The enduring genius of Dennis Bergkamp

There are a lot of ways to score a brilliant goal. You can dribble your way past half the side; you can beat the keeper from inside your own half; you can curl the perfect free-kick in from 35 yards. These are all practised by millions of hopeful dreamers worldwide everyday. Everyone knows what they would like to be able to do; it is the not being able to do it that is the problem.

But there is another way to score a great goal. Not only to score one which others could never execute. But to take it to the next level: to do what others could not even imagine. Scoring straight from the kick-off is the stuff of footballing wonder, but it must be attempted in hundreds of games of grass-roots football every Sunday.

Watch a video of Diego Maradona’s second goal against England in 1986. It is quite possibly the best goal ever scored in a football match, a fusion of pace, dribbling ability, fearlessness and a brilliant finish. You will wonder “how on earth did he do that?” Every footballer across the world harbours dreams of waltzing magisterially through the opposition.

Now watch Dennis Bergkamp’s goal against Newcastle in 2002. It is spectacular, but surely even the most one-eyed of Arsenal supporters could not argue that Maradona’s tour de force was inferior. But the reaction Bergkamp’s strike induces is subtly different. It is not merely ‘how did he do that?’ That is overshadowed by the more discerning question: ‘how did he think of that?’

Footballing superstars can dazzle with their dexterity on the ball; their speed; their apparent immunity, even relish, for pressure. Something altogether rarer is to astonish with their imagination. It takes a special player to execute what everyone is dreaming of. Bergkamp could succeed in what no-one else was dreaming.

In fact, he lacked two of those three attributes of the greats of the game, relatively speaking. His pace was pedestrian set against the likes of Thierry Henry. And he was susceptible to being wound up by less-skilled opponents under pressure, recording an embarrassing number of red cards.

In this sense he was very human: he could not be relied upon to win his side a crucial game – though he did so on countless occasions – as he could not even be relied upon to be on the pitch. But he was otherworldly in his vision, his comprehension of angles and intricacies and complete understanding of the range of creative possibilities the footballing field provides. They say sport is all in the mind: for Bergkamp it was, but in a very different sense.