Stillness and Speed: My Story
Read Stillness and Speed: My Story Online
Authors: Dennis Bergkamp
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2013 by Dennis Bergkamp
This book is copyright under The Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Dennis Bergkamp to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
Photographs courtesy of Jaap Visser
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN 978-1-47112-951-3
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-47112-952-0
ebook ISBN 978-1-47112-954-4
Typeset in UK by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
I
NEVER SAW THE
1980s comedy
Twins
but the poster was fantastic. It showed tiny, squidgy-looking Danny DeVito
leaning into muscle-bound giant Arnold Schwarzenegger under the tagline ‘Only Their Mother Can Tell Them Apart’.
The object you hold in your hands is basically Danny DeVito. Its giant twin – remarkably similar yet entirely different – is the Dutch edition of this book, written by my esteemed
colleague Jaap Visser. He has created a coffee-table colossus covering every aspect of Dennis Bergkamp’s life and career chronologically. That version is illustrated with many hundreds of
colour pictures and will surely one day govern California.
Dennis, naturally, is the biological parent of both editions.
The form, we feel, fits the man. A footballer like no other ought to have a book (or books) no less distinctive. In the film, the brothers share genetic material. We did something similar.
Broadly speaking, Jaap’s research and interviews with Dennis covered his Dutch years while I dealt with his time in Italy and England. Then we pooled everything.
The Dutch edition is in the classic tradition of football biography. The English one is more experimental, its structure influenced, among other things, by
Puskas on Puskas
, Rogan
Taylor and Klara Jamrich’s wonderful book of interviews with and about Ferenc Puskas, and by Francois Truffaut’s book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock. I am not remotely comparable
to Truffaut and Dennis is certainly much nicer than the Master of Suspense. But, like him, he is a unique and influential genius in his chosen art form. Much of the book concerns Dennis’s
technique and creative process.
On the field, Dennis usually played as a deft and original ‘shadow striker’, operating between the lines, using his skills and understanding of space to help colleagues and create
moments of beauty that won football matches. In print, he now does much the same, playing off interviews with colleagues, coaches and fellow footballing greats like Johan Cruyff, Arsene Wenger,
Thierry Henry and Tony Adams. The result, we hope, is both unique and revealing.
When he retired from Arsenal in 2006, Dennis had no plans to write a book. But the more he moved into coaching with his boyhood club Ajax, the more he realised he had something of value to say.
That turned out to be an understatement . . .
David Winner
London, 2013
1
‘Y
OU GET USED TO
the noise,’ says Dennis, smiling. ‘You hardly notice it’.
We are standing a few yards from Dennis’s childhood home beside the A10 motorway that circles Amsterdam. Up until the 1950s the road was a muddy field where cows grazed on the extreme
western edge of the city. By the time the Bergkamp family moved here in 1970 construction had begun. As a toddler, Dennis, watching from his high chair by the window, was enchanted by the sand
trucks, bulldozers and cranes at work. These days, mature trees and glass barriers reduce the sound of traffic but in the seventies nothing stood between the flat and the roaring torrent of cars
and lorries. Yet the recollection delights him. Dennis even remembers how the road ended up being useful. ‘When it was finished it ran all the way around the city, so it took me six minutes
to get to training. Through town it would have taken me forty-five minutes.’ As we stroll through his old neighbourhood his memories are all happy ones.
Dennis was the youngest of four sons in a hard-working and devoutly Catholic family. Wim, his dad, was a modest, twinkly-eyed craftsman and perfectionist. He worked as an electrician, played
football with the Wilskracht club (the name means ‘Willpower’) and loved making and repairing things: furniture, toys, puzzles, anything. Dennis’s mum, Tonny, an accomplished
amateur gymnast in her youth, ran the family home here on James Rosskade (the ‘Kade’), adored all her boys and was renowned for her warmth, strength and neighbourliness.
Dennis crosses the wide pavement towards the entrance to number 22. ‘Look up there on the first floor: that was my bedroom. And this is where we played football, here on the
pavement.’ His old building appears rundown but Dennis doesn’t mind. He gazes contentedly up at the wall of brick and messy balconies. He is beaming. ‘It’s fair to say I had
a perfect childhood here.’
Football was a huge part of it. The Bergkamp boys – Wim Jr, Ronald, Marcel and Dennis – played not only here in the street, but in the corridor of the flat and on local patches of
grass. When the security guy with the large dog guarding it were away, they even used the real grass pitch on the far side of the motorway, reached through a tunnel and over a wooden plank across a
ditch. Televised football was rare by today’s standards. On Saturday evenings the family would hurry to Mass at nearby St Joseph’s Church – but only after watching German football
on television. The FA Cup final, one of the few English games shown live, was a special treat. Legend has it that Dennis was named after his father’s favourite player, Denis Law. The legend
is true. For the different spelling, though, we have to thank Wim Jr, ten years old at the time, and Ronald, aged seven, who thought ‘Dennis’ sounded ‘less girly’ than
‘Denis’. Their little brother grew up to like Glenn Hoddle better. ‘I’m not sure why, but the thing that always interested me most was
controlling
the ball,
especially when it was in the air. I wasn’t interested in dribbling or doing tricks or scoring goals. Control. That was my thing. We saw some English football on TV and the player who really
stood out for me was Glenn Hoddle, because he was always in balance. I loved the way he plucked the ball out of the air and controlled it. Instant control. His touch was perfect.’
At school Dennis’s teacher, Mr De Boer, let the kids play five-a-side in the gym. ‘We finished school at twelve, ran home as fast as we could for a quick sandwich and then went
straight back to school. At half-past twelve we’d be back in the gym playing
paalt-jesvoetbal
(literally, ‘little-stick football’). Everyone had their own stick and you
had to defend that against the ball. My stick was Maradona. I made him in my arts and crafts class. I filed the wood away so he had a neck, a head and a torso and I painted him in blue and white
stripes with a number 10 on the back.
‘We played football all the time, especially here. The Kade was wider in those days, and there weren’t so many cars. It was real street football: four against five or five against
five or four against four. You had to have a certain level of skill and balance because the concrete was hard and if you fell, you’d hurt yourself. One goal was that tree over there. It was a
brilliant feeling to score there. The tree was a small target so you had to be so precise. And this door would be the other goal. You had to be clever and use what was around. You could play a
one-two off the wall, or a car, but you weren’t allowed to hit the door of the car so you aimed for the wheel. Be precise, invent . . . that was the idea. You were always looking for
solutions.’
Not that there was anything wrong with just sticking down jumpers for goalposts and spending most of your time running to collect the ball after a goal. ‘We did that too! And in the
evenings we’d have games on the grass behind the flats. With all the Dutch kids and Turkish and Moroccan kids living here, then it would be Holland v Morocco, or Holland v Turkey or whatever.
It was really interesting. With the apartments all around and people watching from their balconies after dinner, it was like a stadium.’
Later, as his brothers had done, he joined Wilskracht. His all-round athletic talent had been obvious from an early age. ‘I enjoyed cross-country runs in the park during PE lessons. In
fact I loved all PE, except gymnastics which just wasn’t my thing and Mum was disappointed about that. But rope-climbing, baseball, basketball . . . I was good at everything.’ At the
age of nine, he joined the nearby AAC athletics club and proceeded to win medals for sprinting, the 1500 metres, the long jump, everything. One of his favourite events was the shot putt. ‘We
used to take the shot and measuring tape with us on holidays. When we had to do the washing-up after dinner, I’d say to my brothers, “Sorry guys, but I have to go outside with Dad and
practise my shot putting.” Mum would stand and watch, and after every throw she would call out, “Nice throw, Den.”’
It has been said that Johan Cruyff, Louis Van Gaal or one of the youth trainers at Ajax must have taught or developed Dennis’s unique touch with a football. But it turns out Dennis taught
himself. ‘I’m not the “product” of any manager. My best trainers were the ones who let me do my own thing: Cruyff, Wenger and Guus Hiddink in the national team. They
understood me.’ He gives greater credit to his brothers. ‘They acted as a sounding board, and I needed that more than I needed a manager. I never had many friends as a kid. I
didn’t need any because I had my best three at home.’
The brothers themselves – Wim, now an accountant, molecular biologist Ronald and Marcel, an IT expert – seem stunned into silence when they hear Dennis regards them more significant
to his development than the likes of Cruyff and Van Gaal. Eventually Ronald reacts: ‘Dennis does us a great honour. We were never trainers. We were always there for him and that made him feel
comfortable, that’s all,’ Wim adds: ‘Dennis is always there for us too, you know’, and Marcel completes the thought: ‘We’re always there for each other.’
The brothers insist that Dennis was an auto-didact. For Marcel, the key was his powers of observation. ‘When he came to see me playing he saw everything down to the smallest detail.
Afterwards he could always tell you exactly how situations had unfolded and who was standing where. Dennis was always an excellent observer. He plays golf, but he’s never had lessons. He
learned by watching. It was the same with tennis and snooker, too.’ Wim confirms: ‘Dennis would watch and watch and watch, then he’d do it himself. Dennis wanted to achieve
perfection. He got that from Dad, who was never content with the work he’d done or the things he’d made. Dad’s motto was:
you can always do better
. And that became
Dennis’s motto, too.’