Stillness and Speed: My Story (14 page)

For the rest of the squad, the key question was: ‘What the hell does this Ajax nonsense have to do with us?’ Dennis: ‘There was a huge amount of frustration in the air. All
sorts of major and minor issues were raised which they had taken with them from Ajax. It was just by chance that it hadn’t escalated there yet. Or maybe it wasn’t by chance and Van Gaal
could have contained things.’ The neutrals tried to calm the situation, with Dennis and Arthur Numan of PSV urging a truce. The most important intervention came from the most unexpected
quarter: Barcelona winger Jordi, playing for Holland in his only major tournament. ‘I’m an outsider here and I hardly know you,’ he told the meeting. ‘But I do know that
we’re here for something infinitely more important than your disagreement. We are here for a major tournament, we are here to perform at the European Championships. Let’s do that and
put your frustrations aside.’

Dennis was impressed. And so were others. The battling factions failed to resolve their dispute but, following Jordi’s speech, they agreed to work together. ‘Jordi was a
newcomer,’ says Dennis. ‘I thought he was good in the group. We shared a room and we hit it off immediately. We’re similar, with the same wry sense of humour and an attitude that
says: “Who do you think you are?” When I made a cynical joke, Jordi immediately came back with one of his own. I thought he was a great guy.’ Dennis ridicules the rumour that
Jordi was only in the team to keep his father off Hiddink’s back. ‘That idea was ludicrous. As if Hiddink had anything to fear from Cruyff! Guus and Johan got on well together. No,
Jordi was there on merit. He often played as a winger for Barcelona, and Overmars was injured so it was a logical choice.’

So everything would be fine now, wouldn’t it? Not quite. Holland’s team spirit was in tatters and their last group game would be at Wembley against an exuberant England who had just
beaten Scotland. Not only would the hosts be pumped up with patriotic pride, they also had the indignities of 1988 and 1993 to avenge. Moreover, they had a coach, Terry Venables, who had a clear
idea of how to dismantle the Dutch tactically. What followed was one of the great humiliations of Dutch football – and one of England’s best nights in decades. The final score was 4-1.
As England attacked with focused and (for once) tactically sophisticated aggression, the Dutch simply collapsed. There were two genuinely great goals as well. Alan Shearer’s second goal
(England’s third) rounded off a move involving a Paul Gascoigne dribble and a brilliant lay-off by Teddy Sheringham. Holland’s consolation goal followed an even more remarkable assist
by Bergkamp, who controlled a drilled ball from Seedorf before hoisting a soft parabola-arced pass for Kluivert to score through Seaman’s legs. Surprisingly, the goal was enough to send
Holland through to the quarter-final against France. At Anfield Dennis had to come off with a second half injury and could only watch as Holland lost on penalties. At least, at the end of the
Wembley drubbing, he had been able to exit with dignity, conjuring one of his great assists, then swapping shirts with Tony Adams.

Adams looks back: ‘I played over three generations so, with Holland, Van Basten was my contemporary. I’d wanted to get revenge on him and he went and bloody retired! So when we beat
Dennis’s team in 1996 it felt like: “I’m getting revenge against the wrong people.” I know the Dutch were in chaos, but take nothing away from us. I thought we played some
great football and Teddy Sheringham was a fantastic number ten. You know, I’m an Englishman and sometimes we don’t put ourselves forward enough. I’m patriotic. I love Dennis and I
think he’s a super player, but also I played with Teddy Sheringham who had a hell of a lot of talent in the same type of role.’

Hiddink, however, believes that disaster was caused not by English prowess but by Dutch in-fighting. He had pleaded with his players to come to their senses: ‘Think about how privileged
you are to be acting on this stage. Put everything aside for this.’ But against England many of the players were still clearly thinking about problems with each other. ‘I felt like I
was on a runaway train that I couldn’t stop as we raced past every station.’ Ultimately, though, there was a silver lining because ‘all that shit’ had come out during the
tournament and he would now be free to clear the decks and make a fresh start.

Dennis saw it differently: ‘I was really fed up. When the trouble really broke out, I knew right away that we had no more hope of winning. I thought: this is hopeless, it’s
impossible. It was a terrible tournament. Everyone seemed relieved after that group discussion, but the mistrust ran too deep. The discussion came too late. If that whole issue had come out into
the open before the tournament, we might have been able to genuinely solve it and find our rhythm. But that was no longer possible.’

The one bright moment was his assist for Kluivert’s goal. ‘The way I did that was becoming typical of my game at Arsenal. That action meant a lot to me. After Inter I had kind of
lost my way and at Arsenal I rediscovered my love of football, but it wasn’t immediately obvious what my role should be. I scored, but I assisted too. Slowly but surely I was assisting more
than I was scoring. Patrick’s goal confirmed that I was developing that way in the national team, too.’ The negatives, however, far outweighed that single plus. ‘It was my third
tournament and I thought: “What if this is it, and my final tournament is ruined by this kind of unprofessional, selfish behaviour?” It was just awful.’

6

‘A
NNOYINGLY OFTEN
,’
SAYS
D
ENNIS
, ‘I was told I should
do something
about it. People would say: “You can take a course to cure it, you know?” That really pissed me off.’

Dennis’s aversion to flying began to develop in the summer of 1994. After his stressful first season at Inter, his World Cup campaign had been arduous and ended in disappointment in the
heat of Dallas. In the aftermath of Holland’s 3-2 quarter-final defeat, he says: ‘I was exhausted and stayed exhausted. It wasn’t unusual for me to be dead-tired after a match,
but usually I recovered pretty quickly. Not this time. I was really wasted. I went to the hotel with Henrita, but things only got worse there. I started trembling, I felt unwell and I was extremely
nervous about the flight home. Something was really wrong with me for a while, and my head was out of kilter too. I was panicking. I had been through a difficult first year in Italy. It had taken a
lot out of me, both physically and mentally. Then straight afterwards the World Cup and an intense quarter-final in the heat.’

His legs felt like lead. In fact, everything about him felt heavy, including his arms and his head. Somehow he dragged himself onto the plane for Amsterdam. ‘I was still in a panic but it
got better once the plane was cruising above the clouds. I was fine for the rest of the flight.’ But while the panic abated, his body had not recovered. ‘When we got home I slept for
two whole days, that’s how tired I was. Then we rushed to go on holiday. We quickly booked a house in the south of France, but when we got there I was still extremely tired and morose.
Usually, holidays are a time to wind down and recharge your batteries. But not this time. I wasn’t able to enjoy anything. Not the beach, not the sea. And I couldn’t settle down in that
house, either.’

Dennis was worried about having to play football again soon and called Inter to ask if he could join pre-season training a little later. Ottavio Bianchi wouldn’t hear of it. No exceptions
would be made for Dennis. ‘I said: “Look, Coach, I’m sorry, I really need more time.” But Bianchi demanded that I turn up at the club for pre-season. He said he would take
into account that I was still recovering from the World Cup.

‘It was absurd. From the day I went on holiday to the first training session at Inter was just ten days! At Arsenal, Wenger always said four weeks’ rest is the absolute minimum.
Those four weeks were sacred for him.’

When Dennis reported back for duty at Inter after his brief – and useless – holiday, he was given a medical check-up and then driven up into the Dolomite mountains near Madonna di
Campiglio. Wim Jonk, who was also exhausted after the World Cup and had tried to extend his leave, came too.

‘Wim and I were supposed to be gradually eased back to fitness so we could rejoin the group. But after three days we were already expected to train with the others at full throttle. It was
really tough up there in the mountains. We were pushed to the limit. We weren’t allowed to gradually recover our strength and it was awful. Right there I got this horrible premonition that
the coming season was doomed to failure.’

As soon as he returned from the mountains, Dennis was obliged to fly again. Inter almost always travelled to away games by air and, for domestic flights, used small propeller planes. Dennis
recalls: ‘They were those nasty little planes that stay in the clouds and shake all the time. When you looked out all you could see was white or grey. And inside there was hardly any space.
It was so cramped it made me claustrophobic. You had absolutely no room to move and you just sat there shaking the entire trip. It made me feel so awful and I began to develop such an aversion to
it that it suddenly dawned on me: “I don’t want to do this any more.” It got so bad I would look up at the sky during away games to see what the weather was like. Were there any
clouds coming? Sometimes I was preoccupied by the flight home while I was playing football. It was hell. The last straw was when we had an away game against Fiorentina. I saw that boneshaker with
its propellers standing on the runway and I broke out in a cold sweat. And sure enough, it was another disastrous flight. When we finally landed I called Henrita: “Where are you? Can you come
and pick me up? I don’t want to do this any more.” She drove down to Florence and brought me back.’

Dennis doesn’t recall the details – suppressing them, perhaps – but he must have flown a few more times with Inter after that Florence experience
.
Maybe he went by car
or train to Naples for his last Italian league game? Dennis: ‘That’s highly unlikely. I probably gritted my teeth one last time. I have a vague memory of that, yes. But I know one thing
for certain: I never flew again after that day.’ He briefly considered flying with the Dutch national team in June 1995 for the European Championship qualifier against Belarus in Minsk.
‘I went to the Dutch headquarters at Noordwijk to prepare, but I didn’t sleep at all that night. I just lay there sweating until I finally said to myself: “I can’t cope with
this, so I’m not going to do it.” That’s when I took the decision.’ At a meeting with team doctor Frits Kessel and manager Guus Hiddink, Dennis explained his feelings and
said: ‘I’m not flying any more.’

Uttering that one little sentence brought tremendous relief. ‘It’s weird, but it was as if I had regained my freedom. Once again I was able to play football without any inhibitions,
and I could concentrate on a wonderful new career at Arsenal.’ His announcement that he would stay on the ground in future was generally met with acceptance and understanding. But not from
everyone. To those who suggested he take a course to cure his fear of flying, Dennis responds: ‘I know what flying is! I’ve flown countless times in large planes, small ones, tiny ones.
At Ajax, I once flew in a minuscule little plane over Mount Etna near Naples when we got into a terrible air pocket . . . In terms of flying, I’ve seen and done it all and I’m simply
not flying again. Ever.’

His agent Rob Jansen, responded just the way Dennis had hoped. ‘He accepted it right away. He said: “If that’s how it is, Dennis, then so be it.” He didn’t say:
“Don’t you realise what you’re doing? That this is disastrous for your career? That it’s going to cost you dearly?” No, he responded like a member of the family rather
than like someone who only wanted to use me to earn money. That confirmed for me that I was in good hands with him. And it did cost me. In talks with Arsenal, if I said a million, they
automatically deducted a hundred grand “because you don’t fly”. And I accepted that.’

It wasn’t an issue at home, either. Henrita: ‘I never pushed him. I never thought: “I’ve got to get him over this.” Mind you, I did always think he would overcome
his fear. Not by taking a course or something, but just spontaneously. After all, it started that way, too. It didn’t go away, but it did turn out to be something we could live with without
too much trouble. You know, when he said he wasn’t going to fly any more, he calmed down. That calmness is worth a lot more than winning a few hours of travel time by flying. Our eldest,
Estelle, loves flying. It doesn’t bother Dennis. He’s very realistic about it: “You’re able to do something I can no longer do. So be it.” It doesn’t limit him,
it’s not a handicap. Dennis lets us do our thing. He takes us to the airport and picks us up again. No problem. For us it isn’t an issue. If it is for the outside world, well,
that’s their problem.’

7

I
N THE SUMMER OF
1995 Dennis made another important decision. ‘I’d planned to be in Italy for at least four
years, maybe six. But at the end of the second year I decided: “This is not the place to be.”’ Dennis’s agent went to [Inter president Massimo] Moratti and told him that
Dennis wished to keep developing as a player, so the club should either recruit a new coach and different players or allow Dennis to leave. Moratti said that was impossible and he would stick with
Bianchi as coach. Dennis responded: ‘OK, that’s it. We’re still friends, no problem. But let’s shake hands and I’ll go.’

‘Looking back, I think I was really quite broken. The World Cup in America had been exhausting the year before and I think my problem with flying was because of that period. It was
stopping me from enjoying football, so I had to make a decision either to go into therapy for months or years, or just play football and go a different way. And by the summer of ninety-five I had a
lot of doubts in my mind. What kind of footballer am I? Do I still want a career? Do I want to stop at twenty-eight? Because after Inter I’m just fed up with this, I really don’t enjoy
this any more. And then in June I went to England and I felt straightaway the quietness. I thought: this is good. It’s not all about football. You train, you play, and after the final whistle
you talk a little bit about the game but then you can just be yourself: private. And that’s what I needed.’