With Beckham turning 40 this weekend, it seems appropriate to look back on his career.
The former midfielder retired from football two years ago having represented Manchester United, Real Madrid, Los Angeles Galaxy, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain.
But the one constant that remained throughout the majority of his career was England.
Ever since he was a young boy kicking a ball around the streets of Leytonstone in east London where he grew up, Beckham seemed destined to play for England.
"My dream was always to play for England, like every kid," said Beckham, who went on to win 115 England caps.
Eriksson seized upon his enthusiasm straight away and appointed him captain when he took the England job in 2001.
David Seaman, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Martin Keown and Gareth Southgate had played more times for their country, but Eriksson had no hesitation handing Beckham the armband.
"David is not a man who talks very much but when he does, you listen," the Swede recalls, 14 years since his controversial appointment as England manager.
"He's not the kind of captain who screams or shouts, but I am sure everybody listened to him.
"None of the players had a problem [with my decision].
"He had a lot of experience, even though he was 25."
That Eriksson saw leadership qualities in a man who had already won four titles and a Champions League by the start of 2001 was not particularly remarkable.
What the former Lazio coach did find particularly strange was the media focus on Beckham.
When he came to these shores, Eriksson knew all about Beckham, his playing ability, and his pop star wife Victoria, but he did not expect to find paparazzi hiding in trees during England's training sessions.
"It was very chaotic," Eriksson said.
The hysteria had its advantages, though.
"When we arrived somewhere the other players used to say 'David, you get off the bus first so we can get into the hotel'. He was a good decoy," Eriksson said with a chuckle.
Beckham-mania peaked when he fractured a metatarsal playing for Manchester United against Deportivo La Coruna two months before the 2002 World Cup.
The front and back pages were filled with speculation about Beckham's fitness.
"It was all day, every day, all the time - will he play? Won't he play? It became ridiculous," Eriksson said.
Beckham made the squad, but did not live up to his star billing and his failure to kick the ball out in Shizuoka led to the Brazilian attack that put England out in the quarter-finals.
The public did not castigate Beckham. He was the reason England were there in the first place.
His stunning 93rd-minute free-kick against Greece the year before brought the whole country to its feet and sent England through to the finals when a play-off against Ukraine seemed inevitable.
"Before that free-kick he missed five or six or good chances so I wasn't too optimistic it would go in," Eriksson says.
"It was an important goal."
England fans voted it the best of all time.
Wherever Beckham went, hysteria followed, the Football Association's former director of communications Adrian Bevington, ever-present during the player's 13-year international career, recalls.
"I remember in 2005 we were doing a press conference in Manhattan ahead of the game against Colombia," he said.
"Sven and I were in the lift with some security people in the basement and we heard this roar and squealing as David took his seat in the other room he walked into. You could hear the noise. It was unbelievable. And that was just for a press conference.
"It was comparable to the kind of reception that the Beatles received when they went around the world."
Beckham, Scholes, Neville, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard failed to live up to the hype surrounding them during Eriksson's reign and England crashed out of EURO 2004 on penalties to Portugal and the same happened again at the 2006 World Cup.
Beckham was vilified after missing his spot-kick in EURO 2004, but he vowed to bounce back. "I am a strong person," he said.
And he was right. He had been there before. The vitriol towards the then 23-year-old after his sending off against Argentina in France '98 was shameful.
Beckham's kick at Diego Simeone may have been foolish, but he did not deserve to see his effigy hanged outside Upton Park. It was a dark moment for the nation.
"He might be a relatively quietly-spoken man, but he is an incredibly strongly-determined individual and he had to show that strength of character to rebound from what happened," Bevington said.
Glenn Hoddle, the man who gave Beckham his international debut against Moldova in 1996, was replaced by Kevin Keegan, but he failed to get the best out of the former Real Madrid midfielder.
After Eriksson's reign, Steve McClaren made the mistake of telling Beckham his England career was over, only to recall him a year later.
McClaren's successor Fabio Capello had made that error at Real Madrid in 2007 and he was not about to do the same again.
The Italian kept Beckham in his squad until he was 34 and had it not been for injury, the player would have probably gone to the South Africa World Cup and broken Peter Shilton's 125-cap record.
Beckham is still the most-capped England outfield player of all time.
And one thing is for sure, of the other 1207 players who have donned the Three Lions of England, none are quite like Beckham.
ends
