DAVID Beckham continued to play professional football from time to time after leaving Manchester United, it has emerged.
The 1998 World Cup controversy left United in 2003 to become a haircut, but he has revealed he also played ‘on and off’ for the Spanish team, Real Madrid.
Beckham took Britain by surprise yesterday by announcing that he had not retired from football until now.
He said: “I would turn out for Madrid maybe once a month, when I wasn’t trying to reinvent the underpant.
“I went to Spain because it’s a great environment for underpant research scientists. After four years I had perfected male knickers and it was time for new challenges involving money.”
Beckham said he then played for an experimental football team in Los Angeles.
He added: “I moved to LA because it was invented for people like me. I started playing for the local team after realising that if I did not stay in shape I would have been overpowered by Tom Cruise.
“To this day I fear he will leap out of the dark and wrestle me to the ground.”
The odyssey of self-discovery also took him to Tibet, the depths of the Amazon rainforest and the sacred site of Uluru in Australia, as he sought out ancient and mystical places to make adverts for Adidas.
Beckham, who historians say was a ‘right-sided midfielder’, also spent periods in Milan and Paris so that his wife could learn about clothes.
