David Beckham will receive the Editor’s Special Award at the 2019 GQ Men of The Year Awards .
The 44-year-old retired soccer star will attend the GQ Awards in association with HUGO BOSS, in London on Tuesday (03.09.19), where he will be presented with the prestigious prize.
David – who appears on one of the GQ Men of The Year Awards special edition covers of the October issue of the magazine – opened up to the publication about the advice he has for his and his wife Victoria Beckham’s four children, Brooklyn, 20, Romeo, 17, Cruz, 14, and Harper, eight.
He said: "To work hard, simple as that. I tell the kids they have to make choices, sometimes give things up. If your friends are going out on a Friday night, maybe you can’t. Maybe you’ve got tennis practice the next day or you’re in the studio singing, like Cruz, or you’ve got a shoot, like Brooklyn. That’s where your focus needs to be."
David also revealed that football was his main passion when he was growing up.
He said: "To be honest, all I ever wanted was to be successful as a footballer. Obviously, I always did things outside of the game and outside of my footballing career that were slightly different at the time. I think it’s more acceptable now to do some of the things that I did, some of the covers, some of the photo shoots, some of the sponsorships, but I think my focus back then was to just win trophies, be successful with Manchester United and never leave United. Anything outside of the game was just a bonus."
However, the star has since branched out with various endorsement deals including fashion, fragrances and alcohol and said he has become passionate about businesses other than football.
He explained: "I think the change happened when I started seeing things differently on the business side and largely because I was enjoying it a lot more. Consequently, I started to focus and then started looking towards the end of my career and what I was going to do, setting up a team and at some point owning my own team and owning my own office and being able to actually control everything that was going on in my world. I was probably in my late twenties, early thirties when I started to readjust. And it looked very different from when I was 21."
See the full feature in the October issue of GQ available via digital download and newsstands on Friday 6th September.
David Beckham to receive special prize at GQ Men of The Year Awards
