The masterpiece finished: Bergkamp calls it a career
17 May: As the final whistle of referee Hauge sounded
at the Stade de France in Paris this evening, and the players
of Frank Rijkaard's Barcelona could celebrate the winning of
the 2005-2006 Champions League, the moment had officially
arrived: Dennis Bergkamp's career as a football player has come
to an end. Ajax USA takes a deep bow for one of the
greatest Ajacieden of all time.
It would have been the ultimate thing: Dennis Bergkamp
lifting the 'Big One' with Arsenal in his very last game as
a footballer. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be: Arsenal
lost the final to FC Barcelona (2-1)
and Bergkamp remained on the bench. A sad ending?
Perhaps, but the very last day of such a long and impressive
career can never be more than a detail in the long
run.
Dennis Bergkamp (born Amsterdam, 10 May 1969) started
playing football as a child for Amsterdam-based amateur club
Wilskracht/SNL, but was soon discovered by Ajax's omnipresent
scouts and entered the Ajax youth system. In 1986 the young
right winger of the Ajax A1 youth team was surprisingly
added to the first squad by head-coach Johan Cruyff.
Bergkamp made his first team début on 14 December
1986, in the Eredivisie home game against Roda JC. He had
to combine his budding Ajax-1 career with high school at
the time: training at De Meer, then off to school, and then
home to do his homework. The teenager had 14 Eredivisie
appearances (2 goals) in his first season. He also netted
four times in the European Cup Winners' Cup, which
Ajax eventually won that year (1987). Bergkamp, who had
just turned 18, came on a substitute in the final in
Athens, Greece, against Lokomotiv Leipzig from East
Germany.
Bergkamp the Professional
It was a wonderful start of a career at De Meer that
would eventually comprise seven seasons. Initially not too many
people believed he would become one of Holland's football
greats. The right winger was talented and tremendously
skillful, but seemed too shy and modest for a top
footballer. Everything changed when coach Leo Beenhakker moved
him from the right flank to central midfield, directly behind
the central striker. Beenhakker even invented a new word for
the position: schaduwspits ('shadow striker').
At this position Bergkamp really started to shine: the
midfielders behind him (Jan Wouters and Wim Jonk,
particularly) 'launched' the lightning-quick shadow striker
countless times with their splitting thru-passes.
Bergkamp scored like crazy and frequently
in beautiful fashion. He was the Eredivisie's top
goalscorer for three seasons in a row: 25 goals in
1990-1991, followed by 24 goals in 1991-1992 and 26 in
1992-1993. He was Holland's 'Player of the Year' in 1991 and
1992. With Ajax he won a Dutch championship (1990), two Dutch
KNVB Cups (1987, 1993), the European Cup Winners' Cup (1987)
and the UEFA Cup (1992). Towards the end of the 1992-1993
campaign Dennis Bergkamp and Wim Jonk (Ajax's 'golden
spine' of the early 1990s) announced their
departure from De Meer. Both players left
for Internazionale that summer. The Italian powerhouse paid 45
million Dutch guilders for the duo.
Bergkamp's two-season spell at the Giuseppe Meazza
(a.k.a. San Siro) is regarded as the least succesful
period of his career. He seemed unhappy in Milan, did
not fit into the defensive system of
his new employer and struggled on the San
Siro's terrible pitch, which was dying under the ground's
brand-new glass roof. He netted only 11 times in 52 Serie A
games in total, but - in retrospective - his career in
Italy wasn't that unsuccesful at all. The Inter fans surely
don't see it that way: Inter won the 1994 UEFA
Cup and Dennis Bergkamp was the top goalscorer of the
competition.
The summer of 1995 saw Bergkamp's second (and last) major
transfer: he moved to Highbury, North London, for a
transfer fee of 7.5 million English pounds. He would play
for Arsenal for no less than eleven seasons. Remarkably
enough, Arsenal is the only club Dennis Bergkamp never won
a European trophy with, but he brought 'The
Gunners' plenty of domestic glory: four English
championships, three F.A. Cups (including the historic 'double'
of 1998) and three English Super Cups. He was England's
'Player of the Year' in 1998. Remarkably enough for a
striker, Bergkamp was never injured for more than just a
few weeks in England and always had at least 25
league appearances per season, except in his very last:
this season he saw action in 'only' 24 of Arsenal's Premiership
games.
In total, Dennis Bergkamp played 553 league games for his
three clubs, in which he scored 201 goals. His number of
performances in UEFA competition isn't as high as it could have
been: he skipped many of Arsenal's European road games because
he was afraid of flying. English fans called him 'The
Non-Flying Dutchmen', 'Dennis the Menace' or even 'God'.
Dennis Bergkamp played for only three clubs in his
impressive, twenty-season career, but there is of course that
one team that plays in orange. In 79 appearances for Holland
Bergkamp netted 37 times. He was Holland's top goalscorer at
four major summer tournaments in a row: Euro 1992 (Sweden),
World Cup 1994 (United States), Euro 1996 (England) and
World Cup 1998 (France).
The stunning last minute strike that knocked out Argentina
in the quarter final of 1998 was probably his most famous goal
ever: Bergkamp perfectly controlled a long Frank de Boer
pass inside the penalty area, cut to the middle in one
fluent movement and hit the ball with the outside of
his right boot, curling it into the far top corner to
take Holland to the semis. It was just one out of many
Bergkamp goals that were - in the words of his former Ajax
coach, Louis van Gaal - "simply from another
planet."
"From another planet..." Even
Bergkamp himself can hardly
believe what he just did against Argentina, World Cup
1998.
Bergkamp played his last game for Holland in June 2000: the
semi-final of Euro 2000 in The Netherlands and Belgium. Some
people say it all went downhill for Holland after that...
The very, very last time Dennis Bergkamp will play for
Arsenal will be on 22 July, during his testimonial at
Arsenal's brand-new Emirates Stadium in North London. The two
clubs to play each other as a tribute to one of the most
modest and ordinary superstars that football ever saw, will of
course be the clubs he loves the most: Arsenal and Ajax. Johan
Cruyff and Marco van Basten will both be there to give Bergkamp
the hurrah he deserves. According to many they are
the three greatest football players ever to come out of The
Netherlands: Johan Cruyff, Marco van Basten and Dennis
Bergkamp. Today, the latter finished the work of
art that was his football career. And what a masterpiece it is.
(MP)
Source: Ajax.nl, VI.nl
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