Name: David Beckham on Leadership, Legacy & Life Beyond Football
Uploaded: 2025-07-26T18:05:33.000Z
Duration: 17 min 47 s
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The superlative

David Beckham is one of the world's most famous footballers.

As part of Manchester United's 90s golden generation, he became an idol to football fans worldwide and a pop culture icon as half of one of the world's most photographed couples.

Past simple

David captained the England national football team and became the first English footballer to win league titles in four different countries.

He's also achieved great success off the pitch, inspiring movies, working with global brands and businesses, and even founding his own.

David has long been committed to humanitarian work, supporting children's charities and projects around the world, for which he received a Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in January this year.

After receiving the award, David joined me on stage at the CNBC Sanctuary.

And to be awarded the Crystal Award for something that I love doing, and I've loved doing for a long time.

But the most important thing about the award, yes, I'm really pleased that I received it.

But again, it shines a light on the situations that children are facing around the world.

So that's the important part of receiving an award like that, that it does shine a light again on what children are facing around the world.

David, you're two decades now at UNICEF as a Goodwill Ambassador, and you also launched your own Seven Fund with them 10 years ago.

What initiatives are you most proud of so far?

And what kind of work have you been seeing with UNICEF?

There's not one moment or one child that I can pick out and say, that was my favourite moment, because there's so many favourite moments.

When you work with an organisation like UNICEF, there's so many situations that you get put in and that you're in, that is inspiring, heartbreaking.

But more importantly for me, to meet these children and to be inspired by them.

And I always say that when I meet these kids, whether it's in Sierra Leone, Nepal, different places in China, I recently went to India, whatever situation they're in, they have the same smiles as our children do.

And that's heartwarming, and it gives you a lot of confidence that everything is going in the right direction.

That's the thing that I love being part of this organisation.

My first involvement with UNICEF was when I was 17 years old.

I was in Thailand on tour with Manchester United, and we were asked to go to a women's centre.

And I went along, and I knew right that moment, I knew this is the organisation that I want to be part of for a long time.

Then I got the phone call in 2005 from Kofi Annan inviting me to be Goodwill Ambassador.

So it's been 20 years of being an ambassador of this organisation.

And then 10 years ago, like you said, we started the Seven Fund, which was a separate thing where we focused on different initiatives in different places, and we focused on that for three years.

But whilst I was doing that over those three or four years, the one thing I always noticed was that girls were being affected and were treated differently.

And I wanted to be a part of empowering these young girls, these teenagers that are so inspirational, and they just needed to be given the opportunity.

It's been my focus for the last two years.

We cannot continue to have young teenage girls being forced into early marriage, you know, for a number of...  ..for the obvious reasons.

They are being forced into these early marriages.

They're not treated the same with health care.

And it's so important, and that's what our focus is.

Where did this passion to make a difference and give back come from?

What values did your parents instil in you?

I think they instilled in me the right values.

It's the simple values of treating everyone the same and showing respect to people.

And I tried to do the same with my children.

All of my kids have said pleases and thank yous from two, three years old.

So it's the simple values that me and Victoria grew up with that we've tried to instil into our children.

And obviously our children have a different upbringing to what we had.

So there's complications that come with that.

But I think my parents instilled that into me.

And then when I moved up to Manchester to play for Manchester United, I had a manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.

He set the right values for us as players and as a team.

Can I just ask you a little bit about Manchester United and your extraordinary career there?

I wouldn't have been as successful as I was without my team.

And I take that throughout my whole career and I take it into my business life as well and also with my family.

And the reason I've been successful is because of the teams that I've been part of.

And I was lucky to play for great teams with great managers and great players.

To have played for the teams that I've played for, Manchester United, my boyhood team, but then to go on to represent my country, things like that make me very proud.

I turned 50 in May and I still miss playing every single day.

And you hear past players turn around and say, I miss the banter in the changing room and on the training field.

I miss walking out onto Old Trafford or the Bernabeu or all the stadiums that I played in.

But I knew early on that I wanted to have a career outside of my career after I finished playing.

So I did have other focuses, but my main focus for the time that I played the game professionally was always winning.

Hanging up his boots in 2013 did nothing to diminish David Beckham's star power.

As an investor and entrepreneur, he's launched his own brands and he's a founder and co-owner of US Major League Soccer Club Into Miami.

I had the opportunity when I first moved to LA to put in my contract that at the end of that time I would own a franchise and I could decide what city I wanted it in.

And I knew exactly at that moment I wanted it to be in Miami.

And I also wanted to give back to the game in that way.

I wanted to be part of growing the game in America.

I saw the challenges, I knew the opportunities and I knew that we could grow it to a certain level.

And it's now grown to a level where we're all very proud of where it is.

I'm very proud of the team that I own that has the greatest player to ever play the game in it.

We worked really hard to bring someone so great and so big to our club.

I sneaked into his father's hotel for a meeting five years before and I just said, I know now's not the right time but when your son's ready, I want him to come to Miami.

So over that time we started to work on him and then we saw an opportunity.

Then we had to put together the deal that Leo would be happy with and that would bring him to Miami.

And then I was in Japan one night and I had jet lag and my phone kept on dinging and my wife elbowed me and said, please turn your phone off.

I went to turn it off and I looked at it and I saw this update of 40 messages come up on my phone.

Leo had announced that he's coming to Miami.

I burst into tears because I knew what it meant for us.

What are the responsibilities, the pressure of owning a club?

It's probably been my biggest challenge in my career as a player and also in my career as a businessman.

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David Beckham on Leadership, Legacy & Life Beyond Football

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