David Beckham is opening up for the first time about the devastating depression he suffered after Manchester United lost the World Cup in 1998 after a penalty shootout.
The retired soccer legend, 48, recalls the vitriol he faced in England after his team lost against their longtime rivals from Argentina during the first two episodes of the new Netflix documentary "Beckham."
The brutal loss came after Beckham, who was just 23 at the time, was penalized with a red card that removed him from the game, for kicking the back of the leg of Argentina team captain Diego Simeone.
"I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it just because I can’t," an emotional Beckham tells filmmakers.
“I find it hard to talk through what I went through because it was so extreme,” he says as viewers watch scenes of English soccer fans and paparazzi jeering angrily at Beckham after the team returned home.
“The whole country hated me. Hated me," Beckham adds.
The athlete, who recalled being spit on in the street and hearing himself booed at stadiums, said he paid a price for his "stupid mistake."
“Wherever I went I got abuse every single day,” he says, adding, “I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. I was a mess."
Beckham's wife, fashion designer and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, told filmmakers she knew "public bullying" aimed at her and her future husband took a toll on his mental health.
“He was broken. He was absolutely broken. He was in pieces," she tells filmmakers.
The couple revealed during the documentary that the night before that fateful game, Victoria Beckham, who was on tour in the U.S. with the Spice Girls, told the young soccer star she was expecting his baby, their first.
"She phoned me and said, 'I've just taken a test and I'm pregnant,'" David tells the camera.
Victoria Beckham recalls, "He was so, so happy. We both were. There was never any doubt in my mind that I shouldn't tell him. I mean, it was what we wanted."
Director Fisher Stevens then points out that her fiancé was about to play in the biggest soccer game of his life. Did she believe telling him he was about to become a father would help his game?
"I don't really know," the former Posh Spice replies.
In the next scene, Stevens asks David Beckham if hearing Victoria Beckham was pregnant made him want to leave Argentina to be with her.
"That's the first thing I wanted to do," he says.
Elsewhere during the four-part documentary, the couple detail how rumors of an alleged affair between the athlete and his former personal assistant, Rebecca Loos, took a toll on their marriage.
The rumors began in 2004, shortly after the couple, who share four children — Brooklyn, 24, Romeo, 21, Cruz, 18, and Harper, 12 — relocated to Madrid after David Beckham began playing for the Real Madrid team.
“It was the hardest period for us because it felt like the world was against us. And here’s the thing: We were against each other, if I’m being completely honest,” Victoria Beckham tells filmmakers.
“Up until Madrid, sometimes it felt like us against everybody else, but we were together, we were connected, we had each other. But when we were in Spain, it didn’t really feel like we had each other either. And that’s sad," she adds.