Free Stillness and Speed: My Story by Dennis Bergkamp Page B

were Massimo Paganin and Paolo Tramezzani.’
    But they were very junior. Maybe we should find people you didn’t get on with, like Ruben Sosa.
    ‘Get their side of the story, you mean? That could be interesting. We need an opinion, don’t we?’
    They could be hostile. They could say: ‘Dennis was rubbish, his attitude was wrong, he should have done this and that . . .’
    ‘I don’t mind, as long as I get a chance to react.’
    You can react all you like. It’s your book!
    ‘In that case, yes, you could get comments, but not silly ones. If you want honest opinions, you’ll more likely get them from someone like Bagnoli. He’s serious and
intelligent. Yes, it might be interesting. I sort of know what they expected from me and what they wanted. But there is my truth, too. They have their truth and I have mine. Maybe they can come
together somehow.’
    II. Their Truth
    O SVALDO B AGNOLI , the coach of Dennis’s first year at Inter is 78 years old now and lives in Verona. He is puzzled that
Dennis is interested to hear his point of view. ‘I’m surprised he remembers me. I was with him for less than a year.’
    What do you remember about Dennis Bergkamp?
    Bagnoli: ‘Oh, a
bravo ragazzo
! A good guy who maybe couldn’t find his way in Milan and that’s probably why he didn’t play to his level.’
    Couldn’t find his way in football or culturally?
    ‘I think even he cannot answer this question because it is very difficult to say. I remember for example his problems with planes. He didn’t want to travel by plane. I was the same.
I didn’t like travelling by plane either, but I did it. But somehow this was Dennis’s way of being: “I don’t like it. I don’t do it.”’
    Before Dennis and Wim Jonk joined the club, the president promised them that Inter would change and play attacking football like AC Milan. You were the coach, so Pellegrini must have
discussed this with you
. . .
    ‘No. I never heard about this and never talked about it. Every Wednesday I used to go to dinner at his house, but there was never anything like that.’
    When he appointed you as coach, did Pellegrini give you targets or instructions like ‘win the scudetto’ or ‘play like Milan’?
    ‘I think I was chosen by Inter because at that time I was fifty-six or fifty-seven years old and I had a reputation as a man with a lot of experience who was very calm, so I could work in
an atmosphere of a club which had not won for a long time. I had won a
scudetto
with Verona so they thought I could run a difficult situation. But nobody asked me to win something, because
it was very difficult in those years. Inter was not a winning team. In my first season we came second. That was a good year. But in the second year I was sacked twelve games from the end of the
season, and in the twelve games after I left Inter won just one point. They were at risk of being relegated.’
    So Pellegrini never asked you to change the playing style?
    ‘No, there was nothing like that. But sometimes his wife asked me to write things down. Later, I found out she was an expert on handwriting and she studied my way of writing my signature.
I don’t exclude the possibility that my sacking depended on my signature! I’m the kind of trainer who is very loyal to the club, loyal to the firm. That’s how I was in my nine
years with Verona and with Genoa, too. I always had a very good relationship with the people of the club. So it happened that we might discuss about a player. Is this one or that one better than
another? But I always used to accept with no problem all the choices of the club. In the case of Bergkamp, he was chosen by the club. I didn’t know anything about the fact that they were
trying to buy him. He arrived and for me it was OK.’
    At Verona you were known as a rather attacking coach. But at Inter you used the classic Italian defensive style. What was your approach?
    ‘I was never a trainer who imposed my way of playing. Usually,