If you're looking for the biographical basics on David Beckham, there is no better place to start than the many large tattoos that adorn his lean, hairless upper body. "I've always said that if I have a tattoo on my body it will mean something to me," says the world's most famous sportsman, who at 29 is relatively unknown in the U.S. but worshipped as a deity from Berlin to Bangkok. "Not just a Japanese sign, which most people have and don't know what it means," Beckham adds, distinguishing himself from the less discerning breed of ink-happy athlete.

The story starts at the base of Beckham's spine, where the name of his firstborn son, Brooklyn (now five years old), is spelled out in large Gothic letters; the back of Beckham's neck bears tribute to second son Romeo (born September 2002). Between the shoulder blades is a large guardian angel.

So far, so literal. Beckham's arms are what require exegesis. His left forearm features a long string of Devanagari script that spells out the transliterated first name of his wife, the former Victoria "Posh Spice" Adams. If the Hindi lettering hints at Beckham's multicultural leanings (when he first revealed the tattoo, purists said that the spelling was wrong), the adjacent "Amare et Fovere"—meaning, he says, To Love and to Cherish—asserts his traditionalist Western values.

On Beckham's right arm is more Latin: "Perfectio in Spiritu," meaning Spiritual Perfection. This, says Beckham, refers to the nearby Roman numeral VII—he wore the number 7 during his glorious tenure at Manchester United, the English soccer club. Farther up the same limb are two cherubs ("after my two sons") plus an angel weeping over the legend "In the Face of Adversity."

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Victoria Beckham has some tattoos of her own, albeit a less complex collection. On her lower back there are four little stars: "That means I can  be kept for four months in the freezer," says the tanned and taut 30-year-old. "No, those are for the kids." There can be little mystery about the DB tattoo that Victoria recently got on the inside of her wrist, nor the corresponding VB that her husband sports. Asked if the DB inking was painful, Victoria responds, "It was worse than having children." (Both of Mrs. Beckham's deliveries were Cesarean.)

"People didn't expect me to be as good a player as I am. I think the majority of people thought, He's just here to sell shirts."

"Victoria realized afterwards that if we ever got divorced she'd have to go out with either Dane Bowers, Daniel Bedingfield, or David Blaine," says David Beckham, forgetting David Bowie, Daniel Barenboim, and D. B. Sweeney.

"David Blaine we thought was the best one," muses Victoria, "because he's away a lot, swinging about in boxes and all sorts."

So far, so frothy. This is just the kind of banter we have come to expect from a celebrity couple in team-interview mode. But the Beckhams' easy badinage is somewhat surprising, seeing that the couple's public profile has recently soared to an all-time high for entirely the wrong reasons: on April 4, the British Sunday tabloid News of the World ran a front-page story about a well-born 26-year-old woman named Rebecca Loos, who claimed to have had an affair with David Beckham last year, when she was employed by his then management company, SFX. According to Loos, Beckham was a lonely exile whose wife had abandoned him in Spain to advance her singing career. The following week the News of the World ran another detailed installment, and every other paper fought gleefully over the scraps.

"People can say what they like. Me and Victoria will always stay together."

Were he just a young, single soccer player with somewhat flashy taste, David Beckham would—however genial his personality—undoubtedly be a lightning rod for a certain degree of public animus. But in partnership with his wife, Beckham sometimes seems to be as loathed as he is loved. For Victoria, the equation is more lopsided. During the Spice Girls' all-too-brief heyday in the mid-90s, her cartoonish hauteur in the role of Posh Spice was assumed to be part of the group's pre-fabricated shtick; but since then, at least as far as the U.K. press is concerned, she has consistently confirmed her image as a pushy parvenue, one whose bust size seems to increase as her record sales dwindle. People never seem to tire of taking potshots at her, and the News of the World's alleged scoop did not exactly engender her much sympathy.

Rebecca Loos was reportedly paid around $600,000 for her revelations, which detailed several alleged sexual encounters with Beckham. She also supplied a string of naughty text messages, supposedly from Beckham's hand. (Whoever the author, he or she came across as a fairly decent amateur pornographer with a lot of time on his or her hands.)

There ensued the kind of psychic epidemic that only the U.K. press can uncork. Britain has far more national papers competing with one another than America does, and those titles have become increasingly driven by celebrity culture; and so, for days and weeks on end, all angles of the Beckham-Loos story were mined in new and inventive ways. One paper even played the class card, favorably comparing Loos's cosmopolitan background with Victoria Beckham's nouveau riche roots.

Other young women stepped forward with tales of Beckham assignations, a couple of them offering specific details, while Loos— now dubbed "the sleazy senorita" by the press despite her Dutch heritage—submitted to a television interview, presenting her case with the soft voice and wide eyes of a discount Lady Di. Her demure refusal to answer certain intimate questions might have been remotely credible if viewers hadn't known about the reported $200,000 fee she received for doing the interview.

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Team Beckham's response to all this was surprisingly muted. Initially, Rebecca Loos's claims were deemed by his handlers to be "ludicrous"; at worst they were "unsubstantiated." There was some saber rattling about the Beckhams' instructing their lawyers to ready an onslaught of lawsuits, but nothing has come of that. According to one of Beckham's representatives, he and his wife, while in daily touch with their lawyers, have chosen to remain silent in conscious emulation of Old Hollywood class. A very pretty thought, which might even be plausible if the Beckhams had not previously taken $1.2 million from OK! magazine for the photo rights to their overblown 1999 wedding. At any rate, before sitting down with Vanity Fair, neither of them had spoken a word to the press since the Loos story broke. And given that Beckham subsequently signed a multi-million-dollar worldwide endorsement deal with Gillette, seeming proof that his commercial worth has not been seriously impacted, perhaps the couple were justified in their comparatively laissez-faire employment of the scandal-management arts.

But forget jet-set floozies and lurid headlines. These days, even when he is gliding elegantly across the manicured turf that is his natural habitat, David Beckham cannot escape the face of adversity. Even his sporting life is in a phase more turbulent than any other in his professional career.

A brief tutorial for the soccer illiterate: Beckham is currently plying his telegenic trade for the Spanish superteam Real Madrid, a collection of international all-stars he joined last summer after leaving then English champions Manchester United, the club that had nurtured him since he was a gawky teenager. He may lack certain attributes essential to a complete football player—most notably speed—but through some combination of raw instinct, devout application, and a pair of slightly bowed legs, Beckham has forged a world-beating ability. There may never have been another player who could, from wide positions, so unerringly provide his team's forwards with unmissable scoring chances. Precious few players can aspire to the kind of sublime acuity with which he routinely sends free kicks over defensive walls, past mesmerized goalkeepers, and into the net, hence the phrase "Bend it like Beckham."

For all his skill, his pre-eminence is equally due to his scintillating looks and intensely affable persona. "The thing that Beckham has that very few athletes have is that his personality transcends the sport," says Marc Ganis, president of the Chicago-based sports consultancy firm Sportscorp Ltd. "Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan—only a handful of athletes transcend their sport. David Beckham has done so in Europe and in Asia, and I believe he can do so in the United States as well."

It was Manchester United's longtime manager, Alex Ferguson, who nurtured Beckham into the fearsome, if fey-voiced, attacking midfielder who helped United dominate English soccer in the 1990s. And it was Ferguson, a stem Scot of soccer's old school, who deliberately shielded the boy from media attention. In August 1996, when Beckham caused a sensation with a 60-yard wonder-goal, he was known chiefly as the handsomest of the half-dozen moderately well-paid, relatively anonymous youngsters who were breaking into United's first team.

Everything changed in early 1997, when Beckham started dating Victoria Adams: their collective fame didn't add together—it multiplied. The Spice Girls were already a cultural phenomenon in Britain, reportedly garnering five times more press coverage than their closest celebrity rival. Since Victoria was the most-written-about Spice Girl, her relationship with Beckham defined a new level of media saturation, and made paparazzi car chases a feature of daily life for "Posh and Becks."

Beckham began to dress more like a pop person, experimenting with sarongs, cornrows, and pink nail varnish in between tasteful bouts with Gucci, Versace, and Dolce; these days his default mode seems to be a clean-cut take on hip-hop's thug aesthetic. (One morning I spent with him he was wearing a camel-colored jacket, a beige V-necked sweater, low-slung jeans slightly split at the seams, and some white, nouveau-retro Adidas sneakers, plus a pair of chunky diamond earrings from New York's Jacob the Jeweler, friend to the hip-hop elite. You might see Justin Timberlake wearing a similar outfit when he is taking Cameron out to a fancy restaurant; when a soccer player dresses like this, he is hailed as a style icon.)

As Beckham became more than a sportsman, his endorsement earnings—he has shilled for Brylcreem, Police sunglasses, Castrol motor oil, and Rage Software, among others—started to put his soccer-playing peers in the shade. By June 2002, when it came time for Manchester United to renegotiate Beckham's contract, the player insisted on, and got, an unprecedented $32,000 per week just for his "image rights," acknowledgment of his value not just as a footballer but as a brand. This development was hardly likely to impress Alex Ferguson, a man who probably thinks Dolce & Gabbana is something on the dessert menu at a trattoria. Last season the manager dropped his star player from several games, giving strong hints that Beckham's Spice-influenced celebrity lifestyle was not conducive to peak athletic performance.

Ferguson and Beckham's differences came to a head in February 2003, in the team dressing room after a sloppy defeat on United's home ground. An angry Ferguson kicked a soccer boot toward Beckham and cut him above the eye. The next day, Beckham wore his hair back off his forehead to show the world his wound.

While he was on vacation in Palm Springs last summer, Beckham found out that he was to be sold by Manchester United. He was not without recourse in this; legally, he was entitled to sit out the remaining two years of his contract with United, but few players want to endure that kind of career limbo. Beckham joined Real Madrid in July 2003, in a deal that brought the English club a $38 million lump payment while the player's salary stayed at around $200,000 per week. Real cemented its deal with a televised press conference watched by millions worldwide. A club mouthpiece explained that Real would put its Englishman in a Michael Jordan-evocative No. 23 shirt. (Despite Beckham's renown as the Jordan of his sport, Scottie Pippen—Jordan's "little brother" on his Chicago Bulls championship teams— would probably be a more fitting analogue to Beckham's role as a gifted on-field enabler.)

When Florentino Perez, the capricious Real Madrid president—a man who treats players like cattle and managers like Kleenex—brought Beckham to Spain, he was continuing a New York Yankees-like acquisitive binge that is unique in modern soccer. During each of the last several summers, Perez has purchased, at outrageous cost, one of soccer's elite players, assembling a collection of what have become known as galacticos. Thus Beckham's name was added to a lineup that already had the Portuguese trickster Luis Figo and France's Zinedine Zidane, recently voted the best soccer player of the past 50 years; filling out the roster were Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo, the Brazilian party animals with whom Beckham has bonded most strongly.

At 29, Beckham is entering the prime of his football-playing years, and his Madrid career could hardly have got off to a better start. In his competitive debut last August, he scored within 126 seconds; in subsequent months he won over many of those who had doubted his ability to thrive in the Spanish league, widely considered the best in the world. "When I first came here, people didn't expect me to actually be as good a player as apparently I am," says Beckham, who is the only British soccer star currently playing in La Liga. "That's what was good: the expectations weren't that great. I think the majority of people thought, He's just here to sell shirts."

David Beckham may have an awkward surplus of global commercial allure—not to mention the interest in fashion that some red-blooded Spaniards find suspicious—but it didn't take Real's fans long to appreciate him. His Stakhanovite work ethic was a real eye-opener for the jaded regulars at the city's magnificent Santiago Bemabeu Stadium (an imposing work of Fascist-era architecture originally built in 1924 but reconstructed during Franco's regime). When Beckham abandoned his traditional, sideline-hugging role for a place in the bruising melee of central midfield, he proved himself both adaptable and rugged.

A few months ago, squad injuries forced Real's manager Carlos Queiroz to place Beckham in the even more unfamiliar position of defensive midfielder. "Unfortunately, that's the role I've been pushed into," he says with a shrug. "Unfortunately, it stops me going forward and trying to get as many goals as I can. But I'm not going to complain, because there are players sitting on the sidelines who, at any other team, would be playing."

In late April, as the nine-month-long season approached its late-May climax, heavily favored reigning champion Real Madrid was in a neck-and-neck race for first place with provincial powerhouse Valencia. In recent weeks, Beckham's team had had a few disappointing results; the local reaction showed that, at least where football is concerned, Madrid is a town without pity. After Real suffered its first home defeat of the season, 3-0 to a middling Osasuna club, fans showed up at a training session with a banner that read, FOR YOU, WHORES AND MONEY. FOR US, INDIGNATION AND REPRESSION. One newspaper reporter compared Beckham's enthusiastic but aimless running to Forrest Gump's; another suggested that his frequent trips to see his family in England were taking a toll on his game. Beckham says that the reason he hasn't brought his family to Madrid is to shield them from the overheated attentions of the Spanish tabloids—but it didn't help his cause when his wife was reported to have complained that Madrid "smells of garlic."

Still, Real Madrid's fans were not going to lose belief overnight in a player who, earlier in the season, was part of the first Real team in 20 years to beat blood rival Barcelona on its own ground in league play. (Such is the intensity of the rivalry that in 2002, Real's Luis Figo, a former Barcelona star returning to the city for the first time, was greeted with a shower of objects that included a full bottle of whiskey and the head of a suckling pig.)

Beckham admits to knowing as little about the roots of Spain's ancient soccer rivalries—for instance, Barcelona was oppressed during Franco's dictatorship; Franco was a Real supporter—as he does about the country's language, which he says he's been too busy to learn. But when a grudge rematch with Barcelona kicks off on a balmy night at the Bernabeu in front of 78,000 well-groomed yet passionate fans, there is no player more committed to the Madrid cause. Frequently in the first half, Beckham goes in where it hurts, and several times opposition players dump him right onto his "Brooklyn" tattoo.

The Madrid crowd appreciates Beckham's yeomanlike exertions, but deep into the scoreless first half there is an indication of the player's unique status within the Real Madrid setup. While the 22 supremely toned warriors on the pitch have at one another, two electronic screens on the stadium's towering fifth tier periodically display commercial messages. As the first half grinds on in tense stalemate, the screens beam out an advertisement for the glossy tabloid Interviu, touting a cover story about "La Aventura Malaya de Beckham"—Beckham's Malaysian Adventure. The reference is to yet another supposed assignation, and the young woman pictured on the magazine's cover, wearing a see-through nightie and thrusting her nipples toward the viewer, is Sarah Marbeck, a demi-attractive model type who ranks a solid second in the league table of alleged Beckham mistresses.

Imperious, white-clad Real takes the lead, 1-0, early in the second half. But Zidane, the home side's best performer, exits with an injury, and Figo is ejected. The game is taken over by the visitors' Brazilian superstar, Ronaldinho, a jheri-curled Chris Rock lookalike whom one Real Madrid official reportedly deemed "too ugly" to sign. Thanks to Ronaldinho's improvisational genius, and despite David Beckham's continued defensive labors, Barcelona wins, 2-1. As the Real players troop off in defeat, the Englishman stays behind and applauds all four sides of the stadium in turn. The Madrilenos applaud back through their indignation and repression.

Immediately after the Barcelona game, Beckham and his family take a private jet to England, to spend the night at their north-of-London pile popularly known as "Beckingham Palace." (The couple paid around $5 million for the seven-bedroom property, built in the 1930s on 24 acres of land; Victoria led the customization drive, adding a $600,000 recording studio for herself and designing "themed" rooms, such as the Audrey Hepburn bathroom, lined with photos of her favorite film star.) Beckham has work commitments in London the next day; more important, he wants to take his son Brooklyn to school and later pick him up.

David Beckham is slightly late for his first London appointment, at an airy, Mac-lined design studio in a gentrified corner of the East End—he apparently locked himself in the stable when he went to feed Brooklyn's pony. If this sounds like a line from one of the many jokes about Beckham's supposedly modest I.Q., those gags do not quite have the same resonance as they used to. The last few years have put a hard glint in hazel eyes that were once so puppyish; and though Beckham's voice is still a little on the high side, it has grown more modulated of late. There is, too, an increasing tendency to talk out of one side of his mouth, a tough-guy affect that often gives way to a wry smile. These days, it seems, Beckham is in on the joke.

He is visiting the studio to approve initial logo designs for Footwork, the new company that will manage his various soccer-related enterprises. The head designer shows Beckham some roughs, which involve a graphic of the player's body swaying in distinctive mid-kick alongside a digital rendering of a footprint. There are a few variations, intended for reception areas, letterhead, business cards, and so forth. "I've never had a business card before," Beckham muses. "What am I supposed to put on it?" Someone suggests "Footballer."

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Since the footprint on the final Footwork design must be based on Beckham's legendary right foot, he takes off his sneaker and sock to make a few impressions. His ankle is swollen and covered with red gouges. "I must admit, I've got a lot more kicks in Spain," Beckham says as a makeup woman paints the sole of his foot black.

His first chore completed, and his foot washed off, Beckham takes the wheel of his black Range Rover (Autobiography edition) and slaloms through the narrow streets of East London. "He should have been a rally driver," remarks one passenger in a pursuing vehicle. The destination is Leytonstone, an East London borough unlikely to be troubled by gentrification in this lifetime.

This is David Beckham's home turf. To the casual observer, he may seem like an effete millionaire, but his accent says otherwise. Whenever Beckham says "them days" instead of "those days," he audibly harkens back to his unposh youth in Leytonstone. His father, Ted, was a plumber who encouraged his youngster to pursue football perfection through endless practice. As David grew up, he always got a new pair of boots when he needed them. But when, at the age of 11, he asked to go to a soccer academy run by former Manchester United idol Bobby Charlton, the $230 fee was beyond the family's budget; the kid got his wish when his grandfather put up the money. That first summer, David was too small to compete seriously with his peers. The next summer he was still too small, but he won a skills contest, got noticed by Manchester United, and signed up with the club when he left school at 16.

Beckham's very first pair of soccer boots were bought at the A. E. Sedgwick sporting goods store, in Leytonstone, and he is returning for a photo opportunity that will promote his new line of Adidas soccer boots. He is greeted by a cluster of invited press photographers, plus a couple dozen curious locals. Half an hour later, as his security people ready him to leave, word has gotten out, and the store is surrounded by several hundred gawkers. As he is ushered through the crowd into a waiting car, Beckham looks like a silver-screen God surrounded by Dickensian-faced extras in leisurewear.

David Beckham's working day is over— he heads back home to Victoria, the kids, and privacy—but his icon has miles to go before it sleeps. London's National Portrait Gallery is adding Beckham's visage to its venerable collection of mug shots, and this evening there will be a first viewing of the new work. There is a twist: the Beckham portrait, created by Sam Taylor-Wood, is in the form of a one-hour-seven-minute video installation that shows Beckham a-slumber. "I thought, I'm a footballer at the end of the day—is this the right thing to do?" Beckham tells me later. "But being put in the National Portrait Gallery is a pretty amazing privilege."

The next day's papers will suggest that Taylor-Wood's artifact is nothing but a limp pastiche of '63 Warhol, but tonight London's well-shod art elite—plus David's proud mum, Sandra—are happy to park their canapes outside the darkened room where Becks dozes on video. Inside, invitees stand in reverential silence, watching a soccer legend snoozing in soft light that is—according to the catalogue copy—evocative of Caravaggio. When Beckham's left hand slides suggestively toward his shaded nethers, a chubby schoolboy giggles and whispers something to his mother, who tuts loudly and gives him a disapproving look.

Deep in a wooded estate northwest of Madrid is the rented villa that David Beckham currently shares with his Shar-Pei, Carlos. This is where our interview, oft postponed for reasons known only to his press agent (though perhaps easily guessed at), will finally take place. The paparazzo who lounges near the entry gate is a sign that siege conditions will apply. A representative from Beckham's management company will be present at all times, and Beckham cannot be asked to comment directly on the Rebecca Loos matter or any similar press "negativity." It's the lawyers, apparently—they insist on it.

Having been informed that Victoria Beckham is wary about appearing in this article, I am somewhat surprised to be greeted by her in the living room of her husband's residence. Her outfit is more surprising still: gray T-shirt, pink Birkenstock sandals, and pink crocheted bikini of petite dimension. After pleasantries have been exchanged, Mrs. Beckham disappears, muttering about covering herself up. (The kids remain in England with Victoria's mother.)

David Beckham leads the way onto his tiled patio and sits down in the afternoon sun. He is wearing baggy red Adidas shorts, black Adidas slides, and a cheerful grin. His head has been shaved in the last week or so, but he laughs off the idea he did it in penance for any misdeed; nor was he influenced by the defender from crosstown rival Atletico Madrid who yanked on his ponytail last weekend. The haircut, Beckham says, was just a present for Victoria's recent 30th birthday.

Beckham appreciates that his every tonsorial adjustment, his every fashion statement, are under close scrutiny all over the world—nowhere more so than in the Far East, where fans once reportedly took to wearing plaster casts on their wrists in bizarre tribute to their injured hero. Whatever personal style he may possess has been with him for a long time, he says. "I've always dressed different, I must admit," Beckham intones, his unprepossessing voice competing with the wind chimes that tinkle constantly in the background. "Even when I was six years old: I was a page boy at a wedding, and the outfit I wanted to wear was knickerbockers, knee-length socks, frilly shirt, and ballet shoes. My dad said to me, 'You do realize that people will laugh at you?' but I said, 'I don't care—I like it.' That's the way I've been my whole life."

Part of Beckham's off-the-field success seems to be that he is a mutable icon who can be cited as both the blackest white man in Britain and the straight man most desired by gays. "I just woke up one day and someone called to tell me I'd been voted the gay style icon of the year or whatever," recalls Beckham. "I think it's quite cool, actually. I'm sure the blokes of the world would turn around and say, 'I can't believe that so-and-so ... '"

Given the conspicuous consumption that his unstinting work ethic enables, it's not too surprising to hear that David Beckham feels his keenest cultural affinity with the hip-hop world. "Hip-hop is all I listen to," says Beckham, who cites newcomer Kanye West as a current favorite. Although America as a whole has yet to embrace Beckham, black culture has started to reciprocate his admiration: Jay-Z, for instance, name-checked him—"My kick game just like David Beckham"—on a Missy Elliott-album track. "To get mentioned in rap songs like that is pretty amazing," marvels the man whose replica jersey generated $ 1 million worth of sales at a single Madrid store on its first day of release.

Beckham counts R&B sensation Usher as a friend, and he invited the junior love god to an England international match last year. P. Diddy is also a pal, although their respective commitments tend to restrict face time. "We speak every now and then on the phone," says Beckham. "We talk about what's going on, family—whatever. He sends me clothes sometimes. At some point we might do something together, I don't know. He's a really nice bloke, actually."

Something catching his eye, Beckham looks off into the distance, toward the adjoining property that sits beyond his compact lawn and modest swimming pool. He squints for a few moments, then relaxes. "Thought it might be paparazzi. I think it's just a couple of kids playing football."

At this point, Victoria Beckham reappears—minus the T-shirt. She spreads a Tasmanian Devil Looney Tunes towel on the patio about 10 feet away from her husband, lies on her stomach, and proceeds to sunbathe. Even as one discreetly appreciates how nicely the pink bikini complements Mrs. Beckham's tawny epidermis, one wonders if her distracting presence reflects the kind of gamesmanship Hollywood secret agents sometimes have to endure.

Last year, Victoria had her own adventure in hip-hop, recording with rap mogul Damon Dash—whose Roc-A-Fella Records launched Jay-Z—and modeling for his clothing line. I ask Victoria if she learned anything from being up close to the famously dynamic Mr. Dash.

"Well, I haven't been as up close as I've been accused of being, for a start," Mrs. Beckham retorts.

"And me ... And me," adds Beckham meekly, raising his hand like a kid in school hoping to be called on. "Not with Damon ..." Since Beckham has never been accused of romancing Damon Dash, one assumes that this meek interjection is his jokey way of repudiating allegations that he has been unfaithful to his wife.

Of all the decommissioned Spice Girls, Victoria Beckham appears to enjoy the greatest degree of mental and fiscal health, yet she has proved incapable of developing her pop persona into an ongoing musical career, her one solo album having tanked in both Britain and the U.S. The collaboration with Damon Dash was heralded as her long-awaited breakthrough into the U.S. market, but when it produced only one lukewarm single, Victoria's many enemies basked in Schadenfreude. Even now that both Beckhams are being managed by Simon Fuller, the Spice Girls' Svengali, whose resume also includes selling American Idol to Fox, it is said that America will never grant the couple full celebrity status.

"People have said, 'Oh, you'll never crack America,' but it's not something I've set out to do," counters Beckham as he starts to sign his way through a three-inch stack of promotional postcards.

David Beckham should take a significant step toward American recognition this summer when he launches, in conjunction with the U.S. sports-finance behemoth AEG, a David Beckham soccer academy in Southern California. "In a country that does not have soccer as its most popular sport, or second-most popular sport, David Beckham is still an icon," says AEG president Tim Leiweke, echoing the received wisdom on the athlete.

Another Beckham academy will open this summer in London, and if things go according to plan, more will follow on both sides of the Atlantic, fulfilling Beckham's long-held wish to create venues where, as he once did, boys and girls of all abilities can improve their soccer-playing skills. "I've gone for the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme," says Beckham, somewhat cryptically. "Only kids will be allowed to see it—they're not allowed to tell their parents about it.

"I've always wanted to go to America and do something. Of course, the soccer thing has never been as big in America as it is everywhere else in the world—because America has so many great sports and sportsmen. But to start something over there would be nice."

It was Victoria Beckham who recently flew to Los Angeles with Simon Fuller to negotiate with AEG, which tends to confirm the widespread suspicion that Victoria is heavily involved in her husband's business life. And while David Beckham's U.S. ambitions may be modest, his wife—undaunted by the Damon Dash debacle—is swinging for the fences. "We've got big plans for America, both of us," she insists. "We're looking at the bigger picture for me and David—music and football are very important to us, but there are so many areas we'd like to go into, individually and collectively. We've got kids—I'd love to do kids' clothes at some point. Fashion is something I feel really passionate about." Victoria swats an insect off her arm and starts to go back indoors. "There are so many creepy-crawlies in Spain."

If the soccer rumor mill is to be believed, Victoria Beckham will not have to put up with pesky foreign arthropods for much longer. The prevailing wisdom has it that her husband will soon—in a move right out of the Joseph Campbell hero-archetype playbook—transcend his troubles and return home a stronger and wiser man. Roman Abramovich, the young Russian plutocrat who owns the London club Chelsea, is reportedly keen on adding David Beckham to his roster. The timing might well be felicitous because—having given up two more games after the Barcelona match—Real Madrid lost the Spanish-league championship in an embarrassing upset and will likely sell off players to rebuild for next year.

"Eventually I would like to go back to England, I must admit," Beckham allows. "But right now I'm happy playing for Real Madrid." He adds that he's currently househunting in the city.

For all his cheery conviviality, the interview is being conducted with an elephant in the room. What about all the tabloid stories? All of England wants to know, and several other major territories are quite curious. Surely the lawyers wouldn't be offended if one were to ask Beckham, in the most nonspecific terms, if the recent "negativity" had affected his soccer playing.

"It hasn't helped," he admits, seeming almost relieved to discuss the matter. "Because some of the things that have been said about me and my family, they would upset anyone. We're lucky because we've got a good, strong family behind us. We know the truth about every situation that happens with us. We'll always stick together. Nothing will ever break me and Victoria up.

"People can say what they like. But me and Victoria will always stay together as husband and wife. As much as people think they can affect that, they never will."

Now that the subject has been broached, I ask Beckham if the recent allegations came as a shock to him. "Certain things do surprise you that go into the press," he says. "But I think we've been through enough situations that nothing surprises us anymore."

Still, if a man is confronted daily with lurid accounts of his extramarital high jinks, and he knows these tales to be false, surely he is compelled to deny them in a forthright manner?

"Everyone likes to say what they're thinking," says Beckham. "But I've learned over the years that sometimes if you respond it gives people more ammunition to come back at you with. Sometimes you can respond to things and make things worse, make more front pages. Unfortunately, that's the way of life at the moment. But I'm happy right now—as long as my family is O.K., nothing affects me. And as I said, me and Victoria are a lot stronger as a couple than people would ever think."

The Beckhams' tacit dismissal of any extramarital adventures by David may, of course, be just a public stance designed to keep them above the tabloid fray. After all, as the old saying goes, if you wrestle with a pig, you'll both get covered in ordure—and the pig will enjoy it. Still, if David Beckham is acting this afternoon, it is Hollywood's great loss that scheduling conflicts prevented him from appearing in next year's Pink Panther update opposite Steve Martin.

Ultimately, it seems that only legal actions from the Beckhams—or, perhaps, lack thereof—will reveal the truth about the recent tabloid accusations. In the meantime, the couple would probably be better advised to maintain a subterranean profile than to stage another photo opportunity like their post-Loos appearance at a London film premiere. The intended message was togetherness, but while David Beckham was as relaxed as ever, his glammed-up spouse ran through a repertoire of animatronic grins and poses that only brought further mockery upon their house.

On cue, as her husband affirms their togetherness, Victoria Beckham reappears. With mock gravity, he tells her that he has just given the world his solemn promise that they will never, ever part.

Mrs. Beckham clicks her cell phone shut and rolls her eyes theatrically. "People think we're a couple in crisis right now."

David Beckham nods and smiles. "Our marriage counselor will be along later this afternoon."