Everyone always remembers the stories regarding Dennis Bergkamp and flying. He was so scared of taking to the air that he insisted in making his own arrangements for travel to European games during his time at Arsenal. Apparently the fear started earlier in his career when he played in Italy. He was playing for Inter Milan at the time and the club used private planes to travel to away games, but as he puts it…
“They were those nasty little planes that stay in the clouds and shake all the time. When you looked out all you could see was white or grey. And there was hardly any space. It was so cramped it made me claustrophobic. You had absolutely no room to move and you just sat there shaking the entire trip. It made me feel so awful and I began to develop such an aversion to it that it suddenly dawned on me: ‘I don’t want to do this any more.’ It got so bad I would look up at the sky during away games to see what the weather was like. Were there any clouds coming? Sometimes I was preoccupied by the flight home while I was playing football. It was hell. The last straw was when we had an away game against Fiorentina. I saw that boneshaker with its propellers standing on the runway and I broke out in a cold sweat. And sure enough it was another disastrous flight.”
Anyway, the reason I am sharing this with you is because artist Ward Sutton who runs website “Sutton Impact” has recently designed some art for football magazine 8by8 to represent Berkamp’s fear of flying and the results are brilliant…
