Looking back on his time at Manchester United, David Beckham spoke in glowing terms of his relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson despite a "couple of wobbles". One of those wobbles occurred in 2003 after a match against Arsenal where Ferguson accidentally kicked a football boot in his direction, catching the midfielder in the face.
...On European nights Champions league nights, he could come out onto the pitch and he'd start taking penalties and free-kicks. And he'd be telling all of us players how great he was when he played. How great he was when he played and the goals he scored and things like that.
But the time I got to find out how great he really was, was actually a game against Arsenal where I think I'd made a couple of mistakes in the game and he came into the changing room. We had a couple of words and he started to walk over to me and he kicked a pile of clothes on the floor and out came this boot and it hit me and then I found out how actually accurate he was.
It's great to see that in the fullness of time Beckham can see the funny side of an incident which effectively signalled the beginning of the end for him at Manchester United.
Ferguson revealed in his autobiography how he made his decision to get rid of the free kick specialist in the aftermath of the event:
The next day the story was in the press. In public an Alice band highlighted the damage inflicted by the boot. It was in those days that I told the board David had to go.My message would have been familiar to board members who knew me. The minute a Manchester United player thought he was bigger than the manager, he had to go. I used to say, 'The moment the manager loses his authority, you don't have a club. The players will be running it, and then you're in trouble.'”
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