How David and Victoria Beckham withstood sabotage attempts, affair accusations and fallout with son Brooklyn to build one of showbiz's strongest marriages - as they celebrate 27th anniversary

While Americans will be spending July 4 celebrating Independence Day, for David and  the date has even more significance, given it's their 27th wedding anniversary. 

Over the course of three decades, the couple - who split their time between the US and UK - have officially earned power couple status, maintaining their A-list title, building up a joint worth of more than a billion, and welcoming four children. 

Yet it hasn't always been easy for the Beckhams, who by their own admission have faced plenty of ups and downs in their relationship. 

From the start people tried to tear the couple apart, having met when David was at the height of his football career and Victoria at the peak of the . 

The celebrity couple crossed paths in 1997 after Posh Spice attended one of David's Manchester United matches with , getting engaged a year later after a whirlwind romance.

Yet Victoria has revealed that she was told by her manager to keep the fact she was dating David 'under wraps', with the pair having to sneak around and go on dates in car parks when they first struck up their romance. 

She recalled on Call Her Daddy: 'He fitted in so seamlessly with the other [Spice] girls. I remember being on tour, doing a show in Manchester, sneaking him into my room, and literally the following morning, David having to jump out the window and do the walk of shame!

'He had to skip training because of the blisters on his feet - because he literally had to do the walk of shame in his clothes from the night before.'

When they eventually went public with their romance and earned their Posh and Becs nickname, it landed David in hot water with his manager Alex Ferguson. 

The Manchester United boss claimed David 'changed' as a footballer because he was more focused on his celebrity status rather than his efforts on the pitch.

He said on David's Netflix documentary:  'He changed, there's no doubt about that. All the media and celebrity attention was different from what I wanted.'

David's former teammate Paul Scholes added: 'His relationship with Victoria was p***ing the manager off. He thought it was affecting his football.'

Even David's mum tried her best to keep them apart, expressing her concern over the lengths her son would go to in order to see Victoria when his football training and her Spice Girls tours clashed. 

David confessed he would often make the eight-hour round trip from Manchester to London just to meet her for half hour, with teammate Gary Neville claiming David was 'addicted' to seeing her. 

Sandra Beckham grew concerned, revealing she intercepted calls between the pair in a bid to stop David becoming distracted. 

She recalled: 'Victoria would be away and we'd be staying at David's house and 3 o'clock in the morning the phone would ring.

'He had a game so I'd answer the phone and say "he's in bed, asleep" and they'd want to talk. But me being a protective mum thought "you shouldn't really be ringing this time in the morning!"

'But how can you tell them? They're adults. I was worried he'd lose all he worked for because football come first and all of a sudden it wasn't.' 

Despite their critics, David and Victoria didn't let anything get in the way of celebrating their love for one another, with the couple tying the knot in 1999, at Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland. 

David shared clips from his big day in the docu-series, laughing at his decision to make their guests wear black and white while he and Victoria donned garish purple ensembles. 

As Gary described the wedding as 'a spectacle',  David mused: 'I try to think back to when I decided to wear a purple suit and I don't know when that happened...

'I think I just took Victoria's lead on it but what were we thinking?!' 

Having no regrets on her end, Victoria quipped: 'It was fun!'

Yet what felt like a fairytale marriage soon turned sour, with Victoria admitting that during the Noughties she resented her husband because he turned their life into a 'circus'. 

In 2003, David moved to Spain to play for Real Madrid, with the couple deciding that Victoria would stay in the UK to raise their young sons Brooklyn and Romeo. 

Yet just a few months later the Beckhams world fell apart when David was hit by claims that he had an affair with his personal assistant Rebecca Loos.

Victoria and their sons then relocated to Spain to be by David's side, where the family found themselves under intense scrutiny, with Spanish media hounding them and fans intruding in their lives.

Speaking about the experience, Victoria confessed: 'Did I resent David? If I'm being totally honest, yes I did.'

Fighting back tears, she shared: 'It was the hardest period for us. Because it felt like the world was against us.

'Here's the thing, we were against each other, if I'm being completely honest. Up until Madrid sometimes it felt like us against everybody else but we were together, we were connected, we had each other. 

'But when we were in Spain, it didn't really feel like we had each other either. And that's sad. I can't even begin to tell you how hard it was. And how it affected me.'

Victoria added: 'If I'm being honest it's probably the most unhappy I have ever been in my entire life.

'It wasn't that I was being unheard, I chose to internalise a lot of it because I was always mindful of the focus that he needed.'

David was also suffering as a result, with his performance on the pitch coming under scrutiny and Real Madrid losing four games in a row for the first time.

The former England captain also told how he 'felt physically sick every day' as he and Victoria faced a battle to save their marriage.

'I don't know how we got through it, in all honestly,' he shared. 'Victoria is everything to me, to see her hurt was incredibly difficult, but we're fighters and at that time we needed to fight for each other, we needed to fight for our family.

'And what we had was worth fighting for. There were some days that I would wake up and think, "How am I going to go to work? How am I going to walk on to that training pitch? How am I going to look as if nothing's wrong?" I felt physically sick every day when I opened my eyes, "How am I going to do this?"

More recently, the Beckhams were dealt another blow when Brooklyn released a scathing six-page statement announcing he and wife Nicola Peltz had cut ties with his family