June 20 - Walking in a Bergkamp Wonderland

Simon Kuper of the Financial Times wrote in 2006: “One night last year some legends of Dutch football gathered for dinner in an Amsterdam house. Around midnight conversation turned to an old question: who was the best Dutch footballer ever? Dutchmen have been voted European Footballer of the Year seven times, more than any other nationality except Germans. Yet Jan Mulder, a great centre-forward turned writer, chose a player who had never even threatened to win the award nor, at the time, a Champions League: “Bergkamp.” He had the finest technique, said Mulder. Guus Hiddink, the great Dutch manager, nodded, and so the matter was settled.”

On this day in 1995 Boring Boring Arsenal got quite a bit more exciting at a stroke when they signed Dennis Bergkamp from Internazionale for a then record fee of £7.5m

The signing was of huge significance not only for Arsenal and Bergkamp, but for English football as a whole as he was one of the first world class players to join the Premiership when talk of foreigners taking over the English top flight was a long way off.

Schooled in the famous Ajax academy Bergkamp won the Eredivisie, the Uefa Cup and the KNVB Cup for his hometown club before the big time came-a-calling in the shape of Italian giants Internazionale, who signed him in 1993 for £12m.

The Dutchman’s expected progression in Italy did not really materialise and after two largely disappointing seasons he was rescued by Bruce Rioch who took him to Highbury.

Bergkamp said: “The decision I made was to leave Italy and the first team that knocked on the door was Arsenal.

“They were a solid team and that’s what you want, a base where you can fit in before you try to add something. Straight away I thought ‘This could work’ and I didn’t know anything about ‘Boring, Boring Arsenal’ at that time.”

Meanwhile Inter president Massimo Moratti sounded a lot like a man who had just lost £5m on his investment two years earlier when he said: “They will be lucky if he scores 10 goals this season.”

Needless to say, Arsenal had the last laugh as, after a slow start, Bergkamp became a mainstay in the Arsenal side for the next decade, flourishing under the management of Arsene Wenger who replaced Rioch in 1996.

Three Premiership titles and four FA Cups was the not-too-shabby haul of trophies Bergkamp notched up while at Highbury, but as ever, the stats only tell half the story as he was a beautiful player to watch. He was so perfectly suited to Wenger’s ideals of stylish attacking play that it was easy to forget he wasn’t signed by the Frenchman.

As his strike partner Thierry Henry once said: “When Dennis Bergkamp scores, it’s not a common goal, it’s always what we call ‘a Dennis Bergkamp goal’.”

See the clip below for one of his finest goals for Holland in the 1998 World Cup where this last minute strike gave the Dutch a 2-1 win and a passage into the semi-final and knocked Argentina out. Keep the sound on and listen to the Dutch commentator going absolutely mental.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...