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#2 Dennis Bergkamp - Arsenal (1995-96)
The Arsenal of the early-mid ‘90s were a team that played a style of football that would be unrecognizable to the millions of new-generation ‘gooners’ (and neutrals) out there today. After the high of winning the First Division in ’90 (for the second time in three years), the Gunners, under George Graham, would become a team that averaged just 48 goals a season from ’92-’93 to ’94-’95. They really, really didn’t like going forward. As the terrace anthem went, their perfect game was essentially a “One-Nil to the Arsenal.”
In ’95-’96, Bruce Rioch was appointed manager after Graham’s controversy-surrounded exit and he was determined to change the tune of that anthem. So what was the first thing he did as Arsenal manager? He smashed the club’s transfer fee record to shell out £7.5 million for the brilliant, yet (back-then) mercurial young Dutch trequartista named Dennis Bergkamp. The Dutchman struggled initially, but gradually found his feet and grew in confidence as he adjusted to the rough and tumble of the English league.
It was the following season, though, that changed everything for the London club. Out went Rioch, in came the aptly named, and not-all-that-well-known Frenchman Arsène Wenger.
Bergkamp and Wenger; it was a match made in heaven. The player loved his manager for his professionalism, emphasis on discipline in training, attack-mindedness on the pitch and thirst for aesthetic perfection. The manager loved his player for pretty much the same reasons.
With the Dutch No. 10 as the attacking fulcrum of the side, Wenger would go on to build a team whose beautiful passing game would change the way football was played – and perceived - in England, and would utterly shake up the existing elite (read: Alex Ferguson).
With that silken touch of his, and a footballing brain that had few parallels, the non-flying Dutchman led Arsenal through three league titles, four FA Cups and arguably the single most dominant season in the history of the English football.
They don’t sing “One Nil to the Arsenal” anymore, do they?
