David Beckham plays football with school girls on his second visit to India: ‘We’ve had so much fun'

David Beckham visited a school in Vishakhapatnam on Wednesday, interacted with young girls, joined classroom activities, planted trees and played football!

Former footballer David Beckham visited the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Andhra Pradesh Backward Classes Welfare Educational Institutions Society (MJPAPBCWREIS) residential school in Kothavalasa, Vishakhapatnam, on Wednesday as part of UNESCO’s global Education for All initiative. The visit was documented in a reel shared on Instagram, where he is seen interacting with students, joining educational activities and participating in sports and environmental projects.

David Beckham visited a school in Vishakhapatnam recently.

According to a report by The Hindu, the 50-year-old began his visit by sitting in on an ongoing project-based learning (PBL) session, where students led discussions and worked through assignments that required problem-solving, teamwork and analytical reasoning. He then walked through a small exhibition created by the children, who presented projects across different disciplines including, Mathematics and Science.

The children later invited him for a tree-planting activity, explaining how each sapling is scanned and labelled with a digital identifier to help track growth and environmental impact. The former Manchester United and Real Madrid star also spent time in the library, joining a reading circle and discussing with students the books that fuel their imagination and shape their goals. The four-hour-long visit concluded with a lively one-touch football drill on the school grounds, drawing cheers and applause from students and teachers alike.

“As you can see, I’m back in India, and today I’m going back to school. So the girls greeted me with a welcome dance, made musical instruments, planted trees, and got involved with their football games too. It’s been a really, really good day. We’ve had so much fun,” he says in the reel.

This trip marks Beckham’s return to India after his humanitarian visit in November 2023, when he travelled as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador to Gujarat, meeting adolescent girls and young women who benefitted from programmes aimed at preventing child marriage, improving access to education and strengthening leadership pathways. During that tour, he also attended the ICC World Cup 2023 semi-final between India and New Zealand in Mumbai, where he interacted with Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli before the match.