Well, Brooklyn Beckham Definitely Wouldn’t Have Been Able to Avoid His Family at the World Cup

As the World Cup began a month ago, Brooklyn Beckham appeared in a DoorDash ad in which the premise was: I’m a Beckham so I get sick soccer tickets, but I’m afraid of running into my family, so I’m giving away my tickets to a few lucky DoorDash customers. It was a weird joke to be making about a family rift driven exclusively (at least in public) by Brooklyn and his wife, Nicola Peltz, but the premise has certainly proved correct: David Beckham has been spotted at multiple games, and on Saturday night, the entire family was in Miami to watch England play Norway. Victoria Beckham, who never misses a chance for a wholesome family post that’s conspicuously missing Brooklyn, shared a photo with her other sons, Romeo and Cruz; their respective girlfriends, Kim Turnbull and Jackie Apostel; and her daughter, Harper, who turned 15 the day before. 

David, a former star of the England World Cup squad, was amped for England’s win, and joined the regular-degular fans after the game in singing “Wonderwall” and “Hey Jude,” the latter to celebrate midfielder Jude Bellingham’s two goals. As an England fan, I am predisposed to enjoy all this, but the snaps of David and Romeo’s celebrations were very cute. However, they also really highlighted Brooklyn’s absence; People reported that he posted on Instagram Stories that “he was watching the World Cup game remotely.” 

Brooklyn also missed Harper’s 15th birthday, which the family celebrated with dinner in Miami the night before. That Brooklyn and Nicola were not there was not surprising, given recent history, and continues a pattern of seemingly making Harper (a teenage girl!) the main target of their Beckham-related ire over the past few weeks. In mid-June, around the time the DoorDash ad came out, Harper was photographed by Page Six getting driven to Brooklyn and Nicola’s home in Los Angeles, seemingly in a reconciliation attempt. They were “unavailable” and she reportedly left a letter. A rep for the couple wrote off Harper’s visit as being all “choreographed for the cameras”—and true enough, the paparazzi were definitely alerted beforehand; their presence wasn’t an accident. But if we’ve learned anything about celebrity relationships, we know that just because something has a PR angle or gets captured on camera doesn’t mean it doesn’t also come from an earnest place—especially, I would wager, when you’re dealing with a teenage child. 

Something seems to have shifted after that, because Brooklyn and Nicola had previously avoided implicating Harper. But after her brother’s wedding in mid-June—Will Peltz married Kenya Kinski-Jones, daughter of the late Quincy Jones and sister of Rashida Jones (see below)—Nicola thanked her brother “for finally and officially giving me my dream sister, ken.” Nicola has a sister (and six brothers), and has also had a sister-in-law in Harper since she and Brooklyn got married in 2022, so this just seems catty as hell to both of them. 

I find this whole feud to be genuinely sad, and hypocritical to varying degrees for all the adults involved. But crucially, they’re all adults (including Cruz and Romeo). And even considering staged home visits, if I were Nicola, I’d avoid veiled swipes at a teenager half my age in order to maintain any sort of PR sympathy. 

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