The English star unveiled plans Monday for The David Beckham Academy, which opens this summer next to the Millennium Dome in east London, where he grew up.

"There is that certain kind of buzz when you step on a football pitch," Beckham said. "I want to be able get that same kind buzz with the soccer school."

"I'll play up to the point where I feel my legs are getting too old and I can't do it any more at the top level, he added. "When that time comes, that's when I'll go into the soccer school."

After this season, Beckham has two years remaining on his contract with Real Madrid. He arrived at the club 20 months ago, and he's won nothing. He'll turn 30 in May, and he knows Madrid fans are demanding and impatient.

"I'm happy at Real Madrid and want to stay at Real Madrid as long as I can," he said. "But in football and life, you never know what is going to happen."

The midfielder star is bracing himself for the day he leaves soccer, and he knows he does not have the temperament for coaching.

"Management has never been a thing for me and never will be," he said. "I'm just one of those players who has never fancied going into management."

And so his academy beckons.

Beckham is setting up the school with "several million" of his own money. He has hooked up with the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which is developing the vacant Millennium Dome into a 26,000-seat arena and entertainment complex. The school will have two full fields, indoor facilities, classrooms and a dining area. The school will be open to boys and girls ages 8-15.

About 15,000 are expected to enroll, with 10,000 enrolling for free. Others will pay a $480 fee for a five-day training camp.

Dressed in a white track suit, Beckham spoke softly as 20 students from his old school ran through basic drills before several hundred photographers and reporters.

"That was a good one, mate," said Beckman, encouraging one student.

"David has never lost touch with the school and the friends he had there," said Clive Moore, the head teacher at Chingford Foundation School -- Beckham's old school.

Anschutz is planning to open a sister academy this year in Los Angeles. Timothy Leiweke, president and chief executive of Anschutz, said Beckham's celebrity offers a "unique platform." Leiweke watched Beckham instruct children recently in Los Angeles.

"I saw the sheer joy he has working with the kids -- the joy that he brought out of the kids," Leiweke said. "It was something that was natural for us to do as a part of what we were doing at the Millennium Dome."