MOMENTS, MEMORIES and MADNESS with STEVE CAMERON: Falling in love with footy, and becoming an official Gooner

To be honest…

I didn’t know Dennis Bergkamp from a run-of-the-mill Bulgarian weightlifter.

Told that he was Dutch, I probably would have guessed that perhaps Dennis might be the best-known of those gentlemen who peddle tulips alongside various canals in Amsterdam.

Looking back, it’s amazing how little I knew or understood about the thrilling world of soccer — or football, as it’s known by almost all of the planet’s 7.8 billion people.

Ah, but I was yanked out of my ignorance so, SO dramatically.

This was December of 2001, and I was about 18 months into a fascinating gig with a magazine called the Sports Business Journal.

The publication, which is based in Charlotte, offered material that was pretty much what you’d guess from the title.

I had accepted a job with the SBJ the previous summer, despite the fact that living in the South held very little appeal.

IN THE end, it was the specific role dangling in front of me that made the difference.

I’d been offered the “venues” beat, essentially the task of learning everything about the business side of any and all stadia, arenas and other facilities — which sounded pretty cool.

And it was.

In those days, the SBJ focused almost exclusively on venues in the United States, and you might recall that the stretch from the mid-1990s to about 2010 witnessed a sports building boom in this country.

So, that was me, meeting all the industry’s movers and shakers, and covering everything from engineering mega-companies to the serious bidding over concessions deals.

It was fascinating to hop around the country, checking out stadia under construction.

Or maybe to tour a facility that was just finished, with owners anxious to show off their new palaces.

We were rocking.

SOMETIME in late autumn, the boss summoned me to our underground parking garage.

John Genzale, the founding editor of the Sports Business Journal, was always interested in new and exciting ideas, and he had been thinking big.

Oh, why the garage?

John was a smoker, and that was the only place on the premises that he could light up.

I mean, there were no more than about three or four months that you could step outside in Carolina without becoming drenched in sweat, so John used to stroll past my desk and simply say…

“Downstairs.”

On this particular morning, John was fired up.

He already had added something to the magazine portfolio, arranging for a series of industry conferences that we sponsored and hosted.

That is to say, I hosted.

“Hey, after you’re done with the thing in Pittsburgh,” John said, “what would you think if we did a conference in Europe?”

John knew EXACTLY what I’d think, since I’d been advocating for the magazine to establish a footprint overseas.

I assumed no one in management was paying attention, but it turned out John had been thinking along the same lines for quite a while.

“Let’s do a conference in London,” he said. “You and I can go over there together.”

SO, THAT is how I came to learn about Dennis Bergkamp – and fall in love with footy.

Not to mention…

Arsenal Football Club.

The conference was terrific (and the start of serious international business for the magazine), and we took a side trip to Scotland.

John had always wanted to see the Highlands, so we used a few spare days and went up to Inverness by train.

That trip had a pretty deep effect on me, specifically, since I wound up living in Scotland just three years later.

But that December outing with John was simply a holiday, as far as we knew.

The most dramatic outing during our stay in the UK, a football game, was basically just an accident.

We were winding up a day at the conference, when a couple of facility managers from Italy mentioned that they had tickets to a match that very night.

It was a Champions League duel between English contender Arsenal from north London, and Italian champion Juventus — an historic club based in Torino (Turin).

Ironically, I wound up traveling to see Juve’s new stadium project on magazine business a year or so later.

The club was taking advantage of the fact that Torino would be hosting the 2006 Winter Olympics.

BACK TO London in 2001…

I wasn’t really all that excited about spending an evening at that match, in part because of all you heard about soccer hooligans beating on each other’s heads.

In truth, that rough stuff happened in the 1980s, and has been mostly — but not quite entirely — wiped out by various forces in British society.

Massive ticket prices had something to do with it.

In any event, I was persuaded to attend the Arsenal-Juventus game.

Here’s another look into the future, this peek far more immediate…

Arsenal was in the process of building a new stadium just a few blocks from historic Highbury, so club officials convinced John and me to climb a cold and slippery ladder to the roof — and take a look at the new place from a million scary feet up.

That was the day after the Juve match, however, and by then I was a football junkie — and an official Gooner, a diehard Arse supporter.

The Champions League duel was fantastic.

You could feel electricity in the air, unlike most pro sports events in the U.S.

Arsenal had phenomenal talent in those days (Thierry Henry comes immediately to mind), and Bergkamp set up two goals with passes that seemed to defy all logic.

He clearly knew where everyone else was moving on the pitch — despite play occurring in a blur of speed — and somehow he could slip the ball through a mob of players, as if by magic.

Dennis set up one goal with a backheel pass that he executed while looking in a completely opposite direction.

I’d had no idea the sport was so spectacular.

So…

Yes, I was wearing an Arsenal scarf on our flight back across the Atlantic.

Quite a trip…

I became a Gooner forever, and wound up living in Scotland.

Great meeting in the parking garage, I’d say.

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.

Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published each Tuesday.