Stillness and Speed: My Story

by Bergkamp, Dennis

  You didn’t socialise much at Arsenal either.

  ‘No, but does it happen in football? You go out with players you feel comfortable with. I’m not going out to dinner because it might help me in my football career. No! I’m going out to dinner in my private life, because I enjoy it. And at that stage, in my first year, fairly or otherwise, I couldn’t say Ferri was necessarily my type of guy, you know? So, do we hang out with each other? No, you stick with Wim because you know him. I really don’t understand this idea that that would solve the football problem. I know the idea that a team of friends is a successful team. But it’s not true. At Arsenal some years, you bonded with more players than other years. But come on! At Inter you have to sort out the football first – that’s where the problem is! And it’s a deep problem, a problem of different philosophies. Look at how they trained the goalkeepers. They trained very hard, but separately. Then they come and join the rest of the team. I need shooting practice, but the goalkeepers are so tired they only try to save one shot in four. That doesn’t help me! In Holland the idea is: score as many goals as possible, do everything to make the attack better. In Italy the most important is the goalkeeper. If he keeps a clean sheet, you can’t lose. For me, it was really mind-blowing sometimes. I’d think, Jeez, I want to do some finishing, and we’ve got a goalkeeper who doesn’t make an effort. How can I improve my shooting? They say, “Yeah, but come on, he’s been working hard all day.”’

  I guess it comes down to this idea that they see the striker is an individualist. Ferri said it very strongly that you’re not a Ronaldo. They wanted you to be like him. When Van der Sar went to Juventus he had to stop playing like a Dutch goalkeeper. They made him stick on his line like an Italian. He went along with that and felt later that he’d betrayed his principles. He felt he should have said: ‘Actually I’m not doing that, I think my way is better.’ He had to come to England, to Fulham, to find himself again. After you left, Ronaldo arrived. He was happy to play catenaccio style as the lone striker. He adapted and they loved him for it. You never did that. You could have tried to be Italian, like Ronaldo, be a dribbler. You could have thought of that as adding some skills. But you seemed to see it more as losing something, not developing your art as you needed to, or not fulfilling your destiny or something. Any thoughts?

  ‘I need other players around me. That’s when I become a good player, because I need them to perform like me, and I need them to be moving for me. I did learn from the Italian league. At home the vibe is more playful: “Oh look how good I am, I can do this . . . and even this!” And in Italy it’s more a job. You’ve got one chance, and you’ve got to make sure you score that goal. I learned a lot from that. I learned what professional football is. They do two training sessions a day. You come in at nine, you rest there in the middle of the day and train again in the afternoon. Every minute of the day, you’re a football player. That’s what I learned there, but I would never do different than what I’m good at. I’m not a dribbler, so I’m not going to dribble. After that conversation on the plane, I understood they wanted me to run around more, work harder. No problem. I can do that. It didn’t help, though. I still wanted to make a difference, to score a goal or make a fantastic pass. But I’ve got no one around me. I’m frustrated, but they just didn’t care. If I was working for the team, making space, making runs, they were happy. I could do that easily, but it wouldn’t win games. It wouldn’t make me a better player. But they’d expect it of me. OK. I’ll do that. I’m open-minded.’

  But would it actually have damaged you, trying to play their way? Would you have lost something in your game? Or added something?

  ‘It wasn’t my strength, but I was willing to put that in my game, and later it helped me. That sort of stuff helped me in England, where I was one hundred per cent in the game every time. I became more business-like in winning the ball, or scoring goals, or finishing or passing. I learned the mentality: this pass has to be right, because you really only have one chance. Or this shot has to be on target . . . that sort of stuff. That’s what I learned in Italy, but I would not have accepted them making that my game, running around. With all due respect to Italian strikers, most of them – not all of them – are just working for the team in the four-four-two system. Just running, holding the ball, passing, getting into the box. It’s similar to some English strikers as well, but I’ve never felt that to be my game. If I’d made the decision: “OK, I’m going to adapt to Italian football,” I would have been a lesser player. I would have been there longer, and they would have been happier with me. But I would never have been the player I became in the end.’

  You stuck to your vision?

  ‘No. It was more a feeling. What was I comfortable with? I thought: “This is not me.” How do you want to play football? How do you approach football? What do you feel happy – or happier – with? What can you do? It comes down to my intention of being a better player today than yesterday, and always looking for possibilities and opportunities. I was looking for quality instead of quantity. Higher and higher. OK, I can do this for twenty years, and at a certain pace. If I just do what they expect of me, I will be appreciated, but I will be one of . . . many. And in my mind, I want to be different. That’s why I made the choice for Inter instead of other teams. Other teams would have been easier. I don’t want it easy. At Milan, they would have understood immediately. I could have followed Marco, but I wouldn’t make a name for myself. I didn’t want to be a follower. I didn’t want to be “the new Van Basten” or “the new player from Cruyff” at Barcelona. I wanted to follow my own path, my own way. I wanted to be Dennis Bergkamp, basically.’

  5

  PLAYER POWER

  DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES in the Dutch national team have sometimes helped Dennis’s career. At other times they have blighted it.

  Of all the football-loving nations, the Netherlands probably has the most complex pattern of power relationships between coaches and players. Notoriously, as during the 1990 World Cup and the European Championships of 1996 and 2012, the tendency to form cliques and argue about everything from tactics to money has turned toxic. At other times, though, Dutch democracy has proved a strength. In 1974 and 1988, for example, groups of talented, sophisticated, strong-willed players created spectacular football precisely by taking responsibility and finding ways to work together more effectively than anything an autocratic coach could have imposed.

  In 1990, at the dawn of Dennis’s decade in an orange shirt, both aspects were visible. During the summer, at the Italy World Cup, a combination of feuding superstars, an unwanted coach and intransigent suits at the KNVB (the Dutch FA), produced nothing but poison. The team of Van Basten, Gullit, Rijkaard, Koeman, Wouters, Van Breukelen and Van’t Schip – then all at their peak – couldn’t even beat Egypt and came home in disgrace after falling to the Germans. A few months later, however, the picture changed. Soon after Dennis made his debut as a substitute in a friendly against Italy in Palermo, player power reared its head again. But this time it worked more productively.

  Dennis’s first full match, partnering Marco van Basten in a two-man attack, came in October 1990 against Portugal in a European Championships qualifier. The Dutch, confused by their coach’s tactics, lost 1-0. The coach in question, holding the job for the third time in his brilliant career, was the great Rinus Michels. In his glory years in the late sixties and early seventies, he had invented Total Football with Ajax and transferred it to the Dutch national team (or rather he had co-invented it with his players, the most important being Johan Cruyff). Now aged 62 and soon to be named FIFA’s ‘Coach of the Century’, Michels had mellowed and now favoured a variant of the 4-4-2 system in vogue all over Europe. It certainly had its merits and, under Michels, Holland had won Euro ’88 with it. Having returned to the job after the Italy World Cup fiasco, he was unconvinced by Dennis’s performance against the Portuguese and decided to replace him for the next game, against Greece, with big former PSV man Wim Kieft, an English-style centre-f
orward now playing for Bordeaux. Michels had even promised Kieft his place.

  One problem was that the Dutch media didn’t approve of the tactics. Much more importantly, neither did Marco van Basten. During training, whenever a move failed or a pass went astray, the greatest striker on the planet made a show of shaking his head to demonstrate his contempt for Michels’s plan of attack. Van Basten urged Michels to play the Ajax 4-3-3 using two wingers and Dennis as number 10. Michels’s nicknames – ‘The Bull’, ‘The General’ – convey the impression that he was no pushover. Indeed, by Dutch standards he was considered a fearsome disciplinarian. But this being the nation where player power was more or less invented, he was both open to ideas and keen to avoid a damaging clash with his biggest star. Michels therefore asked his squad which tactic they would prefer. At the Kievit Hotel in Wassenaar, a wealthy suburb of The Hague, a players’ meeting was convened. By Dutch tradition, senior players tend to influence such gatherings and, as the meeting turned into a clash between Ajax 4-3-3-ers and PSV 4-4-2-ists, Ajax’s former and current club captains Van Basten and Jan Wouters held sway, the PSV contingent was outnumbered and several young Ajax players even mocked Kieft as a ‘tree trunk’. When the meeting voted to adopt 4-3-3, Kieft stormed out.

  In the match that followed, Dennis played well and scored his first international goal (with a header, strangely enough). Holland won 2-0. According to Dennis: ‘That game was important, both for the team and for me. We chose the Ajax approach and it worked from the start. It was great and really important for my self-confidence. I was in a phase then when I was becoming more of a determining player, more dominant. Only a short time before, I’d been struggling with feelings of resentment about being constantly in and out of the Ajax team. I solved it myself, by working extremely hard to improve my form. Yes, that’s possible. You can work your way to form by making sure you stay fit and in a good rhythm, and by going the extra mile, like practising your shooting after training has finished. And you have to stay positive.’

  Dennis’s career in oranje had begun in earnest, and he now mingled with established greats, observing Michels at close quarters and playing alongside ‘The Milan Three’, all still at the height of their powers. Michels tended to delegate training sessions to his protégé, Dick Advocaat. ‘Dick trained us while Michels wandered along the touchline. Now and then he would walk on to the pitch to speak to a player. His match analyses were interesting and compelling. You listened to him because he was a great personality. Being selected by Michels was very special. To me, he was an imposing figure, a real presence. I was impressed and had great respect for him.’

  Training and playing with Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard isn’t bad either. ‘I really enjoyed testing myself against the Milan guys. At first you think: “Wow, it’s amazing to be on the pitch with players like these.” But after a while it’s more like: “Wait a minute, I can keep up with them and that means I can make giant steps too.” When that happens, you’re already on your way to playing abroad. At first I shared with Marco, but the lads from Milan soon got their own rooms because that’s what they were used to at their club. It didn’t bother me, I liked having a room to myself too. When I was seventeen, Marco was already a sensation, but he didn’t act like a star. With the national team it was like it had been at Ajax. I got along really well with him. He thought of himself as completely normal, you could have a laugh with him, too, and he had a really good, sharp sense of humour. Even when he became a star at Milan, he didn’t think he was different, but I thought he was pretty special.’

  Holland cantered through qualification and by June 1992 Dennis was on his was to his first big tournament, the European Champion ships in Sweden. ‘I wasn’t nervous, there was hardly any pressure. I was just curious. I thought to myself: “Let’s see what this is all about.” I didn’t feel as if we absolutely had to win, and I wasn’t even sure whether we were capable of winning. I knew we had a good team with a mix of younger and older players. I was just focused on enjoying myself, learning and gaining experience. I really enjoyed tournaments: the whole thing, including the tension. It didn’t disturb me. I played five major international tournaments, and I must say I loved all of them. I was always able to focus well, always ate, drank, rested well, trained regularly. It was all good. I never felt out of place at any tournament.’

  His job was different in the national team. At Ajax, Dennis was used to being served by Stefan Pettersson. In oranje he was to serve Van Basten. Holland’s first two group games were disappointing, their attack was sputtering and Marco wasn’t scoring. A goal by Dennis beat Scotland but reviews back home were hostile after the 0-0 draw with the post-Soviet, pre-Russia team know as CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). Qualification for the semi-final depended on beating the Germans.

  The greatest rivalry in European football was in its most bitter phase. The Dutch had never got over the trauma of losing the 1974 World Cup final. Beating the Germans in the semi-final of Euro ’88 had salved the wound somewhat. But the last time the teams had met – in the World Cup second round match in Milan – the Germans had triumphed once again. Poisonously attached to such matches were all the complex Dutch feelings about the Nazi invasion and occupation during the Second World War. Now the two best teams in the world – the reigning European and World Champions – clashed amid the low, wide, orange-dominated spaces of the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg. Dennis: ‘It was my biggest game so far. The atmosphere was very charged. The media attention, the pressure, everything was more intense than anything I had experienced. And the Germans had some great players . . . Kohler, Brehme, Effenberg, Möller, Klinsmann, Riedle . . .’

  Against the old enemy, everything suddenly clicked. The Dutch, playing with passion, focus and precision, blew away their rivals with one of the era’s great international performances. The Germans appeared prosaic and had no answer to mesmeric Dutch movement, technique and imagination. Total Football seemed reborn in the 3-1 triumph, and Dennis scored Holland’s memorable third, benefiting from a moment of Van Basten brilliance. As Aron Winter hared up the wing, Van Basten made a lethal-looking run to the near post, yet had the awareness to notice that Bergkamp was better placed behind. As Van Basten ran he also pointed behind him. ‘I saw Marco pointing and I saw Aron understood his hint. As Marco sprinted to the near post, I automatically rushed to fill the space he’d created. Nowadays, most teams play with their midfield pointing backwards, precisely to catch the opponent’s most advanced midfielder. But that wasn’t the case then, and you knew you’d find space in the middle when the centre-forward pulled his marker away with him. Heading wasn’t my specialty, but Aron’s ball had just the right pace and, because I was moving at speed, all I had to do was touch the ball with my head. It was an amazing feeling.’ It still looks an amazing goal, too. Holland topped the group, but Germany were second. The two teams would surely meet again in the final. All Holland had to do was beat little Denmark, who were only in the competition by default, the winners of their qualification group, Yugoslavia, having collapsed into civil war and ceased to exist.

  But four days later, the Dutch blew it. In the same stadium in which they had crushed the Germans, Holland played one of their worst games, drawing 2-2, then losing on penalties, Peter Schmeichel making the final decisive save from Van Basten’s spot-kick. Observers at the time and historians since have attributed the Dutch defeat to arrogance and over-confidence, but Dennis denies this: ‘We didn’t underestimate Denmark. Not at all. We prepared for the semi-final exactly the same way we did for other games. We were completely focused on our next opponent. Nobody mentioned the final. Of course we celebrated after beating Germany, and it’s logical that we slowed down a bit after that. But we came on to the pitch for the semi-final fully motivated and totally concentrated. We were all surprised that we suddenly couldn’t perform at all. None of us knew what was going on. No, it wasn’t hubris.’

  Dennis, who scored the first goal of the match, also scor
ed in the shootout: ‘I never suffered from nerves anyway. I liked that pressure of having to take a penalty, of walking to the spot with the ball under your arm, feeling the tension but not seizing up. You know you’re about to do something you’ve mastered. You’re close to scoring a goal, all you have to do is execute a well-rehearsed routine.’ Against Schmeichel he shoots to the left, at a saveable height but hard and wide. The side of the net bulges satisfactorily. Things will be different next time.

  GETTING TO THE 1994 World Cup finals in the USA would prove much harder than expected. Holland and England, drawn in the same group, were both expected to qualify comfortably. But little Norway, coached by Egil Olsen, a disciple of the English long-ball theorist Charles Reep, usurped them both. For a while, remarkably, Norway were ranked second in the world. Holland, now coached by Michels’s former deputy Dick Advocaat, and England, under the hapless Graham Taylor, were condemned to play two epic matches against each other for second place. Dennis played a decisive role in both games.

  The two countries had only recently become rivals. Cruyff’s totaalvoetbal side had humiliated Don Revie’s England in 1977, but that was a friendly. More recently, Van Basten had given the 22-year-old Tony Adams the run-around to score the hat-trick that knocked England out of Euro ’88. Five years later, on a dank night at Wembley in April 1993, England raced to a two-goal lead but were forced to settle for 2-2 after a Dutch comeback. The turning point of the game was one of Dennis’s most notable goals. In the 35th minute Jan Wouters lofts the ball towards the ‘D’ on the edge of the England penalty area. Adams gives chase but, with a burst of smooth acceleration, Bergkamp gets there first. ‘It was over my head, thank you,’ remembers Adams with a grimace. ‘I’m still struggling to get to it even now. And it’s still beating me. He’s taken it with one touch and put it the other way . . .’ His voice trails off. Even by Bergkampian standards it’s remarkable: an immaculately controlled reverse flick-lob that floats implausibly into the far corner while goalkeeper Chris Woods, rooted to the spot because he was expecting a shot to his near-post, can do no more than stare in wonder.