From Mesut Ozil and Santi Cazorla to Martin Odegaard, Arsenal have been blessed with some wonderfully gifted players over the years.

But when it comes to first touch, one man stands above them all, at least according to club legend Ian Wright.

Wright was lucky enough to play alongside him for three years after he arrived from Inter Milan in 1995, and he clearly hasn’t forgotten what he was like as a player. When asked to name the best first touch in football history, he picked his old teammate ahead of the greatest player of all time.

Ian Wright picks Dennis Bergkamp over Lionel Messi

In an Instagram reel by The Overlap, Wright and Roy Keane were asked who had the best first touch in the history of the game. Keane went straight in with Lionel Messi, but after some deliberation, Wright backed Dennis Bergkamp.

Messi’s control is obviously ridiculously good, but Bergkamp was another who made the impossible look routine, and some of his most famous goals came down to a single touch.

There was the hat-trick at Leicester in 1997, finished off by bringing down a long ball, flicking it past one defender and calmly finishing. There was his stunning goal for the Netherlands against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup, when he killed Frank de Boer’s long pass dead in an instant before finishing. And of course there was the unforgettable pirouette against Newcastle in 2002, when he flicked the ball one way around Nikos Dabizas and went the other before slotting home. Even now, people still debate whether he meant it (he did!).

Bergkamp went on to help Arsenal win three league titles, including the Invincibles season in 2003/04, and he now has a statue outside the Emirates. For many Arsenal fans, Wright included, there will never be another player quite like him.