"The gaffer had had enough," writes Beckham. "I’d grown up as a person and he didn’t seem to like what I’d become. Now it looked like he’d seen enough of me as a player as well."
He describes how the breaking point came after United’s Champions League quarter- final defeat by Real Madrid in April. Trailing 3-1 from the first leg, Beckham was dropped for the return at Old Trafford. Things went from bad to worse as he watched his team go 3-2 down. When he came on as a substitute in the 63rd minute, there was little hope, but Beckham scored a brilliant free kick 19 minutes from time and then scrambled a second in the 84th minute. United won 4-3 on the night but it was not enough. He missed another free kick chance and Real won 6-5 on aggregate.
Beckham was distraught when Ferguson focused on the miss. "The reception I got after the final whistle against Real Madrid was better than any I could remember at Old Trafford. I went to the four corners of the ground to return the applause.
"By the time I got back to the dressing room, I had a warm glow inside.
"When I got back to the house in Alderley Edge, everything was quiet. I decided not to wake the boys and tell them about Daddy's great night.
"I made myself a bowl of noodles, and ran myself a pint glass of iced water. I put the television on: Manchester United versus Real Madrid. The whole game. I slurped my noodles and settled into it. The free-kick and scrambling my second goal. The free-kick I'd missed.
"But then the camera cut away to the gaffer's reaction and my blood ran cold. His face told me everything I needed to know. His rage, his frustration: and it was all Beckham's fault.
"Maybe you needed to have lived through the past six months to really understand what was obvious to me:
"It's over. He wants me out.
"His face after I missed that free kick made me feel like a door had just been slammed in mine," Beckham writes. "I’d been flying all evening. I believed what I’d done during the game would force a way back in for me. No chance.
"Everybody assumed I’d be playing. Except me. On the morning of the game, the gaffer said, ‘David you’re not going to start tonight. You’ll be on the bench’.
" It felt as if the whole season had been about him building up to doing this to me. ‘Real Madrid: an important game, son. Too important for you to play in’. I could taste the anger. I looked at the gaffer, I tried to look into his eyes, nothing there for me. I shook my head, turned around and began walking back to the changing room, and he said, ‘David, come back here. Don’t walk away from me’. The boss didn’t shout, he didn’t lose his rag. It was as if he was asking me, not telling me, ‘David please come back. I want to finish what I was saying’. I kept walking. Thinking back to that scene now, if he still cared about me as a player, as a person, we’d have had a row there and then." When Beckham learned he had been left out, he said: "It made me sure the gaffer was leaving me out for personal rather than football reasons. Frustration made way for disbelief." A month later Beckham asked for a clear-the-air meeting and asked Ferguson: "Is there a problem? Have you a problem with me? He did. It was that, instead of going straight off on holiday I’d gone to Buckingham Palace with the rest of the England players. He reckoned I’d have been fit sooner if I hadn’t waited those extra couple of days before going away.
"I tried to explain, ‘I’m England captain’. Never mind that I was proud to meet the Queen, I’d have been ripped apart if I hadn’t been there. The whole World Cup squad was there too. What would it have been like if I hadn’t turned up at all? "What the gaffer said next I’ll never forget, ‘When I saw you turn up there, I questioned your loyalty to Manchester United’. I said, ‘I love United, I want to be here. But if you don’t want me to be you should tell me’. He didn’t answer. It felt like I was on the end of the worst criticism. We were all used to getting stick but this was personal and it humiliating."