Free Stillness and Speed: My Story by Dennis Bergkamp

feeling, on instinct. And that was one of them. And, you know, maybe it was the right decision in the end. I didn’t enjoy it, but I learned a lot at Inter. It was the making of me in a way. I
would never have had the career I did at Arsenal if I hadn’t been there. You mentioned that I could have gone to Barcelona. Well, yes, I sort of knew Johan [Cruyff] wanted me to go there. He
would drop hints about it. But he never said anything directly, so I was like “OK, if you don’t ask . . .” Anyway, at that time Spain had the rule of only four foreign players for
each club, and Romario, Koeman and Hristo Stoichkov were already at Bar celona so I’d have been the fourth one. But that wasn’t really why I chose Inter. For a long time my heart was
set on Italy because it was absolutely the best football country then. Italy, Italy, Italy . . . it’s all I was thinking about.
    ‘In the end, it came down to a choice between Juventus and Inter. My agent and my brother were talking to Juve and phoned me from Turin and said: “Dennis, we really don’t have
a good feeling.” I said: “Well, you two guys are my eyes and ears so I believe you, I trust you.” So I chose Inter.’
    Didn’t you think to ask the AC Milan Dutch guys for advice? You were close enough to Rijkaard and Van Basten from Ajax and Gullit from the national team . . .
    ‘I didn’t feel I could pick up the phone and call them. More importantly, I didn’t want to. I was thinking: “I can go for the comfortable options of Milan, or Barcelona,
or I can make my own adventure.” I wanted to do something new, go somewhere no one from Ajax had been. Guys like Johan and Frank and Marco want to let you make your own decisions. They want
to help you, but if you want to make the decision yourself, that’s better, even if it’s the wrong decision.’
    So you follow your intuition. You go to Inter and the rest is . . . well, just misery, isn’t it?
    ‘Not only. I really loved the country. And my personal life couldn’t have been better. We’d [Henrita and I] just got married and it felt like a long honeymoon. We had a
beautiful house outside Milan, in a small town called Civate looking over a lake. Brilliant! The guy I rented the house off was fantastic, a real Inter fan. He’d sold pots and pans out of his
own garage and built up the business to be a big company. I like those success stories of people who work hard for their money. And we saw that house and loved it. Later we asked him why he
hadn’t given the house to his daughter. And he said: “I don’t want to give it to that son-in-law!” [
Laughs
] We had a good feeling with each other. He was really
normal and he talked about Inter in a nice way. He was very frustrated with their way of playing as well, so we bonded a little bit. And I remember we had to make up a contract for the rent, and he
said: “No, no, you fill in the figure.” Crazy! We had another agreement as well. He had an old Ferrari in his garage, which I admired because I like cars. So he said: “If you
score twenty goals, you can have it.” That was at the beginning of the first season. I thought: “I’ve just come from Holland with twenty-five goals, yeah, I think I can do that
here.” I never got near the car, of course. No chance!’
    The first season wasn’t so bad. You scored some good goals and lots of penalties and everyone says you were the best player in the UEFA Cup. But you weren’t exactly surrounded by
love.
    ‘Yeah, in the first season we won the UEFA Cup, though the stadium was never full and no one seemed to think those games meant much. But yeah, generally, it was . . . You know, many times
I said to my wife: “We should have done it the other way around, first England and then Italy. That would have worked better.” As it was, I went from the comfort zone of Ajax, which is
all playful, lots of creativity, warmth and young people to this boring, business-like atmosphere. Suddenly it’s