“It was August 1995, and Dennis Bergkamp had just played his first game for Arsenal at the club’s cosy, iconic Highbury Stadium, a friendly against his old club Internazionale. Afterwards, two Dutch journalists and I snuck into Highbury’s marble halls to wait for the great man. Bergkamp’s family was already there, hanging around while Dennis got changed. The father, an electrician, was standing with his hands folded behind his back studying framed pictures of Arsenal greats. He would have known most of them; like many Dutchmen of his generation, Bergkamp Sr. was an Anglophile, who named his youngest son after Manchester United hero Denis Law. The father and a Bergkamp brother greeted us shyly. This was not a loud family.” askmen