Famously a non-flying Dutchman.
You don’t need me to tell you just how good Dennis Bergkamp was.
Widely regarded as ‘a scorer of great goals’ rather than a great goalscorer, the Arsenal man showed this more than ever in the 1997/98 season.
On route to Arsenal’s title winning campaign, Arsene Wenger’s first at the club, the Dutchman pulled off a typical Bergkamp madness™.
Picking up the nickname ‘the Iceman’, Bergkamp bagged 16 league goals for the Gunners that season, including three absolute peaches in the month of August.
We’re talking the kind of goals that would make Paul Merson choke on his coronation chicken sandwich during Soccer Saturday.
Bergkamp’s strikes were so good that not only did he win Match of the Day’s Goal of the Month award for August, but also finished in second AND third place.
Still to this day he’s the only player to hold the accolade.
Here is the Bergkamp soft porn in all it’s glory…
Following his retirement at the end of the 2006/07 season, Bergkamp declared that his award winning strike against Leicester was the best he scored during his career.
“It was one of those occasions when everything went exactly as I planned it in the second before it happened – the movement, the control, the finish”, the Dutchman said.
The fact he doesn’t even consider *that* Newcastle goal to be the best of his career says it all.
Going onto bag 105 goals in 394 appearances for the Gunners, it’s safe to say he returned his £7million transfer fee, and then some.
Signing Bergkamp was just about the only good thing Bruce Rioch ever did as Arsenal manager.
Not a bad way to be remembered, in all fairness.
Bergkamp gave Alex Song the ACTUAL most embarrassing moment of his career…
Voters posted their entries for Goal of the Month to a PO box ‘back in the day.’
This method should probably be brought back nowadays as a means of preventing Arsenal fans from hijacking the vote.
Just imagine if Arsenal Twitter was around during Bergkamp’s day…
Stuart Pearce famously called him a “waste of money.”
Walking in a Bergkamp wonderland.
