Martin Keown was often on the receiving end of your pranks . . .
‘We used to get a lot of fun at Martin’s expense. We all did!’
Why pick on Martin?
‘Cos he’s so fucking intense! Grrrrrrrrr!! Know what I mean? He was sooooo intense! I remember when Dennis said to me to dress up in Martin’s clothes. He tries so hard, but his clothes are so . . . rubbish! Poor design and really very bland, rubbish clothes!’
Keown confirms: ‘Dennis was all for having plenty of fun. He may have been seen as serious, because he was very exact in his performance. But off the pitch we would be laughing and joking all the way from game to game and then the same in the dressing room. Then it was like: “Let’s focus now and win this one.” It was a nice balance.’
I hear he didn’t approve of your fashion sense.
‘Ha ha! Yes, Dennis was, shall we say, the clothes manager. If you came in and what you were wearing wasn’t to his liking then he would be hanging it up twenty foot in the air somewhere and you’d have to go and get step ladders and all sorts to go and reach it. I’d be furious: “Fucking Bergkamp, he’s done it again!” But it was just part of the banter. Some players couldn’t take it, but Dennis knew he could do it with me. One day I turned up for training and Dennis and Ian Wright had got together. Wrighty came to give me a big hug because he hadn’t seen me for a while and I’m looking at him and thinking: “That jumper looks familiar,” and I look at his feet and I’m thinking: “Those shoes look familiar.” Then I realise. He’s wearing all my fucking clothes! Then he’s running off towards the swimming pool . . .
‘The little man Overmars was just as bad. People forget what a fearsome player he was. He struck fear into the whole Premiership because when Dennis gave him the ball he was unstoppable. Just so bloody quick. But don’t let him in your room! If you had any chocolate or anything and Overmars has been in the room, it’s gone. And let him anywhere near your washbag and you’ll have deodorant in your toothbrush or something. It’s a way of handling the pressure. A football club is almost like an extension of school, really. In school you’ve got your pranksters, you’ve got the people who want to make noise . . . and they’re all talented. There was a lot of fun going on and Dennis was a big part of it.’
‘Dennis had a more intellectual humour as well,’ says Arsene Wenger, ‘. . . this dry sense of humour, and he could hit where he wanted, you know?’
Like when he said Ottavio Bianchi mentioned Maradona ‘a few times . . . every hour ’.
‘Yes! That’s a little bit Dennis! Very precise, like his technique.’
One day in 2003, provocative posters of Freddie Ljungberg, naked except for a pair of bulging Calvin Klein briefs, appeared on advertising hoardings all over London. In the dressing room Dennis led the congratulations. ‘Freddie we’re all really proud of you. But I hope you didn’t forget about the lads. Could you get us all a pair of those Calvin Kleins?’ ‘Of course, Dennis, I can do that.’ ‘We’d really appreciate it. But we want the special ones like yours. The ones with a sock down the front.’
* * *
‘WELL, IT REALLY was a strange poster,’ says Dennis a decade later. ‘Freddie has tattoos of panthers on his back. Somehow in the photo they were on his front. What’s going on here? And, Freddie, we see you every day in the shower, and you’re really not that big . . .’
But why did you dress Ian Wright up in Martin Keown’s clothes?
‘I don’t remember that.’
Martin and Ian both say you didn’t approve of Martin’s clothes so you persuaded Ian to make fun of Martin by putting on all his clothes. You don’t remember?
‘Not at all.’
You’ve probably committed murders you don’t remember.
‘I do remember putting Martin’s clothes in high places. Whoever wore the worst clothes had their clothes put up high. Martin wanted to look nice, and he really made an effort. But sometimes he did things which were just not good enough in our opinion. Once he had a black leather jacket and we took some tape and I put T-Birds on the back, like John Travolta in Grease. It was fantastic. He’s like: “What’s going on here?!” But he took it well. Martin always took it well. And he’s a really funny guy back, really sarcastic to everyone. He really doesn’t care if it’s to Thierry or Ian Wright or me or David Dein or whoever. He just doesn’t care, which is great. He’s got a fantastic sense of humour.’
People think of you as The Iceman but you’re really not, are you?
‘When I feel good in a group, when I feel confident, you see a different me. I always came across as cool. You know: “No emotion” and “He doesn’t play with a smile on his face.” It’s different when I’m in a normal space with everyone. I’ve got my humour. I’ve got my things to say. I don’t think I’m different from what people see, but I have a different side as well. It’s not like I was joking around on the pitch or whatever. There I was concentrated and looking to do my thing and do it well. There is emotion there, but it’s more inside. In a group I can be more extrovert.’
I have to ask you about this. I keep hearing stories about trousers. Ray Parlour says there was a craze for pulling people’s shorts and trousers down – and you were implicated.
‘Ha! We were playing pre-season in Austria in a training ground with a little stand. There were always Arsenal fans travelling with us, so there were about twenty or thirty people watching. I was doing Arsenal TV, I think, and while they’re filming, Ray comes up from behind me and pulls my shorts down. Luckily I always have my underwear on. All the people were laughing in the stand. And Ray’s laughing and I was like: “OK, I’ll take that. No worries. Hold my hands up. Very funny.” But I remember it. Three or four days later we’re playing again, somewhere nearby. It’s a friendly game with a lot of fans and the main stand is full. Ten minutes before the end we get up to go and walk past the stand and some fans stop us for autographs. Ray is doing autographs and I’m behind him and I think: “This is my moment.” Whooosh! The shorts are gone, and there’s nothing underneath. I was so happy.’
Yes, Ray tells that story, and laughs and freely admits he started it. But he also told me about Vic Akers.
‘Oh that was great! I’m glad you mention it because I still talk about it now.’
You and Vic are really close. He’s the kit guy and he goes with you by road to all the away games. The rest of the team fly, but you and Vic travel together by car or coach. And he keeps you entertained and cooks your meals and you watch movies together, and chat for hours. And he’s your best friend at the club. And your families are close, and you’re close. And you play golf and you socialise and he speaks about you so lovingly now, and you speak so lovingly about him.
‘Of course, of course. He’s such a special guy, a fantastic guy. I love Vic.’
He says of you that being your friend has been one of the great delights and privileges of his life.
‘He doesn’t need to say it. We don’t need words between us.’
And yet you do that thing to him at the training ground!?
‘Oh, it was fantastic! I’m still trying to do it with the physios here.’
Admittedly, Vic speaks warmly about it now. But, in your own words, what happened?
‘Vic’s got this big tummy and dodgy knees and he always wears shorts. At the training centre there’s a big room next to the canteen with sliding doors. It’s for media and meetings and stuff, and one lunchtime there’s an event to sell grooming products to the players. There are sales girls in there and Vic is leaning on the door, chatting and flirting. He’s leaning like this, arms crossed and one leg over the other, standing like this, very casual and looking very funny. And the players, we come in for lunch. So we’re eating and watching Vic chatting up the girls. And I can’t resist. I sneak up to him, and . . . whoosh! . . . the shorts are straight down! [laughs] And the reaction! Vic lurches forward to cover himself, and all the guys are still having lunch and they’re all in tears because it took Vic ages to lean d
own to pull up his shorts. The girls are all laughing, too. People were laughing about it for weeks afterwards. You know, I’ve won some trophies. And I’ve scored some nice goals. But this may be the highlight of my career.’
12
IT HAS TO BE PERFECT
‘DENNIS THOUGHT about things other players couldn’t even imagine,’ says Patrick Vieira. ‘And when you look at the way he dresses, and the way he played, you can understand that elegance and perfection are important for him. He dresses really simple but elegant. And when he played he was always on his toes, really kind of “nice Dennis”. Alert. He is one of the very few players I would pay to watch. To make his kind of passes you have to like things to be perfect. I wouldn’t be surprised if at home his clothes are really well organised. I would not be surprised at all.
‘Dennis is always taking the piss out of me, saying: “I’m the one who made you” because, of all the goals I scored, ninety-five per cent were from his passes. That’s what he is saying! I think it is true. I didn’t score many goals but they were mostly from him. You know when you give the ball and you see the space and make the run? Sometimes you say: “Well, I’m not making the run because the ball is not going to come.” But when it is Dennis, knowing Dennis, I know he will see the gap. I know I am not going to run for nothing. So I make the run forward, because I know the ball will get there and I will score because of the timing of the pass, and the quality of the pass. Like the goal against Leicester. I get the ball at my feet. I can’t remember who I give it to. Is it Thierry? Thierry to Dennis? I don’t remember. But I knew I was going to get the ball back. I give the ball to somebody who will give it to Dennis and he will find me because of the run and because he will understand. I knew it would happen. I knew Dennis would find the gap and would give me the ball. It will come. I know it will.’
Arsene Wenger observes: ‘Dennis is a perfectionist. Until the last session of his training [at Arsenal] he was absolutely never neglecting a control, or a pass. And when it was not perfect, he was unhappy. But that is the characteristic of a top-level competitor: he is an unhappy person . . . or unsatisfied more than unhappy because sometimes you approach perfection. Then you’re happy, but unsatisfied. He wanted to do everything perfect and that is common for all the top, top-level players. They need perfection. And that was Dennis.’
‘I love everything about Dennis,’ says Thierry Henry. ‘Every Single Thing! And you know what I love the most? The way he used to train. He is an example for me. If he missed a control – even if the ball was impossible to control – he’d be upset. Everything had to be perfect. Even in training. We’re doing running and he has to be the one. We’re in front of goal and every shot has to be perfect. We’re doing passes and every pass has to be perfect. It’s windy, so you see him working it out . . . “OK, if I shoot it over there, the wind will take it in . . .” EV-ER-eee-THING!!! If you took the ball off him, he’d chase you until you gave it back to him, or he’d foul you. In training! I’ve never seen anyone like that. Everything at one hundred per cent. He’s a very funny guy. But when he was working there was no joking. “Cross the ball properly!” . . . the control had to be perfect. Everything had to be perfect. Never “Oh let’s have fun.” Never! It was crazy. And I was looking at him and thinking: “I guess that’s why he’s Dennis Bergkamp.” Anything and everything: he’s on it. “This ball is too soft – change it.” He changed me too. He changed my attitude and my way of training. Of course, as he got older Dennis was playing less. But the way he used to train! He could have been on the sidelines going: “I’m Dennis Bergkamp. I’m thirty-five now. Why should I try hard in training? I’m not even going to play this week.” But he was always training so hard!’
Ian Wright recalls a goal Dennis scored against Spurs at Highbury [in the 1996-97 season]. On the right wing, Wright twists and turns, beats his man, then sends a high hopeful cross towards the far post. Dennis receives it with a single touch on the half-volley, knocking the ball back and inside, beating both full-back and goalkeeper in the process before finishing neatly into the opposite corner. More than fifteen years on Wright is still astonished by what he saw.
‘It was one touch! One touch! We are talking about a ball that’s just travelled forty yards in the air and he’s killed it dead. Not only that, he’s brought it across, and he’s taken the defender and the goalkeeper out of play . . . His touch made my ball look great but, to be honest, all I did was lump it over to the back stick. I thought: “I’m just going to hit it in his general direction. I know Dennis ain’t going to head that, but I know if I get the ball over in his general direction there’s a chance he’ll do something I haven’t even thought of. When you watch it again notice how perfect that touch is. He’s trapped, half-volleyed it back with the exactly right amount of pace and all he has to do is lift it into the goal. And look at his celebration afterwards. He’s on his knees, arms pumping. That should have been the statue: where you see he’s not ‘The Iceman’ but deep and powerful and you see the core of his passion. It’s a beautiful thing. I will always say that even with Thierry and all these people, Dennis Bergkamp is the best signing Arsenal have made and will ever make. What he’s done for that football club . . .
‘When he passed the ball to me, oh Jesus!, it would always be . . . in the path. On the right side for me, the wrong side for the defender, without him even . . . I mean the ball would come to him and, one touch, he would put it in to me. I found I didn’t need many touches once he played the ball. That’s something I find only the greats can do because they don’t have to think about it. Like Zidane. And I’ll mention Gazza because I have to, and even Paul Scholes. It’s so precise. I remember that all the time with Dennis. When his ball came through to me, the defender couldn’t do anything, the midfielder couldn’t do anything . . . It gave me time to do something and it was a gift. It was just . . . bang!
‘Even in training he was very precise. I never saw him have one where “Oh my God, Dennis, that’s way over the bar!” It was all very technical. I don’t remember many times when you’d say: “Wow Dennis, that is sloppy work,” whereas I am sure there were many times when you could say that to me, where a ball bounced off me and stuff like that. Now I don’t know if it’s something that happened naturally to Dennis where he didn’t give the ball away. But I don’t remember many times where his pass is wrong, his touch is wrong. When he first arrived at Arsenal some people were thinking: “Yeah he’s good but he’s not all that, ’cos you can knock him off the ball.” But I can’t remember too many times where Dennis’s touch was off. What was always fascinating to me was he didn’t seem to have to work very hard on the touch side of his game and the passing. It’s obviously very natural to him. It’s something I was quite envious of because I had to work very hard on that.
‘In training he enhanced his skills, but how do you hone your skills to make sure you’ve already calculated all the angles, and you know where the defender is and where the midfielder is? How do you get to that? Dennis made a lot of my goals. I remember one up at Everton in his first couple of games. He gets it. I make my run. He whips it into the space, and I have one touch . . . past the defender and the next one is literally . . . in. I’m just running onto it. It’s in my path. Same with a goal I scored against Aston Villa before I broke [Cliff Bastin’s goal-scoring] record. You don’t even need to touch it. It’s just ready to go . . . With other players you’d have to control it. But with Dennis, I never had to worry about the ball up and around my neck, or I’ve got to fight off the defender to get it down. He passed it at the right time for me, not the right time for him. There’s nothing to do. He knew I didn’t really want to get involved with holding the ball up and all that stuff. I don’t think that was my strength. So he’d pass it quickly into the space and I’d be onto it. I worked hard on my game and playing with Dennis Bergkamp proved to me that I’d got to the pinnacle of where I was going to get to. He raised my game by thirty to forty per cent.’
Thierry Henry
was the recipient of many of Dennis’s perfect passes. ‘Dennis respects the game and whatever the game is asking him to do he will do it. If he has to wait one more second to give me the perfect ball he waits one more second. If he had to put it on my left because that’s the only way I cannot lose the ball, then he puts it on the left. If it has to be on your head, it will be on your head. If he had to play one touch straightaway, he played one touch straightaway. Everything he did was amazing.’
Some of his assists were spectacular, like against Celta Vigo in 2004: surrounded by defenders, Dennis pirouettes a full 360 degrees before setting up a goal with an exquisite reverse flick with the outside of his right foot. Is that Thierry’s favourite?
‘No, not that one. I prefer the one for Freddie Ljungberg against Juventus by a distance. The Celta Vigo one is great, but, by his motion, you can see the move. With the Juve one, Dennis is turning everywhere. Everywhere! Yet he still sees Freddie. He’s waiting for Freddie to move, and he’s toying with the defenders, but he still knows where Freddie is. And he still knows the right pass to make. If he puts the ball on the ground, a defender can stop it, so he lifts it waist-height. As a defender, that’s the worst. You can’t lift your leg to reach it, and you can’t bend down to head it . . . It’s perfect. For me that’s his best assist.’
Freddie seems a bit slow on the uptake. Dennis has to wait for about three seconds for Freddie to make his run.
‘That’s my point. Dennis waits. That’s Dennis Bergkamp. Any other player would have played the ball first touch and then screamed about it: “Hey! You didn’t move!” But Dennis sees the player isn’t moving, so he waits and he’s toying with all the defenders around him and he’s like “Come on, Freddie . . .” Aaaaaah, it’s so beautiful . . .!’
Stillness and Speed: My Story Page 15