Bergkamp turns down Arsenal offer

(GSM) – Dennis Bergkamp recently said he won’t become a head coach in the near future but that doesn’t mean that the Arsenal fans will never be able to welcome back their hero in London.

Bergkamp, currently coaching some youth teams at Ajax, won’t exclude a return to the club where he enjoyed the most successful period of his career.

“They want me to come, but it’s too early for that.”

However, a coaching job in England is still possible in the future, Bergkamp told Dutch magazine Sportweek.

“I can see myself working with Arsene Wenger,” the former attacker said.

“We share out honesty, humor, vision, how to manage people and how to work with young players. It all worked out. There have been some hints. From him, from Arsenal, from the media. They want me to come.”

The fact that the French coach didn’t award Bergkamp any playing time in the Champions League final of 2006 hasn’t put a dent in the friendship between Wenger and the Dutchman.

“He looks frigid, like a professor, but the decisions he makes as a human being adorn him. I know he wanted to give me some playing time. But the game went the way it went. Lehmann was sent off, so Wenger had to sent on a substitute early in the game, then the score suddenly changed from 1-0 to 1-2, you couldn’t predict it.

“We discussed it in advance. There could only be 18 man on the squad. He said ‘Of course you’re on the squad, but you’ll start on the bench.’ Then I realised: he knows this is a very special game for me. I never regretted the fact that I wasn’t on the pitch. I did thought about the possible fairytale ending but in that case you want to start, be decisive and play at the top of your game. But I was already 37, at the end of my career.”