Stillness and Speed: My Story

by Bergkamp, Dennis

  ‘Patrick, of course, had a completely different style. You didn’t really see on the pitch what he was doing, but, wow, within the team he really affected people and got them going. He lifts them and therefore he lifts the club and the team just by having little talks with people. Did Frank Rijkaard wear the armband? Hardly ever. But behind the scenes he was always talking to people, giving advice. There were no cameras around but he was one of the great leaders. For Ajax in 1995, Danny Blind was the captain but people still keep telling me how important Frank Rijkaard was. For myself, it’s not really about being a leader or not being a leader. But players, ex-players and other people talk about me like they talk about Frank. He was well respected within the dressing room. He made a difference. OK, people looked up to me in a certain way and looked to copy me in certain ways. They were confident with me and knew I was an honest guy. I’m looking for that, but I guess that’s a sort of leadership. Bob Wilson probably has that right. One of the other things as well: if you are a leader it comes by itself. I still believe that. So Bagnoli and Ferri are right. You can’t just say “This guy is now the leader.” If you give someone time, it just happens. It drifts to the surface. It becomes apparent. It reveals itself somehow.’

  16

  POWER PLAYER

  ‘I USED TO LOVE, STILL love, and always will love to see a Dutch team play,’ says Thierry Henry. ‘In the history of the game we all know that it’s not always the case that you win like that. But for me that’s how you should play football: the Dutch way.’

  Isn’t it strange that Dennis’s Holland side never won a tournament?

  ‘Yes and I’m actually sad about that. In 1998 we [the French team] were scared of the Dutch. When Brazil won the semi-final on penalties we celebrated. I’ll always remember that.’

  Because Holland were better than Brazil?

  ‘By a distance! That Brazil team wasn’t bad. But the Dutch for me were definitely the best team of the tournament. Who knows what would have happened in the final? But at that moment we were very relieved. Trust me. More than relieved. I was young but I remember the older guys talking. They really didn’t want to play against Holland because however you try to play against them, they’re strong, they’re fast, they’re technically great, they have a lovely way of playing. Everybody wanted to avoid that Dutch team. Always do, to be honest. And then they did the same thing in 2000. Again we didn’t want to play them and, again we were on the other side of the draw, waiting. That Dutch team with Dennis didn’t win anything – crazy! Too crazy for me.’

  Why do you think it didn’t?

  ‘I don’t have a single clue, but as a fan of the game it’s upsetting. Having said that, if they had won something, then we wouldn’t. So it’s better like this [laughs]. But it’s weird to see a great team like that not getting the reward you would like them to have.’

  AFTER THE MR HYDE version of Dutch player power had wrecked their attempt to win Euro ’96, Holland’s national coach Guus Hiddink decided to get tough. Get tough, that is, in a very Dutch way: he drew up a code of ethics. He then asked all the players to sign a pledge to respect each other, members of staff, supporters and even journalists. Everyone signed except Edgar Davids, whose exile continued for a while. In place of strife, qualification for the next World Cup proceeded smoothly and Holland began to play some classically clever, fluid attacking football. Dennis, with seven goals in six matches as shadow striker, was at the heart of most of it. Meanwhile, a stroke of luck meant his decision never to fly again would not damage the best years of his international career. The only qualification games he had to miss were in Turkey (Holland lost without him) and San Marino. The two next major tournaments would be on his doorstep in France and Holland/Belgium. After that, he planned to retire. Meanwhile, Arsenal had accepted that Dennis would never travel by plane – though they had docked his salary accordingly. Dennis: ‘They did the maths: “If he doesn’t fly then he can’t play a certain number of games and so such and such a sum will be deducted.” But I didn’t care. What mattered was that I no longer had to worry about it. I gradually got more and more into my stride. I felt like I was unstoppable there. I felt amazing.’

  By the time the 1998 World Cup rolled around, the mood was so positive that Hiddink and Davids became friends again. Holland thus headed to France with one of their greatest-ever squads: united, confident, mature and selfless . . . and with Dennis Bergkamp at the height of his footballing powers. The bulk of the team was made up of former or present Ajax men, including seven regulars who’d won the Champions League in 1995, and PSV men like Jaap Stam, Philip Cocu and Arthur Numan, who added steel and guile. Wim Jonk, Dennis’s friend from Ajax and Inter, now at PSV, recalls: ‘Everyone in the team enjoyed what Dennis showed in training. We were all good players, but he had such exceptional class that he was at another level. The other players found that beautiful. They really appreciated him. And he challenged you. Actually, we all challenged each other. That team was the best I ever played in.’

  Dennis himself had only just recovered from the injury which caused him to miss the end of Arsenal’s exhausting Double-winning season. So Hiddink left him on the bench for most of Holland’s first match, a 0-0 draw with the defensive Belgians. The only thing most people remember about the game is Patrick Kluivert getting himself sent off for petulantly elbowing a defender in the chest. In the second match, however, the Dutch sparked gloriously to life and clobbered South Korea 5-1. The irresistible Dutch performance drew comparisons with those of the seventies team of Cruyff and Krol. Dennis, the 10 in a number 8 shirt, shredded the Korean defence with his elegant passing and movement, scored the third goal and even, at one point, dribbled past three defenders. In the final group match Holland surged to an early 2-0 lead against Mexico then relaxed (an old failing) and, with Dennis off the field, gave up an injury-time equaliser.

  Instead of the chaos of 1996 the team had established a flexible, creative unity no autocratic coach could have imposed. Hiddink explains: ‘The group was no longer as selfish as it was in 1996. The lads were unified and their enthusiasm was infectious. It was more like I had to rein them in than urge them on; sometimes I couldn’t get them off the training pitch. The group was so full of energy, it was just a physical presence. There were no bosses in the group, but there was a kind of natural hierarchy. Frank and Ronald de Boer, Seedorf, Cocu, Jonk and Bergkamp automatically assumed leadership. They didn’t spare each other and they dragged the rest along with them. They even wanted to play a five-a-side live game the day before a match. As manager, you would never agree to that if your team isn’t functioning well. You’d be far too concerned that someone might get injured. But at the World Cup the group was so tight and the players were able to tolerate so much from each other, that I was happy for them to play those live games.’

  The players were so angry with themselves for their slip against Mexico that they gave their own pep talks before meeting Yugoslavia in the next round. The tense and tricky tie was decided by a spectacular late Edgar Davids goal. But the game was almost a catastrophe for Dennis. In the first half he played well and scored. In the second he should have been sent off for that crazy foul on Sinisa Mihajlovic, an opponent he knew from Italy, bundling him over near the corner flag, then treading on the side of his chest. Dennis: ‘I really don’t know why I did that. I haven’t the faintest idea. I didn’t like him, but that was no reason to do something like that to him. I was startled by my own behaviour . . . what I did was incredibly foolish, a moment of insanity.’ Remarkably, Spanish ref José Maria Garcia Aranda turned a blind eye, thereby setting Dennis up for one of the defining matches of his career.

  The story of the quarter-final against a powerful Argentina side in the heat of Marseille is well known. The match was as dramatic as Argentina’s clash with England in Saint-Etienne four days earlier, but the football from both sides was even better. The match turned on two astonishing pieces of Bergkamp brilliance. Two? We’ll come to Dennis’s famous last-m
inute winning goal in a moment, but his touch for Holland’s first goal was scarcely less magical. Ronald de Boer danced through the Argentine midfield then drilled the ball at midriff height towards Dennis on the edge of the penalty area. Falling backwards onto his knees, he somehow cushioned a header to lay the ball perfectly into the path of Patrick Kluivert, who lifted it neatly into the net.

  Everyone seems to have forgotten it, but I reckon that’s one of your best assists.

  Dennis: ‘That’s what I say! People forget that. It was with my head, guiding the ball. Really I couldn’t do a lot with it, except a cushioned header, and I’m very proud of that. No one ever talks about it, but I don’t mind! And it was a good finish by Patrick as well.’

  What about the last-minute winner?

  ‘That’s my top goal, I think. Also because of everything around it. It’s a goal that gets us to the semi-final of the World Cup, a massive stadium, lots of people watching and cheering . . . My reaction afterwards was very emotional.’

  You covered your face as if to say: ‘I can’t believe I’ve just done that!’

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do! It’s funny. Every boy has a dream: “I want to score in the World Cup.” Score the winning goal in the final, of course. But in this way . . . to score a goal like that, in my style? The way I score goals, on that stage, in a game that really means something, because that’s important to me, too . . . I love good football, nice football, but it has to mean something. It has to bring me somewhere. And that’s what happened with this goal. At that moment I thought about when I was seven or eight years old, playing football in the street outside my home. This is the moment! It’s a good feeling.’

  You’re a long way off the ground when the ball comes. For a wide receiver to catch that with his hands would be difficult. You do it with your foot! What were you thinking? How much was planned? How much improvised?

  ‘It’s a question of creating that little space. So you get to that ball first. You’ve had the eye contact . . . Frank [de Boer] knows exactly what he’s going to do.’

  You asked for the pass?

  ‘Yeah, yeah. There’s contact. You’re watching him. He’s looking at you. You know his body language. He’s going to give the ball. So then: full sprint away. I’ve got my five, six yards away from the defender. The ball is coming over my shoulder. I know where it’s going. But you know as well that you are running in a straight line, and that’s the line you want to take to go to the goal, the line where you have a chance of scoring. If you go a little bit wider it’s gone. The ball is coming here, and you have two options. One: let it bounce and control it on the floor. That will be easier, but by then you are at the corner flag. So you have to jump up to meet the ball and at the same time control the ball. Control it dead. And again, like the Leicester one, you have to take it inside because the defender is storming [the other] way. He’s running with you and as soon as the ball changes direction, and you change direction as well, then he’s gone, which gives you an open chance. Well, it’s a little bit on the side but it gives you a chance to shoot.’

  It’s an astonishing piece of control. How did you manage it?

  ‘I’ve talked about balance on the ground. This was balance as well, but you have to be in the air. You’ve got to be as still as possible, as if you are standing still . . . but in the air, and controlling the ball. If you’ve got a lot of movement, and try to control with the inside of the foot, then the ball could go towards the defender. So you want to keep it on the top of your foot. That gives you the best chance, and the best chance of controlling it. I’m not worrying about the angle of my foot because that’s something you do all the time. I know I can control almost any ball that comes to me. But I want to be very stable. I didn’t realise how high in the air I was. But you know you want that ball in that position. Not there but here. So you have to jump up to meet the ball.’

  How much looking back were you doing while the ball was on its way to you?

  ‘You first look back when the ball comes, of course. But there wasn’t much wind, so I’m looking forward, to keep sprinting, to meet the ball. You know the line, and at the last moment you think: “OK, now I have to jump.” And when I’m in the air it’s going to meet my foot. There’s a little bit of calculation at that moment. But it’s experience.’

  And after you had landed it?

  ‘You just think: that’s step one. You want to get the whole moment, the whole sequence. It’s three touches. Everything can still go wrong at that moment, so you are concentrating on doing it step by step. But you don’t know the steps. You can only do the second step if the first step is right. If the ball shoots on a little bit further, then you have to adjust again.’

  So you’ve killed the dropping ball, you touch it inside to get rid of Ayala [the defender] and make a better angle, and you don’t take the shot with your left foot but with the outside of your right.

  ‘Yes, because I feel more confident with that at that time. It’s in the middle of my feet and I have the confidence, and it’s not the right angle to take it as well with the left, because that’s a different kick. So I choose to take it with my right – ideally, the outside of the right – and aim it for the far post, then let it turn in . . .’ It curves, even. ‘That’s what I wanted. Take it away from the goalkeeper and let it come in.’

  Did it cross your mind that he might save it?

  ‘No. You know, sometimes you have these moments where you think: “This cannot go wrong! No way!”’

  And that’s the moment you’re in . . .

  ‘Yeah. What can you compare it to? Different sports, like running the hundred metres in what you know is going to be a good time, or a darts player who is . . . in that moment. That’s the feeling you’ve got . . . After the first two touches . . . that moment . . . You give absolutely everything, like your life is leading up to this moment . . .’

  I thought it was the best game of the tournament.

  ‘Yes, it was for us as well. That really was probably our peak moment – and then it all fell apart. It’s a shame . . .’

  I didn’t realise you were exhausted when you scored the goal. Hiddink left you on in case you did something amazing. And then, two days later, you had to play Brazil in the semi-final. And you outplayed them for long periods.

  ‘I started the game well but as it went on I could feel the strength draining from my legs. I felt I had just enough power left if an opportunity came my way, but it didn’t happen. I was shattered, but adrenaline kept me alert and, in the shootout, I scored my penalty. I got very upset with the penalties. Ronald [de Boer] just slowed down, slowed down . . . it’s not the way I would have taken it. Cocu missed as well, but he put it in the corner, I felt, and it was a good save. But I was distraught. I felt a whole range of emotions, but you didn’t see it. I kept it all deep inside.’

  You were furious, too, at Ali Mohammed Bujsaim [the referee from the United Arab Emirates], who failed to award a clear penalty when Pierre van Hooijdonk was pulled down by his shirt in injury time by Junior Baiano.

  ‘Pierre got a yellow card for diving, but the ball should absolutely have been put on the spot. And I would have wanted to take that penalty. Even though I was dead tired.’

  DENNIS HAD DECIDED to retire from the national team after Euro 2000 – but made a point of not telling anyone. ‘I wanted to avoid creating a sense of farewell. “The last time Bergkamp will do this or that, his last pass, his final steps in an Orange shirt . . .” I wanted to avoid that at all costs.’

  The sense that time might be catching up with him was evident in the run-up to the tournament, which was being held on Dutch home soil as well as in Belgium. New coach Frank Rijkaard sometimes used newcomer Ruud van Nistelrooy and Patrick Kluivert as twin strikers, telling Dennis it was just an experiment. ‘I was no fool,’ Dennis remembers. ‘I’d been in football long enough to sense there was something else going on and I could be relegated in the pecking order. Perhaps Rijkaard wanted to switch
to a system with two strikers and he saw me as third choice. I was actually a bit off my game at Arsenal at the time and it concerned me.’ As it turned out, the two centre-forwards were too similar for the partnership to work, and Van Nistelrooy then tore a knee ligament. Now there was no question about Dennis’s role in the team: he would play in a slightly deeper version of the shadow striker, behind Kluivert.

  The Dutch press, remembering him from his Ajax days, were puzzled that Dennis was no longer scoring goals. ‘I’d become a different kind of player at Arsenal, more of a playmaking midfielder, an assister. At Arsenal they accepted my scoring less because they saw the number of my assists rising. In England I scored one hundred and twenty goals and provided one hundred and twenty assists, but in the Dutch team I didn’t have that reputation yet.’

  Dennis got on well with Rijkaard. ‘As a manager he gave me a good feeling. We worked systematically and with concentration and Johan Neeskens also contributed tremendously to that as assistant. What surprised me were Rijkaard’s talks. He’d always argued well. Now he told us we could achieve great things, the kind of things he himself had experienced. But we’d have to put everything else aside. He convinced us we would become European Champions if we were to focus one hundred per cent on that objective. Winning the European Championships really became a mission.’