A close inspection of David Beckham’s career as a footballer who became a celebrity leaves you with the impression that everything happened by design.

I don’t necessarily agree with that theory, but I can see why anyone would think so. For example, if you google ‘David Beckham Wimbledon’, your first results will be images of him at the tennis tournament.

This is a lad who came from London and enrolled on to the Bobby Charlton school of excellence, making no secret of his desire to play for Manchester United.

His determination caught the eye of the manager, Alex Ferguson, who took him under his wing. Beckham was good enough to make the grade and became a part of a great youth team Ferguson was assembling.

Then he broke into the first team. 25 years ago today he scored a goal which launched his star status into the stratosphere. Beckham had not made the Euro ’96 squad, and the country was still buzzing over the events of the tournament by the time of the opening day of the following season.

A new generation of fans were waiting for a new star in the post-Terry Venables era. Beckham announced himself as that name when he took an extravagant punt from the halfway line at Selhurst Park.

From then on he was courted by management companies and aligned with Victoria Adams, the Spice Girl who became his wife. There were haircuts – so many haircuts. There was the sarong. Impetuous acts on the pitch. A move to Real Madrid. A move to America. Most felt it was a perfectly curated, impeccably engineered career from the moment of unplanned genius that launched him into the public eye.

A once-in-a-lifetime goal? Not quite. Beckham scored from the halfway line again when he played for LA Galaxy.

This writer doesn’t really go along with the general narrative. I would prefer to believe that he loved United so much that his safety net of a move to Real Madrid was just that, and not part of a burning ambition to leave Old Trafford to maximise his potential.

However, it is irrefutable that the moment of impulse in London that day a quarter of a century was indeed a product of planning.

It would not be Beckham’s last strike from this distance – and it wasn’t even his first!

On October 5th, 1991, United’s B side – for which Beckham was starring regularly – travelled to Bury. On the coach there, the players had watched a video of a remarkable goal from Uruguayan midfielder José Luis Zalazar, who played for Albacete in Spain, and had scored from his own half in a September game at Tenerife.

‘After we’d watched it, Becks turned round to the lads and said he was going to do that today,’ Kevin Pilkington remembers. ‘And he did.’

Bury were a rare side able to give United a good competition and the score was 0-1 heading into the last ten minutes. Searching for a late goal, Beckham, from his orchestrator’s position in the centre circle, demanded the ball and surveyed his options. A five yard pass wouldn’t do. A fifty yard pass wasn’t on. Rather than keep the ball moving, or waiting, Beckham decided he would go for the extravagant again.

Just inside his own half, he struck the ball with precision and power; it sailed over the goalkeeper like a chipped effort from much closer range, and into the top corner for a late winner.

Naturally, the parents on the sidelines – David’s included – could barely believe what they had seen. His team-mates, though, were barely even surprised. (Incidentally, Zalazar would repeat the trick the following season.)

Beckham’s ascension through the ranks gathered pace in 1995, as Andrei Kanchelskis suffered a disputed injury and then left the club. Failure to sign Darren Anderton left Ferguson with a right-wing headache, and Beckham, the classy midfielder, was selected because of his clever distribution.

He impressed, becoming one of the breakout names in 95/96, and scoring the winner in the FA Cup semi-final. It was not enough to earn him a place in the England squad that summer, nor was it enough to convince Ferguson that he was the long-term choice. So the manager went out and spent a tidy sum of £3.5m on Czech winger Karel Poborsky.

United’s opening day of the league season was at Wimbledon, a notorious venue where the Red Devils had faced a more sinister force which sometimes went over the top physically. You would have to earn the right to play your football, as United did famously in a cup tie against them in 1994.

On that day, Eric Cantona and Denis Irwin scored famous goals. They did so again on the first day of the season, setting United up for a comfortable win.

Beckham, who had scored a fine long range goal in the previous week’s Charity Shield, kept his place in the team. With Poborsky breathing down his neck, he knew he had to step up his game in order to retain his place.

On the other side of the pitch was Jordi Cruyff. As United entered the last five minutes with a two goal lead, Cruyff showed the invention of his father to have an effort on the Wimbledon goal from around forty-five yards. He had seen Neil Sullivan coming off his line but his left foot shot had no power or direction.

In one of his later books, Beckham generously described the effort as being closer than it was – saying that if it was on target, it would have gone in. The truth was that on its first bounce, the ball was closer to the edge of the box near the corner flag than it was the goal, and Sullivan was able to collect it with some comfort.

A couple of minutes later, Nicky Butt nicked the ball from Efan Ekoku, and Brian McClair nudged the ball to Beckham. The midfielder turned on to the rolling ball around five yards into his own half. The momentum was perfect.

‘Not you now!’ Brian Kidd moaned from the bench.

Perhaps Beckham’s memory had been triggered by Cruyff’s tame attempt to recall those days at Littleton Road where he would try this audacious move with some regularity.

‘I hit it and I remember looking up at the ball, which seemed to be heading out towards somewhere between the goal and the corner flag,’ Beckham recalled. ‘The swerve I’d put on the shot, though, started to bring it back in and the thought flashed through my mind. This has got a chance here.’

This was a clean shot, not with the benefit of being on the run, not with the wind assisting, not on the bounce or with any other advantages. This was a plain shot from halfway down the pitch. Immediately it was clear to see this effort had more conviction than Cruyff’s. Sullivan was off his line again but not so far off that he should have been caught out. The shot was struck perfectly; the descent of the ball was sharp and deceptive to the Wimbledon goalkeeper, who backtracked immediately but knew where it was ending up. Without a bounce, the ball struck the back of the net.

Nobody inside Selhurst Park could quite believe what they had witnessed. History. David Beckham had arrived. He had arrived as an established figure into the United team a little later than his peers, but he had provided a seminal moment which forever be associated with him before any of them.

In a sense, this was not even Manchester United against Wimbledon. It was David Beckham against Neil Sullivan; but people were more prone to give the goalkeeper sympathy rather than ridicule, and he took it in good humour after the game. ‘What can you say?’ he told the press. ‘He beat me fair and square. I didn’t think I was too far out, and certainly didn’t believe there was any danger. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him shape to shoot. I thought he was taking the mickey. Even so I had the ball covered for most of the way, but it suddenly swerved and dipped and I was beaten. The lads were good about it afterwards. They accepted it was a moment of magic. I suppose the only consolation I’ll have is that at least I’ll be seen on TV most weeks now!’

Beckham’s instant response was to celebrate like Cantona had done earlier; his usual energetic runs replaced by this calm exterior, soaking in this life-changing moment. Afterwards, in the changing room, Cantona approached Beckham to congratulate him on his achievement. ‘Believe me,’ Beckham said, ‘that felt even better than scoring it.’

New team-mate Ronny Johnsen had made his league debut in the game and described it as ‘the best goal I’ve seen’.

Gary Pallister had been around Beckham for much longer but even he was surprised : ‘My first thought was: “You cheeky sod!” Even as I watched the trajectory of the ball I was thinking: “Nah, nah, don’t be daft.” But then suddenly I saw the Wimbledon ‘keeper, Neil Sullivan, back-pedalling, really starting to panic, and while the words ‘surely not’ were still forming in my mind, the ball sailed over his head and hit the back of the net. To say I was stunned is an understatement. I could believe neither the audacity of the lad for trying such a thing, nor the incredible technique to pull it off.’

Alex Ferguson declared it the ‘goal of the season’ whilst others went even further than that. Take the conclusion of the News Of The World : ‘There’s no argument David Beckham’s unbelievable strike will be the goal of the season. The only debate is whether it is the greatest goal ever.’

According to his former best mate, this was the ultimate evidence of practice making perfect. ‘It was no surprise he did it on the big stage,’ John O’Kane says. ‘If you practiced like he did, chances are it would inevitably work. It did.’

Back in the days before online streaming and instant access to such things, it was a wait until Match of the Day aired that evening to see the goal that everyone was talking about on the news and on the radio.

Back in Manchester, news of Beckham’s incredible moment was spreading like wildfire. ‘If we weren’t at the games we’d be listening to them on the radio,’ Danny Higginbotham recalls. ‘I was recovering from a broken leg and it was the first day of the season… I remember them saying David had scored from the halfway line. So Dad sent me out to get a copy of the Pink and they were raving about it in there. Like everyone else I tuned into Match of the Day to watch it that evening. It was everything and more when it came to people building it up and hyping about what an incredible goal it was. It was absolutely genius.’

It launched a star. But the boy who scored the wonder goal took a little time to come around to his new profile.

‘David was quite shy in his immediate reaction to it,’ Pallister recalled. ‘Obviously he loved it and milked the applause… the lads were all buzzing about it and I think he was a little embarrassed by all the attention.’

Beckham didn’t immediately face the press, leaving it to the manager, who made his ‘goal of the season’ remark and added : ‘He’s very young and he has a way to go. We will just take our time with him and he will develop into a very good player.’

As for what happened next? Poborsky was called up to play on the right-wing in the next game against Everton!

Oh yeah, and Beckham eventually made an even bigger name for himself, getting the England call-up he was desperate for, and becoming a legend for both club and country.

Excerpts in this piece taken from my book ‘David Beckham – Making of a Megastar’, available from Amazon and all good bookstores.