On Dennis Bergkamp…
Dennis was so, so good. It’s quite funny when I tell people just how good Dennis Bergkamp really was. Dennis is quite a private person. He’s not the type to go on talk shows and doesn’t constantly go on about how good he was. He’s quite modest. But I had the opportunity to see him up close and it’s more or less the same as it was for Paul Scholes. He made such brilliant passes. He had the vision. He had such control on the ball that it was unreal just how good he was. You would ask yourself how he could be so good on the ball and still so fit, because he was around 36, 37 years old by then. He did such special things, things I’d never seen before.
On Paul Scholes...
I played with him for a year. At that time, he was 38 but he did things during training that I had never seen before. He would produce passes that would make me ask why on earth he would be trying a pass like that, because I could not see the opening, and then – all of a sudden – it would all fall into place and I’d realise he had already anticipated that. He was always thinking three or four steps ahead. He would make passes that were so unbelievable that you would ask yourself how his brain could work so fast. That was Paul Scholes.
On Ryan Giggs...
I played with Giggs when he was 39. We were playing Real Madrid at Old Trafford and he covered more ground than anyone else – 13.5km. He just kept on going and going, and he played so well. For him, at that time, to be putting in such a performance on a physical level, mental level, tactical level and technical level, that was really special. We’re talking about a player who’d won everything. The drive he had in every training session, that set the bar at a very high level. If the likes of Giggs were doing yoga before training, doing his exercises after training, doing his stretches, playing with the ball, then that had to be the norm for everyone. To the outside world, Giggs appeared very quiet and reserved but, within the club, when Giggs said something then everybody would listen. He was our natural leader, together with a couple of others.
On Thierry Henry...
What springs to mind when I think about him are moments during training, such as the very distinctive way he would take penalties. You’d think he was going to strike the ball with his right, but then he would step over the ball and shoot with his left, sending the ball diagonally into the corner of the goal. And then everyone would try to do the same, but nobody would be able to pull it off. He had a certain trick, a certain way of standing, one fluid way of moving and there you go, the ball is in the back of the net again. He was very calm, very skilful, and what was funny was that he would always train with his laces undone. Hard to believe that you can do a whole training session with your laces undone, but Thierry could and he was just as fast and just as good.
