Stillness and Speed: My Story (28 page)

When your left foot goes to the ball, surely the idea is to flick the ball one way and spin yourself the other? Your foot goes to touch the ball to the right but the rest of your body is
already spinning left.

‘Of course. The pass is coming like this, but I want to go that way so the creativity in my brain goes: “OK I’m going to try this . . .” It’s the all-or-nothing
part of my game. I could have gone for the safe way, control the ball and knock it back. Or maybe turn. But I know the defender is stepping in and the pace of the ball can help me. With a small
touch the pace will still be there, so I can spin the ball and keep it within reach.’

Tony Adams thought you must have tried this kind of turn before. Was it a move you’d imagined ahead of time and practised, then executed when you got the opportunity?

‘No, no. It was nothing like that. If my first thought is: “I want to control the ball,” then I would never make that turn. But my first thought was: “I want to go to the
goal and I’m going to do whatever it takes to go to the goal, no matter how the ball comes to me.” Ten yards before the ball arrived I made my decision: “I’m going to turn
him.”’

Did you calculate Dabizas’s reaction?

‘Not that. But you know where the defender will be and that his knees will be bent a little, and that he will be standing a little wide, so he can’t turn. And he won’t expect
it. The thought was: “I’ll just flick the ball and see what happens. Maybe the defender blocks it, or the flick is not wide enough, or he anticipates and gets two yards ahead. But maybe
he’ll be surprised and I’ll be one or two yards in front of him.” As it happened, I still wasn’t in front of him, so I had to push him off. So you need some luck as
well.’

So it’s a foul?

‘Never! You end up with the ball somewhere in the middle and you have to decide. Maybe you choose safety. Take it with your right and you open up the goal for yourself. Maybe the left is
your weaker foot. It would have to be more of a good hit. You can’t really place it. But with your right foot . . . at the last moment I can go low, or high [he is pointing to the four
corners of the goal]. And then you just open it and take the far corner.’

So you’re calculating at incredible speed?

‘It is more instinctive because you know from training sessions and from other games. You know how the ball will bounce, and how the defender will turn. You know when you push him where
the ball will end up, and where the goalkeeper is. It’s not like you’ve done that for the first time, that shot and that push. You know from previous times.’

Thierry Henry observes: ‘You know my favourite thing about that goal? The way Dennis puts his body in front of Dabizas. Dennis makes the turn and then blocks the defender, and that’s
what gives him
all the time in the world
to finish. Usually when you do something amazing you get carried away. How many times did you see a guy do a great control and then rush the
finish? Dennis did something amazing but then he stayed composed. That’s the difference between great players and normal players. A normal striker would be so happy to have made the turn he
would try to blast it in. No! Calm down. Calm down! You did the most difficult thing. Now relax. Watch Dennis. The way he put his body between Dabizas and the ball was just amazing.’

S
URELY
, D
ENNIS
,
THAT
must be your favourite goal.

‘No.’

Why ever not?

‘There’s a lot of luck involved. If the defender takes one step back then it’s finished. So it’s not pure. People talked so much about that goal I decided to watch it on
TV. It was interesting because it looks quite different to what was in my mind. On TV you see the defender. I knew he was there, but I never saw him. I felt him a little bit, his presence, and I
knew he was on this side. So those are facts. The ball was here. I want to go there . . .
boom!

‘Generally, though, I don’t like tricks. I can enjoy it when other people do them, or when they work out for me. But it’s really not something on my mind. I don’t look
for the chance to do a trick. It’s just not my game. My game is about first touch, control, passing. With one pass or one control, can I get myself or someone else in front of the goalkeeper?
Can I create space to give a pass . . . That’s my passion, my speciality. For me, a trick is just . . . well, that’s all it is. For me, everything has to have a thought and meaning
behind it. What does a trick contribute? It has to be functional. Art for art’s sake isn’t interesting.’

But that goal relies on a trick.

‘Yes, and it looked quite special, but only because there was a goal. That justified the trick which then becomes part of something bigger. The trick makes the goal and the goal makes the
trick.’

Ian Wright says he knew you meant every millisecond of the Newcastle goal because he saw you score a similar one – perhaps even better – in training.

‘Really? I don’t remember.’

He says Martin Keown, who was the best in the business at that time, was marking you tightly and you had your back to goal. The pass comes from the side and you somehow flick the ball not
around Martin but
inside
him. Ian says it was one of the most amazing things he ever saw because Martin was always full-on, even in training.

‘Yeah, he was.’

Apparently everyone just stopped and applauded – even Martin.

‘I’m not sure. Let me think . . . Oh yeah, I think I know the one he means. It was in training, but at Highbury. Sometimes you have these Junior Gunners training sessions and I
believe I did it in a game there.’

So lots of people saw it?

‘Eighty-eight people probably! Maybe it was seventy-seven and a half. Anyway, Martin was in the back four, left central defender. I’m pretty sure of that. He’s marking me, and
I’m running from the left towards the middle and he’s close behind and slightly to the right. It’s difficult to describe, but I think the ball comes from the touchline. That means
it’s going across my body from my left. Martin expects me to control the ball and keep going across him. There’s no danger from his point of view. But, instead of controlling the ball
with my right instep, at the last moment I pass my foot over the ball and flick it back with the outside of the foot.’

What?! You’re running and suddenly stop and twist inside out??

‘Well, no. It’s coming across me and I go over it and . . .
chack
! . . . now I’m going back the other way. You have to be in balance, and you have to make sure you
don’t hurt yourself. It’s like this: foot over the ball and flick back, but all in one step. Normally you’d control the ball without changing direction. Here you turn the foot to
the right like a stepover with the ball moving, and foot over the ball – don’t touch it! – and now your foot is on the other side of the ball and you can touch it back inside.
It’s the contact with the ball that makes the difference.’

Then you stop?

‘No. I go over the ball and make a turn. It’s a sharp turn, not a stop. I know I’m going to turn. The defender doesn’t know. So I do my turn and he’s out of
position and I have my two yards and I get my shot away and it goes in. I tried it a few times, actually. It’s a simple movement. Creative again, knowing what to do and where to go.
It’s a shame there is no footage. Martin would appreciate seeing it.’

19

O
n 28 September 2002, three and a half years after losing the title at Elland Road, a very different Arsenal team walked off the same pitch to huge
applause – from the Leeds fans. Yorkshire supporters understand the game as well as anyone and the powerfully inventive technical football that swept their team to a 4-1 defeat had been
astonishing. As the home fans queued for Gunners’ autographs, Leeds coach Terry Venables declared that the new Arsenal were better than any of the Manchester United teams of the previous
decade and comparable to the great Ajax of the early seventies.

It would be two years before anyone called Arsenal the ‘Invincibles’, but they were rewriting the record books almost every week. The game at Leeds meant the reigning Double
champions had scored in 47 consecutive matches and racked up 22 away league games without defeat, beating records by Chesterfield and Nottingham Forest. Most observers assumed – wrongly, as
it turned out – that Arsenal would walk away with the league and the BBC’s website posed a question that was already a cliché: ‘Are Arsenal England’s best-ever
side?’ Arsene Wenger didn’t usually draw attention to the near-fulfilment of his Plan, but after the match he noted that his team was changing positions all over the field, posing
danger from everywhere and playing ‘great football, Total Football’.

In retrospect, one of the most intriguing things about the match at Leeds was the Bergkampian assist for the fourth goal. A 30-yard pearl-handled dagger of a pass pierced the heart of the home
defence to put in Kanu. But Dennis was not on the field. He was 33 now and, along with Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg, was rested after the no-less majestic 4-0 Champions League destruction of
PSV in Eindhoven three days earlier. Rather, the pass against Leeds was provided by 19-year-old Jermaine Pennant, destined to play just 12 times for Arsenal. Another promising young talent, Pascal
Cygan, was a rock in defence and Arsenal’s domination was such that by the end, two substitutes, Francis Jeffers (who would end up, at age 32, playing for Accrington Stanley) and Oleg Luzhny
(the reserve right-back playing in left midfield) were gleefully swapping passes deep inside the Leeds penalty area. None of these four stayed long at the club or would ever be considered members
of the Arsenal pantheon. Yet here they were playing divine football. How?

According to the principles of homeopathy, water will take on the characteristics of whatever substance it is shaken with and will retain those characteristics even when the original substance
is no longer present. Thierry Henry has a simpler explanation: the whole squad was influenced by Dennis Bergkamp. ‘He was an example to us all. If you are intelligent and you don’t know
how to feed off Dennis then you are an idiot! He doesn’t have to talk. Just watch. He doesn’t have to come to you. Just
watch him
!’

In similar vein, Ray Parlour remembers how he and Edu thoroughly outplayed the Inter midfield when Arsenal won 5-1 at the San Siro in 2003. ‘They had some very well-respected players but
we pulled all the strings. They couldn’t get near us. After the game the Italians were saying: “We didn’t expect you to control the whole game!” But at that time,
technically, I was just getting better and better.’

Because of Wenger or because of Dennis?

‘Both. Dennis was always a big factor. He would always see everything around him, and he was such a clever, clever player. He affected all the players at the club. And Wenger was always
making you think. With him it was always top-quality, high-intensity training. And he always likes a bit of movement. He loved it when people were changing positions in the game. You fill the gaps,
don’t you? If the attack breaks down, you don’t just think: “Oh, he’s got to get back in there.” You fill in. It just happened organically. It’s part of a good
team. If you play a section on the field, you’ve got to have a good understanding with the people around you. I wouldn’t have a lot to do with whoever played left-back or left-winger,
but I’d know to go into the box, to the back post if they get to the line. You have pockets in the team and you all know where you’re going. And a good team ethic always needs different
sorts of players: technically good players who can open things up, like Dennis or Pires, workers like myself and Patrick Vieira, who can control and try to win the ball back in good areas, and good
defenders.’

Did you realise you were creating something new in England?

‘I don’t think we thought about that. We just got on with it. We just played and enjoyed it. Everybody wanted the ball, which was very important. There was no one who would hide in
that team. You’d have some bad games here and there, but generally it was very good most games.’

Thierry Henry, top goal-scorer and increasingly the team’s dominant personality, was an admirer of the Dutch style and knew exactly in whose steps Arsenal now followed. When he arrived
from Juventus in 1999, Thierry had hoped to wear the number 12 shirt in honour of his hero Marco van Basten, who’d worn it at Euro ’88. Since that number was taken, he accepted the
number 14 instead and he went on to add lustre to a number first made famous in football by Johan Cruyff. Homage to Cruyff was never his intention, but sometimes Thierry even resembled the Dutchman
in his speed, skill and tendency to drift to the left and cut in from the wing. He was also aware of the old
totaalvoetballer
’s influence on the new Arsenal. ‘Cruyff took the
Dutch game to Barcelona when he became the boss. And Arsene made it his way. At Arsenal we used to play four-four-two and you might say: “That’s not Dutch.” Sometimes it was
three-four-three or whatever. But the formation doesn’t matter. Whatever way Arsene sent his team out onto the field the mentality was Total Football. If it’s four-three-three or
six-four-zero with no strikers, I don’t care about that. It’s still Total Football. Attack at any time. Everybody attacks. Everybody defends. That’s the Dutch idea. But along the
way, you make it
your
style of Total Football.’

And what a gourmet style it became.

Thierry: ‘Dennis and me, and Robert [Pires], Sylvain Wiltord and Kanu were on the same page. We were giving goals to each other all the time. People say the other guys were feeding me. I
fed them, too. A hell of a lot. So we were feeding each other, but Dennis was the
chef
. He was feeding us all. That was the beauty of that team. I don’t know how many goals we scored
in that two or three years with passes
inside
the opponents’ box
. . . boom! boom! boom!
It was a lot! No one wanted to keep the ball too long. If just one guy had kept it
too long . . .
wheeeeeeeuuw
[
mimes crashing plane
]. Disaster! Every single pass: one-two-go! Not only in front of goal but everywhere. “He’s alone – give it to
him! He’s alone – give it to him!”
Fast
! Everything opens up when there is understanding and you have a clever team and a certain way that the boss is asking you to play.
We were opening teams up just like that. And remember, Highbury was not a big pitch. To do that at Highbury was not easy at all. People said: “It’s easy, they’re not
defending,” and I’d say [
deadpan sarcastic face
]: “Yeah, I know – but we are moving.”’