferguson or other coaches I’ve worked with, but with Eric you always knew exactly where you stood. If he lost his temper with you, he made sure you understood why and, somehow, he had the knack of shaking you up without ever abusing you or putting you down. We always knew, however hairy it got, Eric only ever wanted what we wanted too: to get the best out of ourselves and to achieve everything we could as individuals and as a team. No wonder he commanded the respect of every single one of us young players. Some young players nowadays who sign for a big club suddenly think they’ve hit the big time. There was none of that with our generation. And if there had been, Eric would soon have sorted us out.

I was lucky. I had good coaching all the time I was growing up but, of course, when I got to United and started work with Eric, I knew straight away that I’d moved up to another level. I remember hearing the argument a lot when I was young: that it would be best to start with a smaller club and work my way up to a bigger one like Manchester United. And I can see the sense in that. Once I began training at the Cliff, I realised that the only way from here, if things didn’t work out, was going to be down. But my feeling then, and even more so now, is that if you’re given the chance to be with the best, you should take it.

Everything at United was right: the facilities, the kit, the training and the other players in our group. Who wouldn’t want to have Eric Harrison as a youth team coach? I couldn’t get enough of it all. While we were trainees, Gary and I would go back to the Cliff in the evenings twice a week, when Eric was working with the schoolboys on the big indoor pitch, and join in the sessions just to get extra training under our belts. Phil Neville was in that age group – two years younger than me and Gary – and so was Dave Gardner. I don’t know how you find your very best friends. Maybe they just find you. Dave and I just hit it off and we’ve been close ever since: I was best man at his wedding in the summer of 2003. He stayed on as an apprentice until he was eighteen, by which time I was playing regularly in the first team. Dave turned professional with Manchester City and he still plays non-League with Altrincham. Nowadays, for him, football’s about staying fit and keeping his eye in: he’s a full-time director of a sports management company.

During those first years at United, Eric used to make sure we went to every first-team game at Old Trafford. Not just to watch the game, but to watch individual players. I’d think back to Dad taking me to Cup Finals when I was a boy.

‘Never mind the game, David. Just watch Bryan Robson. Watch what he does.’

Now Eric was telling us the same thing: ‘Watch the man playing in your position. One day, you’re going to take his place.’

To hear something like that gave us so much confidence; not that we realised at the time how soon the manager was going to make us all part of his first-team plans.

Going to those games at Old Trafford was a chance, as well, for Eric to insist on the importance of having standards. He always made sure that we turned up in a blazer, with a collar and tie. It reminded me of Stuart Underwood wanting the Ridgeway players to be well turned out when we arrived for big games. I still think those things make a difference. Some teams might be seen arriving at a ground or walking through an airport in their tracksuits. The fact that a Manchester United team will always be wearing club blazers is part of having a professional attitude. That smartness said something about our respect for ourselves and for the club.

Our training sessions weren’t all about technique and tactics and learning new tricks. If Eric spotted a weakness in your game, you could be sure he’d do his best to confront it. I don’t know if ‘Headers’ was designed just to make me suffer, but some mornings it felt like it. As a forward player, you need to be strong enough to hold your own physically against bigger and tougher defenders. Heading and tackling weren’t exactly my strong points, especially as I was smaller than most of the other lads. ‘Headers’ was Eric’s way of toughening up young players like me. There were two teams: midfielders and forwards lined up against defenders. The ball was chipped up and you could only score with your head. That would have been fine, except it was an invitation to the likes of Gary Neville and Chris Casper to come crashing into you from behind in order to stop you. Gary was the worst. You’d end up bruised all over, wondering what you’d done to annoy him. I dreaded those sessions then but, four years later, by the time I was lining up in the Premiership against the likes of Stuart Pearce and Julian Dicks, I was grateful that the first serious knocks I’d taken had been off my own team-mates.