Like every other Dutch boy who grew up in the 1970s,
Dennis Bergkamp was captivated by the flair and flamboyance of Johan Cruyff.
But he was fascinated by geometry and Glenn Hodddle, too, and when he learnt
the game on the streets of Amsterdam, he played with soft touches and angles,
in an environment where the pavement and the parked cars were just problems to solve.
It was the first chapter in the story of one of the most elegant players football has ever seen.
Bergkamp’s formative years would come at Ajax and were spent between two of the
club’s priests of Totaalvoetball. Cruyff – of course – but also Louis van Gaal.
The better relationship was with Cruyff. It was under his management that a 17-year-old Bergkamp,
then a wickedly quick right-winger, would make his debut.
At the end that first season, in 1987, Ajax would win the Cup Winners’ Cup,
with Bergkamp coming on as a substitute in the final.
A year later, he could come off the bench again as Ajax reached the final once more. This time
they’d lose and, in any case, Cruyff was already gone, having fallen out with the club’s hierarchy.
His departure in 1988 left Ajax in flux and Bergkamp between a transient cast of coaches.
Over the next few years, he would fall in and out of favour before his ascension began for real,
this time under the watch of Van Gaal.
Cruyff and van Gaal had the same basic faith in Total Football, but with a key difference.
Cruyff believed in empowering his players. Under Van Gaal, the system was the only star.
Nevertheless, it was he who would give Bergkamp his identity. Van Gaal pushed him in-field,
behind a centre-forward, into the no.10 role and – eventually – up into the game’s stratosphere.
Ajax were bold, disciplined and intense and Bergkamp scored goals by the dozen.
With artful chips, powerful drives and precise placements.
He created them, too, with passes that spun and checked, cut lines and turned defenders.
By 1990, he had won his first cap for the Netherlands. In 1991, his fellow players
voted him Dutch Footballer of the Year. And in 1992, Ajax would win the UEFA Cup.
Twelve months on he would finish second behind Roberto Baggio in the Ballon D’or voting,
after catching the eye of every major club in Europe – including Inter Milan,
who would pay a Dutch record £8.8m for him in the Summer of 1993.
Unfortunately, the move placed Bergkamp in the middle of a footballing culture war.
The Inter he joined wanted to evolve away from caution and catenaccio,
but without really knowing how. Initial attempts to modernise were quickly abandoned
and Bergkamp often found himself playing into the teeth of a five-man defence
and without the attacking numbers his abilities needed in support.
Inter’s 1993-94 league season was nearly a disaster, with the side finishing just
a point clear of relegation. And yet they won the UEFA Cup,
with Bergkamp as an unlikely talisman and top-scorer. It would be a false dawn.
He would score just three goals in Serie A the following season and, in July of 1995,
would join Bruce Rioch’s Arsenal (£7.5m) who were at the beginning of their own revolution.
Arsenal were transitioning away from being the dour side constructed by George Graham.
And Bergkamp – gifted, technical, and the calibre of name that the
Premier League was starting to attract – was a perfect emblem.
Even if he had his quirks. Bergkamp was afraid of flying,
the result of too many bumpy journeys to Serie A away games on rickety propeller
planes. Arsenal would have to do without him for some away matches. For others,
he would set off days in advance, and drive the journey with Vic Akers, the long-time kitman.
But he still set an example at his new club.
British football was clinging to its drinking culture and, too often, post-game recovery still
involved fish and chips on the team bus and a few pints down the local pub. Bergkamp was different.
He would prepare his own meals and brought a new nutritional sophistication.
But 1995-96 still started slowly. He would have to wait until September to score his first goals for
the club, in a home game against Southampton, but his and Arsenal’s season was encouraging enough.
He was also a perfect foil for Ian Wright and, while still a work in progress, Rioch’s side
attacked with five or six players, rather than the few numbers that Inter had been willing to commit.
His future and Arsenal’s changed for good the following year, with Arsene Wenger’s arrival
from Japan. Bergkamp’s signing had marked the club’s first steps towards the title,
but under Wenger the rest of the cast started to assemble. Patrick Vieira joined in 1996 to
sit ahead of one of the best defences in the country, and Emmanuel Petit,
Marc Overmars and Nicolas Anelka arrived in 1997 to provide resilience, pace and goalscoring fire.
For the first time since leaving Ajax, Bergkamp had the right tools at his disposal.
He wanted the ball quickly, and he needed runners knifing off and beyond him
in every direction. Wenger provided him with both and Arsenal won a Premier League
and FA Cup double in 1998 and Bergkamp collected both Player of the Year awards.
It was a season in which he decorated English football with his ability – most memorably with
a dazzling hat-trick at Filbert Street against Leicester. It was also a season
which ended at the World Cup in France, and what probably remains his signature goal.
His international career was a success, but at major tournaments Bergkamp
and the Netherlands always found adversity or an unlikely obstacle.
In 1992 they had been upended by the Danish miracle at the European Championships.
In 1994, they might have gone further than the World Cup quarter-finals had
Ruud Gullit not withdrawn from the squad. And in 1996, the squad that Guus Hiddink took to
England was strained by racial tension and – eventually – the expulsion of Edgar Davids.
There would be no World Cup win in ’98, but Bergkamp produced the moment of the tournament.
With almost the final kick of the quarter-final against Argentina, he dragged Frank De Boer’s
60-yard pass out of the sky, took a touch around Roberto Ayala, and put the Dutch through.
Bergkamp would retire from international duty in 2000, having won 79 caps and scored 37 goals,
but never was he better than in Marseilles.
Back at Arsenal, he would once again be the bridge between eras. Freddie Ljungberg arrived in 1998,
Thierry Henry arrived in 1999 and, one year later, Robert Pires, Lauren and Sylvain Wiltord
all joined in the summer of 2000. Twelve months later, Sol Campbell moved from
Tottenham on a free-transfer, becoming the last significant piece of the Invincibles jigsaw.
Again, talent was being gathered around Bergkamp. And, again,
his abilities would make it work – likely never with more class
than in December 2001, when he took his revenge on Italian football.
Facing up four Juventus defenders at the end of a Champions League tie, he toyed and teased them on
the edge of the box before picking out Ljungberg with a picture of an assist to seal a 3-1 win.
He and Arsenal would win the Premier League in 2002. And again, unbeaten, in 2004. More
than the trophies or the records, though, it’s a period remembered for attacking football that
still might not have been bettered in England and of which Bergkamp was the conductor.
Or “the brain of the team” as Arsene Wenger described him.
In the years since, Frank Rijkaard referred to Bergkamp as “the beauty of the game”. Years after
his own retirement, Thierry Henry claimed him to have been the finest player he’d ever played with
and given that his list includes Zidane, Messi, and Ronaldinho, that’s quite the accolade.
Wherever he ranked, though, Bergkamp retired in 2006 with the legacy of being his position’s
ideal. He was the quintessential No.10: all elegance and craft, vision and flair.
A player of perfect technique, in total harmony.