A tribute

On July 22, Dennis Bergkamp will grace the pitch at Emirates stadium wearing the Arsenal shirt for the last time. After 11 years and over 100 goals for Arsenal, he is retiring.

He was, and will always be, the player that I liked to watch the most. I remember eagerly awaiting Saturday nights for live telecasts of Arsenal games. I remember that adrenaline and sense of expectation every time he stepped onto the pitch. And I remember the great goals he scored. Like his hat-trick against Leceister in 1997. Or like the one against Argentina during France'98, in the 89th minute of the semi-final, with the score at 1-1. And who could forget the one against Newcastle in 2002, where commentators were so amazed they wondered whether it was even intentional. The three goals he scored for his hat-trick in 1997 were ranked the top 3 goals of the month by BBC Match of the Day, a feat that has never been repeated.

But scoring goals was not the only aspect of Bergkamp's play. He had a deft touch, immaculate control and visionary passing. There have been numerous times when teammates like Marc Overmars, Patrick Kluivert, Nicolas Anelka, Fredrik Ljungberg and Thierry Henry have all benefitted from a defence splitting pass from Bergkamp. He made it all look so simple, and he conjured it up on such a regular basis that you were in danger of forgetting how much skill he possesed. There are numerous compilations of his many great goals. This is but one of them.

Although he featured mostly as a substitute in the later stages of his career at Arsenal, watching them will not be the same now that he's retired. It's been said that there are many great scorers of goals, but Bergkamp was a scorer of great goals. Some consider him the best foreign player ever to play in the English Premier League, and Thierry Henry has said that Bergkamp was the best strike partner he ever had.

Quiet and unassumming, it was easy to underestimate how skilled he truly was. So here's to the Non-Flying Dutchman, an Arsenal great - Dennis Bergkamp.