TIME 100 - Philanthropy

THESE ARE THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF GIVING

- BY SEAN GREGORY/FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.

David Beckham

CHAMPION OF CHANGE

ON THE FIRST SUNDAY NIGHT IN APRIL, DRUMS ARE beating and horns are blaring in a boisterous Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami teammates make a humdrum regular-season American soccer game a happening. Inter Miami and Toronto FC are tied 1-1 in the waning seconds of the contest when Messi drives a ball into the goal box, giving his team a golden chance to pull out the win. His pass lands on the foot of Inter Miami’s Fafà Picault, who pops what should be a surefire game winner over the net. A few seconds later, the referee blows the final whistle.

David Beckham, co-owner of Inter Miami, sits still in his box, his face frozen in disbelief. He looks too ticked to move. Finally, he rises to shake a few hands and slap some shoulders. “That was a frustrating game,” he says.

“I feel more exhausted watching the team as an owner,” says Beckham, whose wife Victoria noted how sweaty he was when he got home and asked what in the world he had been doing. “I’m so invested in the game that I feel that I’ve played the game.”

It has been a dozen years since Beckham retired from professional soccer following a career in which he won six Premier League titles with Manchester United, a La Liga championship with Real Madrid, two Major League Soccer (MLS) Cups with the L.A. Galaxy, and a Ligue 1 championship with Paris Saint-Germain. And having just reached a major milestone—his 50th birthday, on May 2—Beckham admits that he’d love to get back out there. “There’s a lot of players that say, ‘Oh, well, I miss the locker room. I miss the banter,’” he says. “I don’t miss any of that, because I have that with my family and with my friends. I miss training every day. I miss playing every weekend. Every day, I wake up, and I feel like something’s missing. Even at 50 years old, in my head, I can still play.”