Stillness and Speed: My Story (23 page)

‘Guys like that would give it but take it as well. Martin would go in, but if he gets a kick it’s not like he would be rolling on the floor. He would just take it and the next time
do it back. That’s so different to those players where if they do something to you and you do something to them they try to get you sent off: “Oi ref! The whole world is against
me,” and all that.’

Is that why you trod on Mihajlovic and elbowed Steve Lomas in the FA Cup quarter-final at West Ham in 1998?

‘With Mihajlovic it’s one of those moments where immediately afterwards you realise you’ve gone too far. It was a bit silly, but I could live with it. And getting away with it,
I could live with. The one with Steve Lomas, I wasn’t happy with that. He pulled my shirt from behind as we were breaking out from the corner, and I smashed him with my elbow. But he was
bleeding and I felt bad about it. He didn’t deserve that, not at all. It was meant like “Get away from me!” but when you do it in such a way that you hurt someone, straightaway
you think: “That’s not nice.” It also hurt the team. They had to play for an hour with ten men. So the whole thing was not good. I wasn’t hammered for it, because in England
I think they want to know if you’re sorry about it. And I said what I meant straightaway. There were a few incidents but the one with Lomas was the only really bad one. I was banned for three
games. I thought: “That’s not me,” but these things happen in football. I think everyone gets into a situation at some time where you think: “I really, really want to win
this tackle and if I’m gonna hurt him that comes with the sport.” With certain players you get the feeling they always think: “Whatever it costs.” But you want to get that
out of your system. With me I was always a little bit embarrassed afterwards. “I shouldn’t have done that, it was stupid.” But if there are players who say: “No, he had it
coming,” then I think there is something wrong.’

15

W
HO LEADS ON A
football field? And how do they do it? Some times it’s hard to tell because dominant figures come in a
range of shapes, sizes, personalities and decibel levels. There’s also confusion between different types of leader and teams usually have more than one. As well as formally appointed
captains, there are ‘technical leaders’ and specialists. Old English centre-forwards, for example, were said to ‘lead the line’. Goalkeepers dominate defence. Some of the
natural leaders who have influenced Dennis Bergkamp’s career, like Tony Adams in clenched-fist warrior mode or Johan Cruyff, who used to shout, point and tell team-mates where to run, are
impossible to miss. Others, like Dennis himself, are harder to spot.

In fact some colleagues failed to see leadership qualities in him at all. At Inter, in the view of Riccardo Ferri, Dennis was ‘too quiet’. To Ferri, the crucial point is that the
leader must be vocal and gregarious. ‘Dennis never became the technical leader at Inter. You can’t just say: “He’s the leader now.” The team decides. I don’t
know how it was in the Arsenal dressing room, but at Inter if you don’t socialise you won’t be the leader. You can be Maradona but if you don’t socialise you still won’t be
the leader. At Napoli, Maradona showed his feelings all the time. And he was very generous. When he was interviewed after a game, even if he’d scored three goals, he always praised someone
else in the team. He’d say: “I couldn’t have done it without De Napoli,” though De Napoli was a very modest player. Maradona was generous to the whole team, outside as well.
He invited everyone out, had dinner with everyone.’

Osvaldo Bagnoli makes a similar point: ‘A team chooses who must be the team’s leader. It is an automatic, unconscious thing. Subconscious even. It just happens. And that Inter team
didn’t choose Dennis. Maybe it was because of his character, his shyness, his loneliness, his “closedness”. If he’d had more time maybe he could have become the leader. But
he didn’t.’

As Arsenal goalkeeping coach when Dennis arrived at the club in 1995, Bob Wilson saw the Dutchman differently. ‘When you’re a genius it’s often very difficult not to be
arrogant with it. Some people could misinterpret Dennis’s aloofness at times. I saw it as shyness. He would never talk about how great he was as a player or anything like that. He was humble.
But I’m seventy-one years of age now, and I’ve loved and followed football from the age of six or seven, and he is in my handful of top players of all time. I put him up there with
Stanley Matthews, Puskas and Hidegkuti, Duncan Edwards, Pele, Garrincha to a degree, Cruyff, Maradona, Messi, Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore: players who without doubt made the game better. Dennis
Bergkamp took the game to a new level. For all watchers of the game, I think he led them into almost an unknown area of how they viewed the game. It was his total mastery,
total
mastery,
of the ball. He was like a juggler on stage, except people were kicking him. Was he a leader? Of course he was. He was the one the others would turn to and say: “Look Dennis, we’re in
trouble, we can’t find a way through,” and he would come up with something different. But without doubt the biggest thing that Dennis did for the players was to show them they
didn’t need to hide or be scared if they made a mistake. “Do it. You can do it! You’re capable.” He was never like Tony Adams or Frank McLintock. He was more like Bobby
Moore. There was this presence and calmness about what he did that made people think: “My God, we’ll try that.” He was the leader of the pack. He was inspiring.’

Thierry Henry confirms this. ‘People sometimes get confused between arrogance and confidence so they misunderstand Dutch players. Dutch players are very, very confident. People always go:
“They’re a bit arrogant.” No! They are confident. One of the things I loved right away about Dennis was that he was super-confident and not arrogant at all. Sometimes I heard
people say: “Why does he have to show off?” He’s not showing off. That’s how he plays. Like his goal against Newcastle. People cannot comprehend why Dennis did that. But for
him there is no “why”. The ball was coming this way, so: “OK, I’ll control it the other way, get in behind Dabizas, make sure the spin is right to come back . . . then
finish.” For someone else it’s impossible. For him it’s natural. I played with Zidane, with Messi, with Xavi, Iniesta, Ronaldinho, Eto’o . . . Those guys were unbelievable.
If you’re talking about raw talent, Zizou was out of this world. He could do whatever he wanted. I mean the guy was
dancing
with the ball. Sometimes I was watching him and my mouth
was just hanging open. Messi? He’s doing stuff that I don’t know if anyone will ever do again. Maradona? Incomparable! Cruyff? The same. Platini, the same. But I played with Dennis
Bergkamp the longest and I saw him every day in training and the way he saw the game and the way he was . . . and that’s why I always say Dennis was the best that I played with. For me Dennis
was and always will be The Master.

‘When I arrived it was his team so it was always like that. When he left it was different, but as long as he was there it was his team. Don’t get me wrong. Dennis has a big, big
personality. But that’s why I admire him even more. Any big players at that level have a big ego, but Dennis could control it. When he was in his prime he could have scored a lot more goals.
But sometimes the game was asking him to pass the ball to the free man, and that’s what he did. Dennis was for me and always will be The Man. It wasn’t a case of “looking
up” to him. It was just like having an older brother. But he was intelligent enough to know he didn’t need to be the front man. He doesn’t shout a lot but when he
looks
at you . . .! Dennis talks with the ball, which is the best way to talk.’

Tony Adams was more sceptical. ‘Other people can be sentimental and tell you about his magic more articulately than me. But what you’ll get from me is the reality, my experience. I
had respect for Dennis but I wasn’t overwhelmed. You’ve got to take into consideration where I was when Dennis came to the club. In 1995 I wanted to die. I didn’t give a shit
about Dennis Bergkamp. Then I got sober and the world was my oyster. I came to life and I had this fellow team-mate who was technically unbelievable. But there were a lot of players who came into
that team, don’t forget. So I’m just seeing it differently to everybody else. I went from being very sociable, one of the lads, but being masked most of the time, to going to AA
recovery meetings. Suddenly I’ve got this new-found know ledge and health and I can enjoy playing with Dennis.

‘But I’m still the captain. And that’s like line management. You need to play a role at times. I couldn’t be his mate. I didn’t think it was my place. Maybe in
another life, another place, another situation, we would have had a different relationship. But I had the voice of the manager. I was wanting to win and Dennis was a player who could get me to
where I wanted to go. So I was going to make sure I was on him.’

On him? Driving him? Pushing him?

‘Yeah. But he didn’t need a lot because he was the ultimate professional. I didn’t need to keep him on his toes. Only the once. That’s all I needed to do, and
that’s all he needed to take. You know, I’ve played with hundreds, and against hundreds, of players in three decades. People like Maradona, Van Basten, Dalglish, Thierry . . .
unbelievable players. And I put Dennis in my top three. Top three. I’m not saying who the other two are, but Dennis . . . For me, he was ten times the player Thierry was. But I’m also
serious. I’m professional and I don’t like waste and I just felt at one point that he was on cruise control, just going a little bit through the motions. Super, super player. But come
on Dennis, it’s about time you won the league, player of the year. That kind of stuff should be yours for the taking. This would have been 1997 or early 1998. We’ve come through the
dark years. We’ve done the Bruce [Rioch] thing. We’ve got the team in place. We’ve got the finance. The next step is to win stuff. So we’re getting on the coach after the
Middlesbrough game and he’s sitting there. On his own . . .’

On his own?

‘. . . We had a kind of set-up with the English boys at the back of the coach. It was more to do with us and nobody can kind of come in, like no one can just walk into an old East End
family. We’d grown up together. Me and Bouldy used to drink together. Dicko [Lee Dixon] I’ve known for ten years at that point. With Nigel [Winterburn] we’ve known each other ten
lifetimes, and Dave Seaman . . . We’d lived and breathed, men together, you know? Like in the army. So we’re sitting at the back and we’re maybe to blame for not including other
people in the squad . . . But anyway, I go to Dennis and I say it. “Dennis, you’ve been here two-and-a-half years and you haven’t won anything. It’s time for you to win
something. How much do you want it?” It looked like I got a reaction from him, physically, in his face. As I was going, I was thinking: “He might just turn round and punch
me.”’

And did you sense a change after that?

‘A few months later we’ve won the Double, Dennis is player of the year and he’s just played the best football of his life.’

He’s said your phrase stuck with him: ‘How much do you want it?’ It was kind of a revelation for him. It’s a phrase he adopted and often uses now.

‘Yeah, I remember him saying that. But it was all for me, really, because some players don’t need motivating. He could quite easily have said: “Oh, for fuck’s sake shut
up, Tone.” But he didn’t. It was just part of my thing. “How much do you want it? Come on!” Passion, pride in the club, motivation. That’s the way I kind of worked. It
helped my concentration. Manu Petit was very quiet, but I was . . . [
clenches fist, makes war face, bangs forehead
]
WOOO-Aaaarr
! I would be that kind of pumped up. The adrenaline
going. Motivation! Martin [Keown] was like that as well, but he didn’t calm down. He needed to calm down. Oh God, the number of penalties Martin gave away down the years with his impetuous
tackles! And Dennis was so quiet I felt I needed to get him up now and again. But maybe he didn’t need it. There was enormous self-motivation in there anyway. He couldn’t have got to
where he got to without having drive. I was learning about me and other people, and what makes other people tick . . .’

To Patrick Vieira, Adams’s successor as Arsenal captain, Dennis’s secret lay precisely in his quietness. ‘Dennis is not the one who will shout and he is not the one who will
talk. But on the field we knew that he was our technical leader, the one who would bring the small magic that would help us win something. You knew he would be the one to make the assist, to create
something.’

You were the captain, but Dennis was the leader?

Vieira: ‘Dennis was our inspiration, he was the leader. We knew that Thierry would score, and we knew that Dennis would make something happen, and we knew that Sol Campbell would be the
one who leads at the back and we knew that in midfield I would be the one who got the red card.’

How did the squad see him?

‘He got the respect from people. That’s why everybody likes Dennis. Of course he has got this kind of Dutch arrogance. I say it all the time. “We are the best, we have the best
way,” you know? [
laughs
] But everybody liked him because he respected everybody. And he was popular in the dressing room. Everybody was laughing and talking with him so we all knew
that he was our technical leader on the field. But I think what was really good as well was that they brought in a manager who has got the same philosophy. You couldn’t have in your team
Dennis Bergkamp and a manager who would want to play kick and rush. If you didn’t have Dennis and you had instead a player like Duncan Ferguson, that would not fit your team trying to play
football. Because that is the way it is.’

* * *

D
ENNIS SAYS HE
was impressed by Vieira as a leader.

‘He is French, so he is moody sometimes and arrogant. I keep telling him that as well [
laughs
]. Off the pitch he is just a normal very polite guy and very charming. All the women
say: “Patrick, he is so charming!” But he’s got this personality. It’s overwhelming when he comes into the room. Fantastic charisma. And he was a good leader as well. After
Tony Adams, it was like “Who can take over?” Tony was the captain. Tony ‘Captain’ Adams. It was his middle name almost. Who is going to be next? But Patrick built that role
fantastically in his own way, less clenched fist, more connecting to everyone, to the kit man, to the chef, the coach, the players . . . That role doesn’t suit everyone, but he could do it.
He could play football and take that role on himself.’