David Beckham says Victoria is despairing as daughter Harper catches football bug

'Football should never be known as a man’s sport'

David Beckham’s sons all attend Arsenal’s football academy; now his daughter shows promise too (PA)

Women’s football deserves full equality with the men’s game, David Beckham has said. Except in his own household, where Victoria Beckham despairs that their daughter has now been bitten by the football bug.

With the world’s most famous footballer and three sons harbouring their own professional ambitions already living chez Beckham, fashion designer wife Victoria is hoping that four year-old Harper Seven might channel her enthusiasms into ballet instead.

However David, a leading advocate for the expanding women’s game, has already posted proud Instagram pictures of Harper enjoying a backyard kickabout and modelling the Lionesses kit gifted to her by the England Women’s team during their breakthrough World Cup campaign.

The tensions are revealed in a BBC documentary For The Love Of The Game, in which Beckham plays seven games of football in seven countries in 13 days, as part of his role as a Unicef Ambassador.

The former England captain joins a night time match at the top of a skyscraper in Miami between two University women’s football teams. “Football should never be known as a man’s sport,” said Beckham, marvelling at the skill level, before adding that Victoria had “pretty big reservations.”

Speaking at a screening of the film, Beckham explained: “After having three boys that obviously do want to play football she wants to be able to have one of our children that wants to do stuff with her, like ballet or tap.

“I think when you’ve had 16 years of sitting on cold Sunday mornings on the sidelines watching the boys, she’d like to sit indoors and watch Harper play tennis or perform ballet or tap.” He added: “If ever Harper does want to go and play football, Victoria will support her.”

The Beckham sons, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, have each won places at Arsenal’s football academy. Victoria described Harper’s early passion for football as “like a dagger going into my heart.”

Mrs Beckham does not feature in the documentary, in which David plays a game with warring tribes in the jungles of Papa New Guinea, meets children devastated by an earthquake in Nepal and scores in the first official match to take place in Antarctica.

Once famously sent off in England’s 1998 World Cup game against Argentina, Beckham visits the country for the first time and pulls on the national team’s blue and white shirt to join a game staged in one of Buenos Aires’s roughest barrios.

“Victoria would have done something in it (the film) but I don’t think we needed her,” said Beckham, who added: “I wouldn’t walk in to her studio and tell her how to make a dress. It might be interesting if I did.”

Beckham said he believed the 2018 and 2022 World Cups should stay in Russia and Qatar despite claims of corruption in the bidding process. But he hoped the events would generate social change in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal and Russia, which has introduced homophobic laws under President Putin.

“I’m not agreeing with anything they believe in but everyone now needs to get behind the sport and support the fact that it will change those countries and help moderate views,” Beckham, 40, said. “The power of the game is so huge it could change people’s perceptions on certain things.”

Beckham said he felt “humbled” by the power of football to inspire the children he met, displaced by conflict and living in a refugee camp in the Djibouti desert.

Was the film a rebuke to Sepp Blatter and the FIFA administrators accused of sleaze and corruption? “No matter what corruption is going on at the highest level it will never be as powerful as the game itself,” Beckham said. “I think this documentary shows the power of the sport.”

Asked if he had considered standing for FIFA President in a bid to clean up the game he loves, Beckham said: “I’m slightly too busy to run FIFA with the commitments I have. I’m sure at some point there will be a huge amount of change at FIFA. Football has given me so much in the last 22 years I would like to be involved in the game going forward.”

The former Manchester United and Real Madrid star said he wanted to explore way to help the talented African desert children he played alongside in Djibouti build a professional career. Beckham said he plans to spend much of the next 20 years in Miami where he and his business partners are creating a new MLS franchise.

:: David Beckham: For The Love Of The Game, BBC1, December 29, 9pm.