Stillness and Speed: My Story

by Bergkamp, Dennis

  Johan’s admiration for Dennis never dimmed and is particularly strong now they are helping to run Ajax together. ‘Dennis is a guy with a helicopter view. He sees everything and he keeps things in balance, because he’s in balance himself. You can’t pressurise Dennis Bergkamp. No matter how loudly people around him shout, he always remains calm and thinks. And because Dennis is able to think broadly, he sees connections. He is a truly decent and amiable man – until he gets angry. Then you see genuine anger, but also intelligence. Then his comments are incredibly incisive, even hurtful, but always well considered. So when someone like that becomes prominent within an organisation, maybe even the most prominent individual, it makes sense. It happens automatically.’

  Meanwhile, the older he gets, the more Cruyff-like Dennis seems to become. ‘I’m really fond of Johan, even though I certainly don’t always agree with him. But the discussions are always about details, never about principles. We never disagree about principles.’ Their relationship is pleasant rather than close, but Dennis is not the least bothered by the suggestion that he has grown to be like his mentor. ‘That’s not a problematic observation,’ he says with a smile. ‘Sometimes I notice we have very similar thoughts. I don’t know if that’s because Johan influenced me when I was young or if we are just similar in nature.’

  Have you ever deliberately tried to imitate Cruyff?

  Dennis: ‘Do me a favour, please! Imitating someone else is really not my style. And anyway, Johan would see through that immediately.’

  But you don’t like fighting with people as he does?

  ‘Yeah, I can understand when people say that he is always looking for conflict. That’s probably in his character. Conflict is what he wants, that’s what he needs. And when things are smooth, he’s always looking for another thing . . . Yeah, he likes it. But I understand him. I know where he is coming from. That’s probably where we’re different. I prefer things to be smooth.’

  3

  LOUIS, LOUIS

  IT IS NEARLY MIDNIGHT and smoke from flares among the tens of thousands of raucous fans hangs over the Leidseplein. It’s a May night in 1992 and Ajax have just won the UEFA Cup but their star player is absent. Having played wonderfully throughout the tournament, Dennis actually slept through most of tonight’s final against Torino, laid low by flu and a high fever. On the crowded balcony of the Stadsschouwburg theatre, with his players and the giant silver trophy, bullish and jubilant young manager Louis van Gaal has something to say. He grabs the microphone and pushes through to the balcony railings. Louis wants to tell the crowd just who they should thank for tonight’s triumph: ‘ONE MAN!’ he shouts, jabbing at the night sky with his forefinger as if proclaiming the arrival of the Messiah. ‘ONE MAN!’ He is now leaning so far forward he seems certain to fall into the throng. He pauses for effect. Then he screams out the name: ‘DENNIS B-E-R-G-K-A-M-P!!!!’ The crowd roars. Louis roars. Every child, woman and man in the ecstatic gathering chants the young star’s name in unison.

  Van Gaal would never speak so emotionally in public about Dennis again, but that night the two seemed an unbreakable double act. In just six months in charge of the club, Van Gaal, the intense former teacher with a face like an Easter Island statue, had turned his collection of prospects into a whirlwind of a team. Ajax had whipped through the UEFA tournament with a delicious variant of the traditional Ajax game: crisp and creative, quick and daring, and splendidly organised. And Dennis had become the main man.

  The UEFA Cup triumph was all the more impressive for coming after a period of astonishing instability. In ancient Rome, AD 69, the so-called Year of Four Emperors, was considered the acme of political chaos. Between 1989 and 1991 Ajax had nine coaches – nine! – in a bewildering series of combinations. ‘I forget the sequence,’ says Dennis, ‘but there really were a lot of coaches in a short time!’ When Johan Cruyff walked out in January 1988 he was replaced by a triumvirate of Bobby Haarms, Barry Hulshoff and Spitz Kohn. They, in turn, were ditched for German physiotherapist Kurt Linder (‘the worst coach I ever had!’ Dennis remembers). He lasted just three months before Spitz Kohn (again) and Louis van Gaal (in a junior capacity) paved the way for Leo Beenhakker, who jumped ship for Real Madrid after a season and a half.

  On top of all that, before Van Gaal finally took the managerial reins in late 1991, Ton Harmsen, the chairman who had clashed so bitterly with Cruyff, was forced from the club by a combination of fan outrage and media derision. A few months later he suffered a stroke. Furthermore, the club was not only convulsed by a tax scandal but had been banned from Europe for a year because a hooligan fan had speared a rival goalkeeper with a metal rod ripped from the F-Side terraces. Meanwhile, the players had suffered enough tactical turbulence to sink a navy. Dennis’s formative football years involved being bounced around between positions and roles. ‘Yeah, it was quite an interesting period,’ he says equably. ‘But I learned a lot from it, and from all those coaches. Good or bad, I really just learned a lot.’

  Under Cruyff, Dennis had reached the first team, played in a European final and established himself as a right-winger. In a side bristling with players like Frank Rijkaard, Marco van Basten and Jan Wouters, he more than held his own. Then the simmering feud with Harmsen boiled over and Cruyff departed. Departed, that is, without a word of farewell. Indeed, he and Dennis had no contact for the next three and a half years. ‘I would have expected a phone call from Johan, a few encouraging words, some reassurance like: “Keep calm, things will work out for the best.” But maybe he intentionally didn’t call because he thought I needed to manage on my own. And that’s what I did. I never experienced it as a trauma.’ Meanwhile, with its three new bosses, the team continued in muddled fashion through the 1987-88 season but managed to reach the Cup Winners’ Cup final again, but lost to Mechelen, a Belgian team managed by yet another former Ajax coach, Aad de Mos. Dennis played in most games, scoring occasionally but more often using his speed on the wing to get past opposition full-backs and deliver precise crosses.

  Kurt Linder’s arrival at the beginning of the following season was more problematic, because he was the man chosen by Harmsen to roll back the Cruyff revolution. Cruyff, as always, had created a team for attack, and fielded bafflingly fluid formations: 4-3-3, 3-4-3, even 3-3-4. Along with other football conservatives in the Netherlands, Harmsen regarded Cruyff as brilliant but essentially unreliable. What was needed now, the chairman felt sure, was discipline and defensive solidity. Hence his approach to Linder, a German who had coached Ajax briefly in the early eighties. The two men were skiing buddies and although Linder had retired from football to run a clinic in Switzerland, Harmsen persuaded him to return to bring some order to Amsterdam.

  ‘Linder was an obvious outsider,’ says Dennis. ‘He didn’t understand the culture of Ajax at all. The young players challenged him and the older ones were tactically superior to him. As Amsterdammers, we liked to bluff, show off, be cheeky, boast. If you’re a coach, you have two ways to deal with that. Either you can be like that yourself – and do it better than the players – or be aloof and come down hard when the squad plays up.’ Linder did neither and was soon being openly mocked in training sessions. Nor was he a match for his sophisticated players, three of whom had just played under the great Rinus Michels and won Euro ’88 with the Dutch national team. From the start, captain Jan Wouters emerged as the tactical leader. ‘During matches Jan would give detailed instructions. He’d say things like: “You, two yards to the right. You, to the left and you drop back.” If Linder tried to say something, Jan would get really annoyed and tell him to back off and Linder would just say: “OK, do it your way.” It was extremely embarrassing.’ Even so, Linder still had enough power to kick Bergkamp out of the team. ‘He played four-four-two without a right-winger, which was my position. So he demoted me, just like that, without a word.’

  Actually, Linder used four words. Dispatching both Dennis and the future Barcelona star Richard Witschge to the Youth team, he informed the lo
wer-level coach: ‘Those two are useless.’ The coach in question was Louis van Gaal. And he saw things differently. Dennis was demoralised, but Van Gaal saw potential. He had a feeling Dennis might be playing in the wrong position. So, instead of the winger’s number 7, he handed him the number 10 shirt. Dennis’s experimental new position would be in the centre of the team as a second striker working just behind the centre-forward. Van Gaal encouraged Dennis to think strategically. As his performance in a youth tournament in Volendam demonstrated, the switch electrified him. Dennis was now able to deploy all the quickness of his brain as well as of his feet. He began to move astutely between the lines, sprayed clever passes, confused opponents with sudden positional manoeuvres and scored goals. He was crowned the best player of the tournament. Rather more importantly, he had discovered his destiny. Looking back, he sees this as one of the key moments of his career; as important as being picked for the first time by Cruyff and winning a place three years later in the national team under Rinus Michels.

  To the relief of everyone – including Linder himself – his reign lasted just three months. He was replaced by Kohn and Van Gaal. Notionally, the latter was the junior partner but in practice he called most of the shots, and Dennis was central to his ambitious plans. Dennis was sensational in his evolving role as free man behind a centre-forward and two wingers. He set a new national record by scoring in ten consecutive matches, and so original was his new position there wasn’t even a name for it. Eventually, the press came up with schaduwspits. Shadow striker. Dennis had found the role of his life. ‘I suddenly felt completely free in my game. I could use my two-footedness and show I could score goals. Everything I had learned playing for the juniors and what the fans didn’t yet know about me, could manifest itself in that position. Being the number ten gave me that wonderful tension again. It was new, it was exciting. I didn’t hesitate for a moment, wondering where I should run to. It was all automatic. Suddenly, something amazing happened to me.’

  Ajax only narrowly missed out on the league title. The new board now handed Leo Beenhakker the job and Dennis came down to earth with a bump. Bizarre as it seems in retrospect, Beenhakker was not convinced by Dennis and thought three other candidates might be better in the number 10 slot: Wim Jonk, Ron Willems and Ronald de Boer. Dennis found himself offered other roles, none of which suited him so well: centre-forward, left-winger, deeper-lying central-midfielder, substitute. ‘I was demoted and I really struggled with that because I felt I’d earned my place. I had more or less created my own position in the team: the “Bergkamp position”. Then along comes a different manager with other ideas and he wants to show everyone that there’s another way of doing things, namely his way. Managers want to enforce their style because they think in terms of power. Kohn and Van Gaal approached me together during a training session and said: “If anyone asks you who put you in the number ten position, then you know what to say, right? That was us, we did that.” That made me wonder: “What’s all this about?” Managers want to impress because they crave recognition. That’s especially true of Van Gaal and it was already the case back then.’

  Beenhakker was amiable, but Dennis’s plight was in some ways worse than it had been under Linder. ‘At least I could understand why Linder dropped me. If you’re playing four-four-two and you think Bergkamp is purely a right-winger, then Bergkamp has to go. But for Beenhakker the issue was my football skills. He just didn’t think I was good enough.’ Beenhakker denies this and says he was just trying to win the league, which he duly did. But he thought too little of Dennis, then aged 20, to take him to the World Cup in Italy. (In fact, Dennis had a lucky escape: the Dutch stars had wanted Cruyff as coach. In Italy, instead of concentrating on football, they spent most of their time fighting with each other, with Beenhakker and with the Dutch FA. Holland, who should have won the tournament, came home without winning a match.)

  Meanwhile, Dennis spent the summer more productively. On his return to Ajax, Beenhakker was astonished: ‘I was confronted with a completely transformed Bergkamp. Dennis was self-confident. He had a defiant attitude, as if he was saying: “Come on then, I’ll show you what I’m made of.” It sometimes happens to young players that they suddenly grow a lot in just a few weeks. During that summer he changed himself from a youngster into a man. It had nothing to do with me.’

  Dennis doesn’t remember the period in detail. ‘He said that? If he noticed, then it must have been something. I was hurt the season before. If the coach is not happy, if he’s not playing you, you think: “OK it has to be different now.” Something would have happened with me at some point. I think I worked a bit harder, did some running, got into a different mindset, got into an extra gear. I’m sure that must have happened. But when I look back now through my career, and at other players as well, sometimes you just find a certain balance within yourself, or your body or your life or something like that.’

  Whatever triggered the change, there was now no doubt: Dennis was the best number 10. And he began to develop a remarkable understanding with team-mates. These relationships foreshadowed later ones with Ian Wright, Nicolas Anelka, Patrick Kluivert and Thierry Henry. Dennis’s movement and the almost unearthly precision of his finishing began to mesh with Wim Jonk’s genius for long, defence-opening passes. Spectacular goals began to flow. Scarcely less productive was the partnership with Swedish centre-forward Stefan Pettersson whose selfless running made space for Dennis’s rapier thrusts from deep. Dennis and his colleagues were developing most of this by themselves and Beenhakker was mesmerised. As he said at the time: ‘The timing of Bergkamp’s sprints, his ability to score, all the time quickly turning in limited space . . . it’s all equally amazing.’ Even so, he thought Dennis was still too modest. ‘He doesn’t manifest himself enough in the group. As a person he’s the ideal son-in-law, slightly reticent, very well-mannered. These are wonderful traits – but not necessarily for a professional footballer. It’s like he needs to develop two personalities: Bergkamp off the pitch and Bergkamp on the pitch. These two will have to converge.’

  Finally, Beenhakker was lured back to Spain and Van Gaal got his chance with the first team. Dennis remembers: ‘Everything became more intense. We talked a lot about things like taking positions, and every game was evaluated in detail afterwards. Louis always had his little notebook with him in which he wrote down all sorts of stuff. He constantly emphasised what was important, what we needed to learn and practise. He brought structure to the way we worked and gave us clarity. At that point in my career I really liked that.’ The team became more Total, rarely conceding possession and pressing with ever-greater energy. After the winter break, Ajax began to fly. In a 7-0 win over Twente, Dennis scored a sublime hat-trick and Louis van Gaal was moved to tears by the beauty of his young team. In the league, a more conventional PSV side built around the singular genius of Romario was outpointing them. But all Europe began to notice Dennis’s starring role in a series of dominating UEFA Cup performances, not least against Osvaldo Bagnoli’s Genoa. (We shall meet Bagnoli again shortly.)

  ‘You could really sense there was a new generation emerging. Van Gaal made us even more eager and ambitious. Our game was innovative, attractive to watch and enjoyable to play. If we slipped up, we didn’t give up. We kept bouncing back because we stuck to his philosophy that the team is more important than any individual player. “If everyone adheres to the agreements we make as a team, success will inevitably follow,” Louis said time and again. It gave us the stability we needed.’

  Van Gaal also encouraged Dennis to think critically and creatively about every aspect of the game. ‘We trained meticulously. Every detail, shooting, passing, everything had to improve. And everything became more tactical. Where should you run and why? “Think, guys,” Van Gaal would say. “Consider every move you make.” He gave us pointers, but during matches you had to do it yourself. He constantly hammered home that you had to be aware of everything you were doing. Every action had to have a purpose. I focused on wha
t I was good at: being decisive. I thought a lot about tactics, about the position of defenders and about finding the opponent’s weak spots. I began to choose more intelligent positions by communicating more with the players around me. If a midfielder was marking me, I would play as far forward as possible, forcing my man to play between his defenders to make him uncomfortable. And if the player marking me was a defender, I would drop back to the midfield so he would feel out of place. I really loved approaching football that way, analysing my position like that. I was completely obsessed with being decisive. I was always watching my opponents, paying attention to details, observing the situation on the pitch. I constantly watched for opportunities to win the ball. All I needed was the slightest chance and I would rush at it.’

  If this is beginning to sound like ‘Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’, it shouldn’t. Football is not the movies. A rift was coming between coach and star, and their second season would make it manifest. Part of the problem was Van Gaal’s sheer intensity. ‘We were young and keen to learn, but if we’d been together for five years, I don’t think Van Gaal’s fanatical approach would have worked.’ And Dennis was beginning to assert his independence. ‘We discussed things, but ultimately I did what I thought best. That might sound presumptuous, but even then I was more developed as a player than Van Gaal was as a manager. I just knew, instinctively, where I needed to be to be decisive. Let’s say Van Gaal tells me: “Move ten yards back to be in a better defensive position, Dennis.” I’d say: “I’d prefer not to, Coach, because if we win the ball I’ll have to make up those ten yards at a sprint, and that will cost me that little bit of extra energy I need to be decisive.”’

  Dennis was also thinking of his next step. He had started learning Italian via a correspondence course a year earlier and, after the UEFA Cup win, Europe’s top clubs began wooing him aggressively. Dennis eventually agreed to join Inter. Wim Jonk would go, too. A future issue of conflict was that the deal was signed on a Friday night in The Hague, 36 hours before a crucial league match at PSV on the Sunday afternoon. Van Gaal was desperate to win the championship, and regarded the Inter business a distraction. The match – on Valentine’s Day – went badly. In the first 45 minutes, Ajax played brilliantly and Dennis scored one of his greatest goals yet. Seen now, it looks like a prototype of his winning strike against Argentina in the World Cup six years later. Sprinting at the PSV defence, he perfectly controls a high 50-metre pass from Frank de Boer with his knee (his knee!), then chips the goalkeeper from a narrow angle. It was hardly Dennis’s fault that a minute later a defensive blunder gave PSV a soft equaliser. Even Romario later admitted that the 1-1 half-time score was a ‘bizarre’ reflection of the balance of play. After the break, however, Ajax tired and PSV, despite having a man sent off, won 2-1. Ajax dropped to fourth in the table and Van Gaal was apoplectic.