Rifts, fallouts and flashy cars – the glorious highs and painful lows of David Beckham’s career charted in four-part Netflix documentary

The title carries a double-meaning. There’s that kick: the stunning strike the 21-year-old David Beckham hit from the halfway line in Manchester United’s opening game of the 1996-97 Premier League season that floated over the head of Wimbledon keeper Neil Sullivan and into the back of the net.

Then there’s the other kick: the one on the leg of Diego Simeone in England’s game against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup that got Beckham sent off and saw him saddled with the blame for England crashing out of the tournament.

It was little more than a petulant tap, yet Simeone crumpled like he’d been shot by a sniper in the stand.

These two moments, one a glorious high; the other, a painful low, bookend the episode. In between the extremes, there’s plenty of match footage that will make United fans (guilty, m’lud) tingle with nostalgic warmth, but also cause pangs of melancholy at how things have fallen apart in the decade since Alex Ferguson retired.

The fact that the series is produced in association with Beckham’s production company 99 Studios (United fans won’t need telling why it’s called that) fed the expectation that this would be a hagiography.

Would it, for instance, tackle Beckham’s controversial decision to sign a £125m dollar deal to be homophobic, transphobic, sports-washing Qatar’s football ‘ambassador’ for 10 years?

Not a good look for someone who’s long been seen as an ally of the LGBTQ community.

Without seeing all four episodes (critics were given just two in advance), it’s impossible to say.

But the opening instalment, which features contributions from many of Beckham’s former United teammates, is a well-balanced affair that leaves room to accommodate critical voices, not least Alex Ferguson, who signed Beckham as a young teenager and gave him his first-team debut at 17.

The growing rift between manager and player that preceded Beckham’s departure to Real Madrid in 2003 has long since healed, although Ferguson is not one for wearing rose-tinted glasses.

“He definitely changed,” he says of Beckham’s swift elevation following that sensational goal, from footballer to global celebrity and endorsement magnet.

Beckham’s first deal, with Adidas, netted him £50,000. He spent it all on a Porsche.

“He upped everyone’s game in the car park, I’ll give him that,” quips Roy Keane over a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Celebrity was not what Ferguson wanted from Beckham. Archive TV interviews remind us that he was remarkably frank about his concerns even then.

Beckham admits that Ferguson “went mental” when he heard he was choosing his own agent, rather than going with the one Ferguson suggested.

“I wanted to have a career after football and that ate away at the manager,” he says.

Ferguson, says Gary Neville, had socialist principles and they translated to how he ran the club. No player was allowed to wear anything but black boots.

“He wanted you to be stable,” says Paul Ince, who noted that Ferguson used to check a player’s background, quizzing them about girlfriends and marriage prospects.

Spice Girl Victoria Adams probably wasn’t Ferguson’s idea of the perfect future Mrs Beckham.

Still, no matter how much Beckham was “pissing off the boss”, as Paul Scholes put it, Ferguson would never have fed his player to the wolves the way England manager Glenn Hoddle did.

Even before a ball was kicked in the 1998 World Cup, Hoddle had already undermined Beckham by telling the media the player wasn’t “focused”.

After the sending off against Argentina, Hoddle publicly blamed Beckham, who’d scored in the previous match, for England’s early exit — even though, as Beckham’s father Ted points out here, they still could have won it without him in the penalty shootout.

“It cost us dearly,” said Hoddle on live TV. Not as dearly as it would cost Beckham when he returned home to a chorus of hostility and vile abuse.

All four episodes of Beckham are available to stream on Netflix from Wednesday 4th October.