Victoria Beckham has delivered an impassioned response to the ‘total venom’ aimed at David Beckham during the 1998 World Cup.
Posh, 49, claims her footballer husband was ‘clinically distraught’ following the abuse he received for kicking Diego Simeone before England’s loss to Argentina.
Following the game, a bar hung an effigy of Becks outside its doors, and the team bus was assaulted with stones and pint glasses during Manchester United’s first away game the following season, against West Ham.
Speaking in the upcoming Netflix documentary Beckham, she said according to The Sun: ‘I mean, the absolute hate, the public bullying, to another level. He was depressed, absolutely clinically depressed. I still want to kill these people.’
The former Manchester United player, who has Brooklyn, 23, Romeo, 21, Cruz, 18, and Harper, 12, with Victoria, reminisced on how the ‘abuse’ he received after the match ‘changed his life’ and left him feeling ‘alone’ in the period that followed.
He said: ‘What I went through was so extreme. The whole country hated me. Hated me. It changed my life. I felt very vulnerable and alone. Wherever I went I got abuse every single day.
‘People look at you in a certain way, spit at you, abuse you, come up to your face and say some of the things that they said. That was difficult.’
David, 48, revealed that he was suffering from melancholy and that he wasn’t eating or sleeping as a result of being sent off.
Speaking to The Telegraph, he said: ‘It’s something I would never admit, because I was brought up by a dad who, if I said, ‘dad, I’m feeling a bit low today,’ he’d have said, ‘boy, get on with it’.
‘But I was [depressed]. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping. I was living day to day thinking about what was coming next.
‘People were saying I should leave the country. It was tough.’
David is the latest celebrity to get the Netflix documentary treatment in Beckham, a four-part series that will premiere on the worldwide streaming site on October 4.
According to the synopsis: ‘David Beckham is one of the most known names on the planet, yet few people know who he really is.
‘From his humble working-class beginnings in east London, his drive and determination to win, and the battle to find balance between ambition, love and family, David’s story is one of immense ups and downs.
‘The series takes you on that rollercoaster and builds a surprising, personal and definitive story of one of the most recognisable and scrutinised athletes of all time.’
The Beckhams were sighted at Paris Fashion Week for Victoria’s show, which was also attended by celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Anna Wintour, ahead of the documentary’s premiere.
Beckham launches on Netflix on October 4.
