David Beckham revealed during a chat show visit Wednesday that he still has the train ticket stub on which Victoria Beckham wrote down her phone number for him.
The 44-year-old soccer legend met Victoria, 45, in 1997, when she was in the Spice Girls, he explained while on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
The former Posh Spice initially brought her manager and bandmate Sporty Spice, aka Mel Chisholm, 46, to watch him play a game in London.
Phone number: David Beckham revealed during a chat show visit Wednesday that he still has the train ticket stub on which Victoria Beckham wrote down her phone number for him in 1997
‘We knew of [the Spice Girls], obviously, because they were pretty big at the time, and I was just establishing myself in the Manchester United team at the time,’ David told host Jimmy, 45, emphasizing that his wife had ‘obviously’ been his favorite Spice Girl.
‘I didn’t get to talk to her that day,’ he went on, ‘but then the week after, she came back up to Manchester to watch another game, and she’d had a couple of drinks, so I decided, ”Why not?” I’d try to get her number.’
‘We talked for about an hour in the player’s lounge. And she’d actually got the train up that day, so she wrote her number down on her train ticket, which I still have,’ David revealed.
The crowd sighed, and Jimmy said, ‘And here you are 20 years later.’
Going strong: Victoria and David, shown last September in London, have been married since 1999 and have four children together
‘Twenty years later, and four kids later,’ David affirmed, referring to his sons Brooklyn, 20, Romeo, 17, Cruz, 15, and eight-year-old daughter Harper.
He added that Victoria and he will have been married for 21 years in July.
As the show opened, David said he’d just come back from an annual ski trip with his family, and confessed that he’d become a bit competitive with his sons.
Family portrait: David and Victoria are shown with their children Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper on social media last month
After Cruz did a few ski jumps on the trip, David thought he would try to make some moves, too, and was emboldened by the fact that he did well on his first few attempts.
He asked someone to film him because he thought he was ‘on fire’ and must have jumped at least two feet, he said, but when he replayed the video, his jump was ‘like an inch.’
David noted that he had also started snowboarding over the past three years, explaining that he ‘wasn’t allowed’ to do it up until then presumably to protect his soccer career.
Ski trip: David told about an annual ski trip with his family, and confessed that he’d become a bit competitive with his sons
Jimmy then got David to talk about his most unusual hobby: Building things with Legos, which he had loved playing with since he was ‘eight, nine years old.’
‘Victoria always laughs at me, and she’ll come down at like, two o’ clock in the morning, and I will still be trying to finish a piece off,’ David admitted. ‘She posted something the other day… because [the kit said] ”11 years and above,” she was like, ”Really? You’re still up at two ‘o’ clock in the morning doing 11 years and above?”
Jimmy showed a video of Victoria confronting David as he built a car out of Legos, and asking him, ‘How much longer, David?’ to which he answered, ‘Twenty minutes.’
Good times: Jimmy Fallon then got David to talk about his most unusual hobby: Building things with Legos, which he had loved playing with since he was ‘eight, nine years old
‘Twenty minutes,’ she mused. ‘It does say on the box that it’s for an eleven-year-old.’
‘I’ve completed this in nine hours,’ David told her.
‘But you are 44, you know that,’ she said, and her husband replied, ‘And you’re 45.’
To Jimmy, David explained that he was ‘a little kid’ at heart, saying, ‘I love Lego, It calms me when I’m making it.’
Lego fan: David admitted that he was a kid at heart when it came to Lego toy projects
Jimmy then showed the audience David’s finished truck and his versions of Lego’s Disney and Hogwarts castles, the latter done for Harper, whom he said ‘loves Harry Potter.’
The talk show host gifted him with Lego’s Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon set, for those age 16 and above, which has 7,541 pieces and is ‘the biggest Lego you can get.’
Talk turned to David’s new job as owner and president of soccer operations for Inter Miami CF.
Biggest one: The talk show host gifted David with Lego’s Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon set, for those age 16 and above, which has 7,541 pieces and is ‘the biggest Lego you can get’
The soccer legend addressed a rumor spread by a Major League Soccer coach that Cristiano Ronaldo, 35, and Lionel Messi, 32, might finish out their careers with his team.
He would neither confirm nor deny the rumors about those players, though his cat-that-ate-the-canary smile suggested something might be in the works.
‘We’ve got great opportunities down in Miami, and we’ve been contacted by a lot of different players with possibly coming to join the team,’ David revealed. ‘You know, as any owner, you really want the best players. And if we have the opportunity to bring in players like Cristiano or Lio Messi–I’ve got such admiration for both of them as athletes—if we could bring those players in, then great.’
Media day: David also participated Wednesday in the Major League Soccer kickoff event in NYC as a co-owner of Inter Miami CF
David, who’d been trying to get Inter Miami off the ground since his retirement seven years ago, said it had a strong roster of young players, and it was really about finding ‘the right fit.’
He explained that Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of his former team Manchester United, once told him, ‘Whoever you bring in, you know, they have to be the right fit for the club. It’s not about bringing the biggest name or the biggest personality or the biggest player. It’s all about the player that will fit in best with the players,’ he recalled. ‘And that’s what we’ll do.’
David said he was ‘very proud to be the owner of my own team. You know, I’m from the East End of London, so to say that I’ve had the career that I’ve had, obviously playing for some of the teams I’ve played for, and now being an owner of a team here in the US, it’s really exciting.’
‘Did you ever think as a player you would ever be an owner?’ Jimmy asked.
‘No, never,’ insisted David, who will be enjoying Inter Miami’s first game against Los Angeles FC this Sunday, after breaking ground on its stadium and training facility just 10 months ago.
First game: The soccer legend will be enjoying Inter Miami’s first game against Los Angeles FC this Sunday