David Beckham has kept the train ticket his wife Victoria wrote her phone number on the first time they met.

David and Victoria Beckham

David and Victoria Beckham

The 44-year-old retired soccer ace spoke to his future wife after she'd had a "few drinks" in the Manchester United player's lounge in 1997, when she came to one of his matches, and David has now confessed he's held onto the memento for the last 23 years.

Appearing on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon', David recalled: "She'd had a couple of drinks so I decided why not, I'll try and get her number.

"We talked for about an hour in the players' lounge. She actually got the train up that day so she wrote her number down on her train ticket, which I still have."

The couple went on to tie the knot two years later, and now have four children - Brooklyn, 20, Romeo, 17, Cruz, 15, and Harper, eight - together.

David also admitted he always had his eye on Victoria, who was known as Posh Spice when they first met.

Recalling the time the 45-year-old fashion designer came to a charity game with her bandmate Mel C, he added: "She came to watch me in a game in London with her manager at the time and one of the other Spice Girls, Sporty Spice.

"We knew of them, obviously, because they were pretty big at the time. And I was just establishing myself in the Manchester United team at the time. But we all had our favourite Spice Girl."

David is currently in the US, where he's the president of the new Inter Miami soccer team.

The sports icon has waited seven years to get his new venture off the ground, and he hopes it's something his kids will be proud of him for.

In an interview with NBC's 'Today', he said: "Victoria has seen over the last seven years what I've gone through, to get to this point, we want something for all of our kids to be able to walk into that training facility and that stadium and say, 'Wow, this is what our dad's built.'"