Beckham fikk hjelp på Vita Älgen
[ Artikel daterad: 4/27/2004 | Senast uppdaterad: 4/27/2004 ]

Becks fikk hjelp fra den Vita Älgen!

Ettersom David Beckham ikke kan norsk fikk Vita Älgen hjelpe til. I hektiske høstuker 2003 ble Beckhams selvbiografi My Life oversatt på Vita Älgen. Atle Nielsen, Arild Rønsen og Anders fikk boken til norsk. 

Vi synes boken er interessant og godt skrevet. Den ble da også belönnet med nest beste terningskast i Norges störste avis; VG. Boken ble også den mestselgende utenlandske biografi som noengang er utgitt i Norge, med ett opplag på näre 20.000!

Da vi fikk manus, satt vi oss ned og skrev direkte til Beckham og spurte om han ikke kunne skrive en spesiell hilsen til norske lesere og fans. Dagen etter kom svaret (!):

FOREWORD

Football is a game that belongs to the whole world. During my decade and more at Old Trafford, it often felt as if Manchester United was the whole world’s club. At every home game, we knew there’d be Norwegian supporters up in the stands who’d made the trip over to England, not just to watch some football but to make the pilgrimage to Manchester to follow the team they loved. Thanks to satellite television, I think supporters on the other side of the North Sea were probably able to watch United – and the other teams in the Premiership – in action more often than those back in England. No wonder the connection is so strong.

There was always just as strong a link in the United dressing room, of course. Scandinavian players in general, and Norwegian players in particular, have left their mark on English football over the past fifteen years. Quite apart from their technical ability, their willingness to adapt to the physical side of the English game and the ease with which they settled into life in this country have helped that happen. At Old Trafford, Henning Berg, Ronnie Johnsen and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer helped us make history in the nineties. Norwegian supporters know and understand the game. And Norwegian players can play it, no question: just look at those who were in the thick of it during the season United did the Treble.

I hope that means my autobiography – and why I’ve written it – won’t need much explaining in Oslo and beyond. I wonder if the English and English football are understood better anywhere in the world than they are in Norway. When I started telling this story, I had no idea where it was going to end. I’d already lived twenty-seven years of an eventful life. I thought I knew how far I’d come. I thought I’d chosen the right time to sit down and remember how I’d got there. I should have known better.

I think there’s every chance that, in Norway, you’ll already have seen the games, already read the headlines. A lad growing up in London but dreaming of playing his football in Manchester; coming through into the first team with a whole generation of home-grown talent and then writing football history with them, from Old Trafford to the Nou Camp; an England career with highs and lows, from Saint-Etienne to Sapporo, which helped turn a boy into a man; love, marriage and fatherhood with Victoria, Brooklyn and Romeo; a life lived at every turn, it sometimes seems, in the spotlight of the public eye; and, now, a new career and a new home for us in Spain with Real Madrid. This is how it felt to live through all that.

It’s been an adventure: something amazing was always just around the corner to surprise me. And sure enough, the last twelve months have been a chapter I couldn’t ever have foreseen. My world was turned upside down in the course of a single English football season. Right now, here in Madrid, it feels as if I’m starting everything all over again. I’ve tried to be as honest as I can about football, my family and fame. It’s the story I had expected I’d be telling. Along with the one I never imagined that I would.

David Beckham

August 2003