"We've got three fridges - food in one, salad in another and drinks in the third. In the drinks one, everything is symmetrical. If there's three cans, he'll throw one away because it has to be an even number."

Beckham said that his teammates at Real Madrid were unaware of his condition, but that players at his former club, Manchester United, would deliberately rearrange his clothes in hotel rooms or move magazines around to make them "wonky" to infuriate him.

Beckham is not the first footballer to admit to suffering from OCD, which is estimated to affect more than two million people at some point in their lives.

The former England star Paul Gascoigne said last year that he was obsessed with cleanliness and needed help for the condition.

Other famous sufferers include the actor Billy Bob Thornton, who has spoken of having to repeat words and count up to particular numbers, and the singer Natalie Appleton, who is obsessed with cleanliness and broke down in tears when she had to touch a tree on the reality show I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

A spokesman for the charity OCD UK said: "There is still a lot of stigma about the condition and even GPs are not very good at picking up on it.

"Young men in particular are often reluctant to come forward and ask for treatment, so to have someone like David Beckham come out and talk about it is very good."