8/25. I flew to Brazil to photograph David Beckham at the launch of his new football academy but, the night before, he drove out to see the location so I went along with my cameras and a borrowed football. The light had just about gone by the time we arrived but we managed a ten minute kickabout. I reluctantly used flash, so he wasn't completely in shadow, but this got hit by a stray shot early on and broke. The next day at the launch, I showed the best frames from the beach to David and his team and they agreed to release a few along with the official photographs. They got quite a bit of press coverage which apparently didn't go down well with Fabio Capello, the new England manager. He left Beckham out of his first squad, announced a couple of days later, and apparently stranded him on 99 caps... (For 25 Years of Mooneyphoto)