Stillness and Speed: My Story (3 page)

2

‘H
E WOULD NEVER
say it himself, but he
is
Dutch football,’ says Dennis. He is talking about the key
mentor of his career. Johan Cruyff spotted Dennis’s talent when he was in the Ajax Youth team, then played Yoda to his Luke Skywalker and guided him to higher things, often in surprising and
mysterious ways. Cruyff has done the same for others, too, of course, influencing most of the great talents of modern Dutch football (and plenty of Spanish and Danish ones, too). More importantly,
says Dennis, he shaped the footballing mindset of the nation.

‘All the Dutch players who are adventurers – and most of us are – get it a bit from Johan. That’s his personality and philosophy and it became the Dutch way of playing.
Of course, we adjust to the country or the club where we are. But we still have the Dutch mentality. We want to be someone, to do something our way. We’re the kind of people who say: “I
know what I’m talking about, and I know what I want, and I see what I can do.” That can be seen as a bit arrogant, but it’s not really. Cruyff is the biggest one in that.
He’s not arrogant. He just knows what he’s talking about. Maybe it’s a Dutch thing, or an Amsterdam thing as well, but Johan really was the biggest influence. Because his career
was extreme, he was a pioneer. He’s been there –
really
been there – and he’s done it all. And no one did it before he did. He was fantastic as a player and
fantastic as a coach, so we listen to him.’

For many years the relationship between Cruyff and Bergkamp was that of master and pupil. These days they are on a more equal footing. In 2010, Johan persuaded Dennis to join him in what became
an extraordinary and controversial coup by ex-players which seized control at Ajax. Football had never seen anything quite like it. As we shall see in Chapter 21, they succeeded and now work
closely together, restructuring the club and its youth system in order for it once more to be the envy of the world. Dennis: ‘We didn’t see each other much for a very long time, and
then suddenly we were meeting very frequently. That changed things. When he was my manager, I used the formal
u
[like
vous
in French]. For me he was always “Mr
Cruyff”. But when you work together and fight side-by-side for the same cause and everyone around you calls him “Johan”, then you inevitably try that yourself, too. It was
peculiar for me, because I still even address my mother as
u
. Suddenly, I heard myself calling him “Johan”. I was startled. But it has become increasingly normal. I
wouldn’t say Cruyff and I are now friends, but he has certainly become Johan for me.’

It used to be said that Marco van Basten was the closest thing Cruyff had to an anointed successor. These days, along with Pep Guardiola, his most esteemed protégé from Barcelona,
Bergkamp probably fits the bill. The pair first met one afternoon after Johan had returned to Ajax as a player after eight years away in Spain and the USA. Dennis was playing for the Under-14s at
the old Youth academy ground behind the stadium when Johan suddenly appeared and took over from the trainer during shooting practice. Dennis was awestruck: ‘That really does something to you.
I felt an even stronger urge to prove myself. I had a powerful sense that I really had to perform at that moment.’

* * *

W
AS
C
RUYFF YOUR
idol?

Dennis: ‘I wouldn’t put it that way. I didn’t have any idols. Cruyff was just one of the best footballers in the world, light-years ahead of us.’ It still seems to work
that way. When former top players like Frank de Boer and Dennis lead training sessions, members of the current Ajax first time seem to try a little harder, keen to impress their predecessors.

Later, when he was your coach, Johan must have taught you a lot. What sort of things would he tell you?

‘Actually we didn’t talk a great deal. Just a few words here and there, in passing, on the way to the pitch. That was enough. I still need only a few words from Johan. He had to
speak much more to others, he had to give them instructions. He knew what to expect from me, he knew I was a quiet, modest lad, but I was daring on the pitch. He gave me a lot of confidence by just
saying: “Do what you’re good at.” It’s similar to Wenger, who never said: “Do this, do that.” With Johan it was more like: “What you did in the Youth, just
do the same here, and the players behind you will help you, as well. Jan Wouters and Frank Rijkaard will help you.” When we did a circle drill, for example, he’d tell other people to
make more space or move to the left or right, but he never had comments for me, and that gave me the sense that I was doing well. It’s been like that throughout my career. None of my managers
had to tell me to change the way I play.’

T
HE CONCEPT OF A
reticent Cruyff is hard to imagine. As a kid at Ajax in the mid-1960s, he drove older team-mates to distraction by offering unwanted
advice on what they were doing wrong. What annoyed them most was having to admit he was usually right. Nicknamed ‘Jopie’, Cruyff went on to become the chattiest and bossiest of captains
at Ajax, Barcelona and the Dutch national team, forever pointing, shouting, cajoling and giving detailed instructions to everyone, including referees. Thanks to his frequent appearances on radio
and television, Cruyff became perhaps the most quoted Dutchman ever. He once explained why he didn’t believe in religion: ‘In Spain all twenty-two players make the sign of the cross
before they enter the pitch – if it worked all matches would end in a draw’. Cruyff not only loves to talk, he developed a language of his own. In Holland, he is almost as well known
now for his paradoxical, Yogi Berra-like axioms and left-field
aperçus
as for his football: ‘Coincidence is logical’ . . . ‘Before I make a mistake, I don’t
make that mistake’ . . . ‘Sometimes something’s got to happen before something is going to happen’ . . . ‘Every disadvantage has its advantage’. But perhaps his
most revealing line came at the end of a combative TV interview: ‘If I’d wanted you to understand, I’d have explained it better.’

Dennis and Johan were always on the same wavelength: like Dick Halloran and his grandmother in
The Shining
, they seemed to be able to have entire conversations without ever opening
their mouths.

Cruyff’s coaching methods were unusual: a provocative, high-wire style based in part on the ‘conflict model’ he learned from his own guru, Rinus Michels. Michels used to raise
energy and adrenaline levels among his players by provoking an argument. Cruyff, for complex psychological reasons linked perhaps to the early death of his father, also seemed to believe that
adversity stimulated learning. As coach, he often needled and criticised his best players about their technique or attitude, expecting to get a creative, positive response. Being ordinary was never
acceptable. Cruyff was relentless in his demand for improvement and excellence. Dennis observes: ‘He is very instinctive. He really sees a lot of things, and, yes, he’s got a dominating
character as well, an urge to control things. But that’s Total Football. You want to see everything, and Johan does see everything. If you are a Total Footballer, you can’t be just
doing your own thing. You have to have the whole picture on the pitch and outside as well.’

Likewise, Cruyff admired Dennis’s skills and intelligence: ‘Bergkamp is one of those people I have a special football relationship with. He belongs to a group of special guys, with
Van Basten, Van’t Schip and Rijkaard. Intelligent guys. And that’s what it’s all about, because you play football with your head, and your legs are there to help you. If you
don’t use your head, using your feet won’t be sufficient. Why does a player have to chase the ball? Because he started running too late. You have to pay attention, use your brain and
find the right position. If you get to the ball late, it means you chose the wrong position. Bergkamp was never late.’

That very appreciation of his qualities meant the maestro felt entitled to play mind games with the youngster – for his own benefit. Cruyff explains: ‘We wanted to promote Dennis,
but he had to toughen up a bit first.’ As a teenager Dennis was technically and tactically good enough to reach the A1s, the highest junior side. But his trainers considered him too timid for
the first team. One afternoon Cruyff’s assistant, Tonny Bruins Slot, gave Dennis the bad news: he was to be demoted to the A2s for a month because of his ‘lack of motivation’.
Furthermore, he would not play in his normal right-wing position there but as a full-back. Dennis was bewildered. ‘I didn’t get it. Lack of motivation? Perhaps my game didn’t look
like I was working flat out, but I was.’ The blow hit hard, and he never forgot the humiliation. ‘It must have really affected me. Later I often wondered: did Cruyff do it on purpose?
Did he want to provoke me?’

Cruyff laughs. That was indeed the strategy. ‘Yes, of course we did that to provoke Dennis. We didn’t demote him because of any shortcoming and it also had nothing to do with his
attitude. It was just to boost his resilience. If you put a good player in a lower team, he has to play against but also
alongside
less talented players. The game is more physical and that
makes it harder for him. We also made it more difficult by playing him in a different position. If you play someone like Bergkamp at right-back with a right-winger in front of him who does nothing
to help defend, then he experiences first-hand what it’s like for the guy behind him when he’s the winger and lets his man get away. He really learns from that. Or you play him as a
centre-forward and make sure he keeps receiving high crosses from the wings. Then he really has to stick his little head where it hurts. That makes him tougher.’

Cruyff also wanted to see how Bergkamp would react to being the best player in an ordinary team. ‘When you’re the best player you have more time, and if you have more time you need
to use it wisely, helping other players, talking to them, coaching them, leading them.’

Dennis served his time in the A2s, then returned to the A1s. Then came another shock. On 13 December 1986, at half-time in a game against Amsterdam club DWS, his coach brusquely informed him:
‘I’m taking you off.’ Dennis was upset because he knew he was playing well. Then, grinning, the coach added: ‘I’m taking you off because tomorrow you’re in the
first team.’

Dennis had been 12 years old when Cruyff returned from semi-retirement to play for Ajax in 1981. The nation’s greatest-ever player had become rich with Barcelona, then lost all his money
in a scam involving a pig farm. Confounding those who doubted his ability to stage a comeback, he scored a brilliant lobbed goal in his first match back, then began a revolution whose consequences
for world football are still being felt. The Dutch game at the time was in a sorry state. The Total Football generation had faded away after the 1978 World Cup. Holland were thoroughly outplayed by
the Germans at the 1980 Euros and would fail even to qualify for the next three major tournaments. A dreary new ‘realism’ (a.k.a. defensive football) took hold across the Netherlands,
and at Ajax the lessons and doctrines of spatially sophisticated football had been so thoroughly forgotten that the great young hope of the day was the Brazilian-style individualist Gerald
Vanenburg, a classic dribbler of the very old school.

As colleague and teacher, Cruyff now galvanised a generation and reignited the fire of what we now call ‘the Dutch style’. Cruyff was a huge influence on young Dutch players at Ajax
like Frank Rijkaard, Marco van Basten, Sonny Silooy, John van’t Schip, and John Bosman. He also left his mark on the club’s Danes, Jan Molby, Soren Lerby and Jesper Olsen, helping to
set the fuse for the remarkable ‘Danish Dynamite’ team which played Total Football at the 1986 World Cup. At the end of the 1982-83 season, Ajax chairman Ton Harmsen declined to renew
Cruyff’s playing contract because he thought the maestro was ‘too old’ to perform well enough to pull big crowds to justify his salary. Furious, Cruyff signed for rivals Feyenoord
and won them the Double in his only season there (passing on his wisdom and attitude to his young team-mate Ruud Gullit into the bargain). Harmsen vowed that Cruyff would ‘never set foot in
here again’. Having made his point, Cruyff finally hung up his boots at the end of the 1983-84 season and retired to his house in the village of Vinkeveen, south of Amsterdam. Restless, he
was soon looking for a way into management, preferably with Ajax, the only club in Holland he cared about. That the club already had a rather good coach, Aad de Mos, the chairman hated him, and
Cruyff didn’t even have a coaching badge (as Dutch FA rules said he must) were the merest of difficulties. His two best mates in the team, Van’t Schip and Van Basten, agitated on
Cruyff’s behalf, undermined de Mos and he was finally sacked. The media was on Cruyff’s side, too, and Harmsen was forced to appoint him as manager in 1985. To get round Dutch FA
regulations, Cruyff was called ‘technical director’. A model for Ajax takeovers, to be put into effect again nearly 30 years later, had been established.

While Dennis was patiently working his way through the youth ranks, Johan went straight into revolutionary mode, quickly building a dazzling new version of the old Total Football, or, as he puts
it now, ‘working according to my own philosophy’. And what is that? ‘Throwing the opposition into chaos. That’s football. If you get past your man, you throw the opposition
into chaos. Creating a one-man advantage using positional play has the same effect. If you don’t get past your man, if you don’t get that extra man advantage, then the opposition stays
organised and nothing happens. The one-man advantage
is
Ajax football.’

Highlights of some of the games Ajax played at that time are on YouTube: treat yourself by looking them up. To say that Cruyff got his team playing 4-3-3 would be to miss the point. What counted
was not the formation but the state of mind. His daring young side pressed, passed and moved in beguiling patterns high up the field. Rijkaard, Ronald Koeman, Van’t Schip and Van Basten were
imperious. Silky veteran Arnold Muhren, lured from Manchester United, rarely misplaced a pass, and goalkeeper Stanley Menzo played so far from his line he sometimes seemed to be an auxiliary
midfielder. In Cruyff’s first season, Ajax scored 120 goals, Van Basten getting 37 of them in just 26 games. The team had off days as well, of course, but when they were good they were
spectacular. A couple of years earlier Van Basten had led an 8-2 demolition of Feyenoord. Now rugby-esque scorelines – 9-0, 8-1, 6-0 – became routine against lesser teams. After his
first season, when technical midfielders Koeman and Gerald Vanenburg followed the money to PSV, Cruyff counter-intuitively replaced them with two gnarly defenders, Danny Blind and Jan Wouters.
Having revamped the Ajax Youth system, he also promoted youngsters like Aron Winter and the Witschge brothers, Robbie and Richard. The team, thus stabilised, played even better than before.