Whether you’re a Man United season ticket holder like my grandfather, who watched all four hours without so much as a tea break, or you’re more familiar with David Beckham as the husband of former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham (AKA Posh), there is something in Netflix’s new docuseries Beckham for you. It has all the trappings of a hit reality TV show: famous faces, cringy confessionals, tensions between the cast. Plus, it’s got high-tension sports drama. It switches between the present day and the height of Beckham’s heyday so seamlessly that I found myself at the edge of my seat anticipating the outcome of soccer games that happened before I was born.

I’m no hooligan, but it doesn’t take much to have more of an interest in the sport than Mrs. Beckham, who plainly says in the documentary, “I wasn’t into football then, and I’m not into football now.” Like Posh with soccer, before Beckham, I had very little interest or knowledge of her husband, my perception being that he was charmingly vapid with a pretty face. I was wrong, kind of. While he is dumb, David Beckham is complex — tough, vulnerable, with a champion mindset. He is unfalteringly besotted with Victoria and has been since the day he met her. Yet, even so, he is the first to admit that nothing and no one comes before football. “I loved the game more than anyone has ever loved it,” he says. This was never more evident than when watching home videos of Victoria and their young children begrudgingly being dragged from pillar to post. When David signed for Real Madrid and Victoria moved to Spain with their oldest son, Brooklyn, the rumor was that she didn’t like the country because the Spanish “smell like garlic,” a claim she denies in the series with a laugh. Anyway, she seemingly got over the (in my opinion, delicious) stenches of Spain and settled in. But she really needn’t have bothered, as it wasn’t too long before the family moved to the states when Beckham was bought by LA Galaxy in a deal that would see him make $255 million over five years.