David Beckham 2023 Calendar

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I’d love to be able to keep playing snooker for the next five, six, seven, eight years. But if I’m going to be forced into a situation where that isn’t possible then I’m not going to accept what the other 130 players do, which is play tournament after tournament.’ I’d like to feel that the trust of anyone who has respected me over the years — the amount of years they’ve either looked up to me, thought I’m a nice person or whatever — outweighs anything they feel I have done wrong or made a mistake with,” he says. He talks about his relationship with his wife and Sir Alex Ferguson, the allegation of that extramarital affair and the bullying and abuse he suffered after the 1998 red card against Argentina. In an interview with ITV in 2006, he said he could not stop acting on his compulsions despite having tried. I was aching," he said. "I was hurting. I'd roll out of the bed in the morning because I was in so much pain."

O’Sullivan’s aim does remain to continue playing and that is by far the most likely scenario for some years to come. The Qataris said from day one, ‘Everybody is welcome’. I came away after the final thinking, ‘This is possibly one of the safest World Cups I’ve been to’. I spoke to people from the LGBTQ community. I was comfortable with the decision I made to get involved because I always feel that to make change you have to communicate, you have to engage.”He attributes this to the "family" dynamic at Old Trafford and throughout the documentary calls Ferguson a "father figure". I saw that as an opportunity. Firstly, to be involved in another World Cup. Secondly, Qatar is a relatively young country, it’s on a journey and there’s change. What comes with hosting a World Cup brings change. Fame followed, but manager Ferguson had growing concerns about his celebrity lifestyle and his relationship with Spice Girls singer Victoria Adams. I clip the candle wax, I clean the glass, that’s my pet hate, the smoke around the inside of a candle,” he says. “I know, it’s weird.”

Other members of the footballer’s family offer anecdotes and titbits, from his strict-sounding father, Ted, to his mother, Sandra, who is great value. She says that when the then-England manager Glenn Hoddle questioned her son’s professionalism and left him on the bench, she “just put him on my hitlist”, and she recalls taking revenge on a journalist staying at the same hotel as she was. Victoria, too, is more frank than you might expect. When recalling a particularly explicit chant about her that came from the stands, she says the woman sitting next to her didn’t know what to do, so just turned to her and said, “Do you want a Polo?”I was an ambassador of the World Cup in Qatar because I love the game. I also know and have been — not in business — part of Qatar since I signed for PSG. They asked me if I would be involved in the World Cup. I wanted to be involved in the World Cup because I’ve always said this game can change lives, can change people’s perceptions, and when you bring a World Cup into any country, it shines a huge spotlight on issues.

I wish there was a pill you could take that could erase some memories," he said. "I made a stupid mistake and it changed my life."Wherever I went, I got abused every day,” he said. “To walk down the street and see people look at you a certain way, spit at you, abuse you, come up to your face and say some of the things that they said, that’s difficult. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, I was a mess.” The glamorous, big-budget Chinese events can also shine some of the more modest UK tournaments in a poor light, although the three biggest events remain in Britain; the World Championship, Masters and UK Championship. I was comfortable with not speaking out there because, firstly, I felt that once the tournament started, the football, the atmosphere, would speak for itself. I also didn’t want to come out and be the person who is fuelling the fire. I felt, ‘I’m going to talk at the right time’.