Stillness and Speed: My Story (25 page)

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-minute 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.’

D
ENNIS 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.’

In the first two group games, Holland, with Dennis conducting the team from his new deeper position, overcame stubborn Czech and Danish resistance. They then beat a reserve French team in a dead
rubber before the quarter-final in which Dennis inspired a devastating 6-1 win over the Yugoslavs. Patriotic football frenzy now gripped the Netherlands. Towns and cities were awash with flags and
bunting and the entire village of Hoenderloo, where the Dutch team was staying, painted itself orange. It made Dennis uneasy. ‘It’s great when the people are behind you, their
enthusiasm really gives you a kick. But this was over the top, too much hysteria with all those orange masks and wigs. When you’re abroad you hardly notice what’s going on at home. When
you turned on the TV during the World Cup in France, it was lovely and relaxing, it helped you forget football for a while. But in 2000 every time the TV was on, orange hysteria burst into the
hotel room. Almost every programme was about us, about the Championship we’d apparently already practically won. You couldn’t shut out the craziness.’

Beating the Italians in the semi-final in Amsterdam would surely be a formality. And so it should have been. But one of the strangest, most one-sided of matches produced a bizarre ending. Italy,
playing with ten men after the sending-off of Zambrotta, had just one clear chance. Holland had more than twenty chances, failed to score from any of them and even missed two penalties in normal
time. In the shootout they missed three times. By that stage, however, Dennis, who would surely have done better with his spot-kicks than Frank de Boer, Jaap Stam and Paul Bosvelt, was no longer on
the field.

In the 77th minute, coach Rijkaard had replaced winger Boudewijn Zenden with Peter van Vossen, the 32-year-old who’d had a mediocre season with Feyenoord. When he came on Van Vossen urged
the crowd to make more noise but otherwise contributed little. He and Rijkaard were close, but surely the manager would not have been swayed by sentiment during a major semi-final? Then in the 84th
minute Clarence Seedorf came on for Dennis. Dennis was bewildered. Fine all-rounder though he is, Seedorf was not known for Bergkamp-style match-winning moments – and didn’t produce
one. Rijkaard’s third change, in the 95th minute, was the strangest of all: Cocu off in place of 33-year-old midfielder Aron Winter. The substitution enabled Winter to break Ruud Krol’s
record for appearances, but did nothing to break down the Italian defence.

Even though the game was clearly headed for penalties, the two renowned pinch-hitting strikers and penalty specialists, Pierre van Hooijdonk and Roy Makaay, were left on the bench. Rijkaard
later said his idea had been to inject energy into his sagging team. But Dennis remains unimpressed. ‘I still think they were peculiar changes. I thought: “Come on, man, why don’t
you leave me on the pitch? Remember Van Basten in 1988 against the Germans, Bergkamp in 1998 against Argentina?” I felt I was capable of producing something like that again. I was still in
the game, I wasn’t tired and I was sure I could do it: give the deciding pass or score myself. But Rijkaard brought me off and I was very, very unhappy about that.’

As at the World Cup, the French were amazed to see their most feared opponents fall, and went on to beat Italy narrowly in the final. Patrick Vieira observes: ‘I never understood why that
Dutch team didn’t win. They had everything that generation: Kluivert, Bergkamp, Overmars . . . I remember watching them play against Argentina and they were unbelievable. Unbelievable! That
was a good game of football! One of the differences between Holland and France at that time was that we had maybe less quality but we had more physical power. If you look at our back four,
physically it was unbelievable: Thuram, Lizarazu, Desailly, Laurent Blanc . . . We were winners. We were putting our heads where the Dutch would put their feet. And maybe the Dutch would not put
their head where we were putting our feet. That was the difference.’