France ’98, Chewing Gum and DB10

The summer of 1998 changed my life.

Until that point in time, I was only vaguely acquainted with the beautiful game. I had watched bits and pieces of the 1994 World Cup, but with very little involvement, as I wasn’t familiar with any of the players or teams. The first time I watched football over a sustained period of time was two years later, during Euro ’96. The packed stadiums, the noisy fans and above all else, the heart-pounding, non-stop action (completely alien to someone who had grown up on cricket!) captured my young imagination.

At that time, the country’s leading sports magazine, ‘The Sportstar’, devoted a mere two pages, and sometimes not even that, to the world’s most popular sport. A column by Brian Glanville, or just a round up of the developments in the footballing world, usually restricted to England. Every week, as soon as I got my hands on the new issue, I would search out and feverishly devour those two pages, and then go on to spend the rest of the week thinking about what I’d read.

It was in one of those weekly doses of football news, at the beginning of the summer of ’98, that I read about how Arsenal, the challengers, under their sophisticated French manager Arsene Wenger (was the club named after him, I wondered, at the time) had dethroned the two time defending champions Manchester United, led by the ebullient Scot, Alex Ferguson and clinched the English Premier League title. I was a neutral then, and so this underdog victory thrilled me to bits. But I haven’t been a neutral ever since.

That was the singularity, the Big Bang, and after that, the football universe just exploded into life inside my head. ‘The Sportstar’ suddenly started running World Cup special issues to lead up to the footballing extravaganza that was to take place in France later that summer – The Holy Grail itself, the FIFA World Cup, dubbed France ‘98. After a few weeks of committed reading, I knew everything there was to know about the tournament – the teams, the managers, the superstars waiting to be crowned, the young turks looking to make an impression, the schedule, the venues, everything. I was ready for kick-off.

At the same time, a chewing gum company was running a World Cup related promotion, offering a free football card with every wad of a certain gum purchased. I spent a lot of time chewing gum that summer and soon, I had amassed 46 out of the 50 cards that were available for collection. On the front, there was the player’s image, and on the back, some information about him – his nationality, club, position, etc. I would gaze longingly at the images and then flip over the cards to read the names of the great clubs these superstars played for – Inter Milan, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Ajax – legendary names, with magnificent histories behind them.

Though I can’t find any of those cards now, the images printed on them will forever be embossed on my brain – Ronaldo was muscling his way through some hapless defence, Shearer had just given the ball a frightful thwack, Zidane was snarling away at some unfortunate soul and Schmeichel was screaming instructions at his defenders, his face contorted with rage. I was completely obsessed, staring at the cards for hours, weaving wondrous stories around these static but immortal images. However, even in the set, I had a few cards that I liked more than the others, and one in particular that I treasured over the rest of them. It featured a slightly built, blond Dutchman wearing a red and white shirt that said JVC on it. His name was Dennis Bergkamp.

The moment I flipped the Bergkamp card over, and found out that the club he played for was Arsenal; I think that’s when the real connection took place. I don’t quite remember whether I liked him because of the club or if my love for the club grew because of him, but either way, supporting any other club was absolutely out of the question now. France ‘98 finally kicked off, and I was overjoyed when the players I’d been seeing on cards all summer, suddenly appeared on my TV screen in the flesh, running around and kicking the ball. It was a thrill like nothing I’d ever felt before. Though all of the players excited me, the one player I looked forward to watching the most was the one on my favourite card – the peerless Bergkamp.

My admiration for the icy-cool assassin in orange rose to astronomical levels as the tournament progressed. His skill, elegance and intelligence captivated me, and in the dying minutes of the quarterfinal against Argentina, when he scored THAT goal, controlling the ball with ease, taking it inside Ayala and slotting it past Roa, I was up on my feet, clapping and screaming. For a player, to do that was difficult enough, but to do it at that crucial moment, at the business end of a knockout game in the world’s biggest tournament, that is the stuff schoolboy dreams are made of. And I was celebrating not only for the Netherlands that day, but also for Arsenal the following season. “We’ve Got Dennis Bergkamp, We’ve Got Dennis Bergkamp,” the Arsenal faithful would chant, for 11 glorious years.

For the Netherlands, he may have been Dennis Bergkamp, but for Arsenal, he was simply DB10. Blessed with quick feet, supernatural vision and exquisite technique, DB10 was Arsene Wenger’s template for the Arsenal teams he has built over the years. There was nothing he could not do on the football pitch – the little dinks, the eye-of-the-needle Hollywood passes, the curlers, the rockets, the tap-ins and the UNDESCRIBABLY BRILLIANT. And of course, as far as I was concerned, DB10 was the very foundation of my relationship with Arsenal. So it was that much more emotional for me when it was announced that the 2005-06 season would be his last, that he would be retiring from the game at the end of it. I just couldn’t believe that DB10 would be no more. 

In mid-2006, he finally packed his bags and left for home, to enjoy the pleasures of retirement, bringing to an end one of the most glorious chapters in Arsenal’s history, not just in terms of trophies won but also in terms of the football that was played. He may be gone now, never again to wear the famous red and white, but one thing is for certain. For Arsenal fans the world over, especially this one in Chennai, DB10 will live forever.