Dennis Bergkamp
Dennis Bergkamp
Dennis Nicolaas Maria Bergkamp; born 10 May 1969) is a Dutch former professional footballer, who is the assistant manager to Frank de Boer at Ajax. Originally a wide midfielder, Bergkamp was moved to main striker and then to second striker, where he remained throughout his playing career. Bergkamp has been described by Jan Mulder as having "the finest technique" of any Dutch international and a "dream for a striker" by teammate Thierry Henry...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionSoccer Player
Date of Birth10 May 1969
CityAmsterdam, Netherlands
If you look at the whole package, with everything Henry has, I don't think you can find that anywhere else. You give him the ball in the right place and his acceleration will take him past any defender in the world.
I love playing football, being out on the pitch with a ball, and I will be a little sad when that ends.
My goals in Holland were known as 'stiffies', which means something quite different in England of course.
In Holland and Spain and France, where so many of us come from, people aren't interested in the sex lives of their players. We don't hear these stories - even in Italy where the media is right on top of football.
People can say the money doesn't really matter but it does show you how much a club respects you.
When I played in Holland, I always tried to lob the goalkeeper. People used to say, 'Oh, you're always only trying to make a nice goal'. But I said, 'Listen, if the goalie is a little bit off his line, how much space do you have on his left or right?' It's not a lot. 'And how much space do you have above him?
You have to shoot, to want to score goals no matter how. Just score that goal! You can't be afraid to miss.
When you beat a team so often - especially like this season when Chelsea had already lost three times to us - you know people expect you to do it again. But you also know they're going to be even more motivated to finally win.
I don't want to lose myself in football and that's what a coach has to do to be successful.
So here, at Arsenal, we are often surprised when we are shown some of the newspapers, and at the bottom of an article there is a line saying if you know of anyone who had an affair with a player, call this number. It is very strange to us.
A lot of people say you always come back to what you are good at. Football has been 25 years of my life, so maybe I'll come back to it in some sort of way.
So I took it as a very positive sign that the club came to me rather than the other way round.
I just wanted to get back to playing attacking football after my time in Italy. It was a little difficult at first but the atmosphere and the fans were just fantastic.
We're still a great team. In your mind you can understand that but, emotionally, we needed to express the same belief. We came out full of fire and scored two early goals, two really beautiful goals, and that changed everything.