The Wenger Decade tributes have been deserved.
And predictable in what they say : he has modernised the English game, played stylish attacking football, signed gifted kids cheaply, acquired bargains from AC Milan and Juventus, and sold players to Barcelona and Real Madrid for big bucks.
Everyone agrees, Arsene has been marvellous for Arsenal, their best-ever manager
A couple of things they didn’t say.
One, Arsenal has been great for Arsene as well.
Arsenal has given him ten years of stability in his life and the opportunity to work in a lucrative league in a country where many people, like him, are football-mad.
The club has given him complete control. The directors worship him. He’s bought £160 million worth of players and sold £115 million worth of players and won seven major trophies and put AFC in the Champions League every year, and the Emirates Stadium would have been impossible without him.
In his career, he has been in control at Monaco, at Nagoya, at Arsenal. He thinks : building teams and winning games is hard enough without interference, so I will only work where I have compete control of the playing side, where I can be manager, coach, sporting director, chief scout and sole spokeman.
When George Graham was sacked on February 21, 1995, the directors vowed that no Arsenal manager must be allowed that much power again.
But Arsene Wenger quickly accrued far more power than George ever had. He used it wisely.
And he had several things in common with George.
One was : My way or the highway. John Hartson was everything that Wenger did not like in a player ; too belligerent, too many cards, too static, wrong body shape, a target man who encouraged his back four to kick it long.
Wenger removed that option ASAP and never signed another target man. It was : Do it my way, quick forward passing on the floor.
However (and nobody has ever written this), if he had kept Hartson, he could have won the title in his first season.
Secondly, the tributes did not mention that the George Graham back five allowed Arsene Wenger to concentrate on the attacking side of the game, which is what he is interested in.
Overall, he has been remarkably consistent in the way he has applied his ideas, remarkably true to the mission statement he made in 1996, which I made the intro chapter to my book :
PROLOGUE: MISSION STATEMENT
Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood stands on a small stage covered in red cloth, welcoming television crews, journalists, radio reporters and photographers to a hospitality suite in the Clock End at Highbury.
Unusually, it is a Sunday morning. We are seven matches into the season and the date is the twenty-second of September 1996. Hill-Wood is about to introduce the new Arsenal manager, who has flown in overnight from Japan.
This press conference is a big moment, one the fans and the media have been wondering about for weeks. Everyone wants to know: who is this Arsene Wenger?
Is he a hard case like George Graham?
A blarney merchant like Terry Neill?
A tactician like Don Howe?
A chequebook cowboy like Ron Atkinson?
A brilliant bully like Brian Clough?
An inarticulate genius judge of horseflesh like Bob Paisley?
A combative workaholic like Alex Ferguson?
The main problem at Arsenal is an ageing team. The team will have to change and at the same time continue to be successful. We do not know how long the period of transition will last nor how expensive or difficult it will be. The challenge is a fundamental one which all modern businesses have to face: the management of change.
A tall, slim Frenchman walks in and steps up on to the dais. Arsene Wenger is, we quickly realise, a completely different animal.
He is not like George Graham, not like Bruce Rioch, not like anybody we have seen before. He has an ambassadorial presence. He is firm, calm, diplomatic and very articulate, handling a variety of testing questions with great fluency. He is authoritative, but in a friendly, accessible way. He seems to be a man of great analytical intelligence. Everything he says makes sense and he does not waste many words. It is a flawless performance, and while it is a valuable press conference in the sense that he answers each question honestly and clearly, without the usual evasions, it is something else too, something like a political or military briefing, almost a lecture. He has given us a mission statement.
Clearly, Arsene Wenger is a gentleman rather than a well-groomed bully on his best behaviour. A gentleman is someone who can be trusted. A gentleman’s word is his bond. A gentleman has good manners and is public-spirited. A gentleman has firm principles and unimpeachable integrity. A gentleman has an aura of charm and intelligence. A gentleman, above all, is someone who can demonstrate grace under pressure, and Arsene Wenger will need that quality in his new job.
Today’s football managers are powerful figures, household names, superstars of the biggest sport in the world, ringmasters who try to control forty players and fifty reporters, but they are also lion-tamers who put their heads in the lion’s mouth twice a week.
That is pressure. They live and die by decisions made in front of 40,000 people and twelve television cameras. It is a highly nerve-racking job, but it is well paid. And somebody has to do it.
They have also become, in this Sky-hyped age of the Premiership, vital news providers.
The managers want to be liked by the viewers and listeners and readers and they need the approval of the reporters who transmit their predictions, reactions and excuses. Arsene Wenger knows he has to walk a fine line, knows he has to be very careful about what he says while appearing to be friendly, reasonable and candid.
If reporters like him they will tend to ignore his mistakes and the occasions when he contradicts himself. However, his words must have substance, especially topical substance, because he is feeding a machine which services a huge appetite for news about football clubs and star players.
And if that tightrope is not tricky enough to walk, he has to talk informatively about his players knowing that they will see and hear and read what he has said. Every manager uses the media to wind up a player at times, to challenge him, to punish him, to remind him of his responsibilities.
So what did Wenger say at that inaugural press conference that so impressed everyone? First of all he said that he had been frustrated by the delay in securing his release from Nagoya Grampus Eight, who had now hired Portuguese coach Carlos Queiroz. `I had the feeling that I put Arsenal in an awkward situation. It was a very difficult situation for the board, which was severely attacked. Fortunately, the team has done very well and is in a good position. That makes me quite confident for the future.’
He had been offered the job over a month before, in the second week of August, and had not taken long to make up his mind. `I love English football because the roots of football are here. I like the spirit of the games, and at Arsenal I like the appearance of the club and the potential of the club. It’s another step in my personal development. I’ve worked and been successful in France for ten years, and I’ve been successful in Japan for two years, where I had to create something from nothing and had to adapt personally. To go to another country with a football club at a high level and be successful is a very big challenge for me.’
He admitted that he had also been approached by the FA.
`Before I had contact with Arsenal Glenn Hoddle had contacted me. When he took over the international team he asked me if I would take over as technical director of the FA. I asked him for time to think it over, and we agreed that I would call him back in August. But then I had contact from Arsenal. I told Glenn I would take over at Arsenal because I love to work on the field. I am not at an age where I would like to work in administration. So I chose Arsenal because I think it’s better for me. I think I know all the best players in England. I know all the international players, I know all the clubs, I know how the teams play, the organisation. Some of the grounds I don’t know, but generally I think I know what’s going on here. I was always interested when I started my career. I went every year to other countries to see how they were working and I think I have a good knowledge of international football.’
Press reports had already been linking him with South American stars like Leonardo and Ortega, and with German midfielder Matthias Sammer, but he denied an interest in any of them.
`The people who write those stories have good imagination – and expensive imagination. There’s no truth in them at all. I have some ideas about players I might sign, but nothing concrete.When you speak about players you want you always end up paying double what they’re worth, and many times you don’t make the agreement.’ When asked about new acquisition Patrick Vieira, he said, `I think he’s a great midfielder because he’s a fighter. He’s able to win the ball. And he’s a very good passer.’ He emphasised that Vieira, at the time an under-21 international, would be a great asset to the French national team in the future.
He was asked if he had a message for the Arsenal fans.
`My aspiration is that when Arsenal fans come here they are happy. It’s up to the players and me to present the game that they love. Also, I want the fans to help us in difficult periods of the season when they are inside the gates. Because no team can be attractive and fantastic for the whole season.’ He added that the absence of a manager in recent weeks had not caused a crisis in morale at the club – quite the opposite. `I was very surprised. I read all the press but every time I had contact with the board they were very strong and very determined.
`I have the feeling today that the team also reacted very well. So the crisis was around the club but never inside the club. I feel only one pressure, my inside pressure to win and to do well. When you are in a job as long as I’ve been now, you get used to the outside pressure. The only important pressure is what you feel from yourself, to be strong, to work hard, to make an attractive game, and to go on and win the game. All the rest, I’m used to it now. Of course at the beginning of my career it was not easy, but these kind of pressures are much easier now.’
He said he hoped to marry continental sophistication with the red-blooded fighting spirit of English football, giving Arsenal the best of both worlds.
`That’s my challenge. But I think English football has changed in the last four or five years. Everything is internationalised today. Could you imagine four years ago that Ravanelli and Juninho would play in Middlesbrough? The way of playing has changed very quickly, and I don’t see a big difference now between English football and the game in other countries. In Euro 96, England played more technically than some other countries, more of a passing game. I think the difference is very small now.’
The new boss continued to preach evolution rather than revolution.
`I want the team to develop what they are doing now. Football made of movement, a collective game of quick passing and quick movement. I think we will have to improve, and that will be the main target of every player, individually and collectively. I would like to bring in my collective touch, the way I see things. You can never say in advance how long it will take, but for the players to get used to my way of working will take two months.
‘I like real, modern football. That means compact lines, of zones, of quick, coordinated movements with a good technique. I play 4-4-2 if I can. It is very adaptable because you can change easily to 4-3-3 or 4-5-1. It is really strange because in Europe people are going to the English system of 4-4-2 and England is going the other way. But with three at the back you have to come a little deeper, and I like offensive football and winning the ball early. It is much more difficult to pressurise up the field with three at the back.
`There are two challenges. The first is for me to adapt to the team and the qualities of English players. The second is for them to adapt to my ideas. I want to improve the squad with my ideas, and if we really need somebody, I’ll try to bring somebody in. I don’t want to destroy the strengths of the team, the spirit, the mental strength they showed in a difficult period before I arrived. There are many talented players here. But after I assess them maybe we’ll bring one or two young players in.’
Football is much bigger in England than in France, a point he acknowledged.
`The game is important here. You have the feeling that you’re working with something that is part of the life of the people. That’s very exciting. People carry on supporting, from father to son, and you really live with your club, and that gives you the feeling that you always have somebody behind you. Arsenal did well in the recent past, and also in the distant past. I think I can help this club be successful and take a further step forward. And after me somebody else will come in and help the club even more. The life of a club never stops. Also, the spirit of the players. They are always able to fight to reverse games. You can see a game where one team is leading 2-0, but anything can happen here because the players have a generosity that you don’t find in Latin countries.’
Wenger is a personal friend of the vice-chairman, David Dein, so he was asked whether he thought, if things did not work out, Dein would get rid of him.
`If you are a friend or not, when things don’t work well you will always have problems. I don’t think that will affect our friendship. The work is one thing and the friendship is another. What is important on one side has nothing to do with the friendship. The work is the work, and it has to be effective. If I’m here it’s not because I’m a friend of the vice-chairman of Arsenal. It’s because the board of Arsenal think I have the right qualities to work here, and it’s up to me to prove they made the right choice.’ He denied, however, that he was under pressure to be an instant success. `I want to win every game. That’s the only important pressure for me. Instant success is demanded everywhere, it’s the same all over the world. I believe you have to work with your ideas, do quality work, and after that hope for the best.’
For Arsenal to introduce a new manager in this way on such a day was unprecedented. Peter Hill-Wood, a gracious old-Etonian banker, apologised for interrupting our Sunday, thanked us for coming, and invited us to stay for lunch. I chatted briefly with David Dein and his friend Danny Fiszman, and then joined assistant manager Pat Rice for lunch. We talked about Spurs and Gerry Francis.
Overall, Arsene Wenger came over as a serious technocrat who knew he was accepting a serious responsibility. He was everything we wanted him to be and more than we expected.
His opening address was memorable because he somehow hit on exactly the right mixture of realism, optimism and humility. When it was all over we could safely point to a number of qualities in the new manager. We could say that Wenger was straightforward (`I love English football’), very ambitious (`I want to win every game’), a traditionalist (`the life of a club never stops’), idealistic (`my aspiration is that when Arsenal fans come here they are happy’) and wholly comfortable when it came to accepting full responsibility (`it’s up to the players and me to present the game that they love’).
He was also pragmatic (`I don’t want to destroy the strengths of the team, the spirit, the mental strength they showed in a difficult period before I arrived’), an experienced manager confident about his qualifications for the job (`I want to improve the squad with my ideas’).
Luckily for Wenger, midfielder Patrick Vieira, whom Arsenal had signed on his recommendation, had already played twice by mid-September and shown his class.
The twenty-year-old, who was signed from AC Milan for £3.5 million, had come on as a substitute for Ray Parlour in a 4-1 demolition of Sheffield Wednesday, then made a superb first start in a 2-0 victory at Middlesbrough which hoisted Arsenal up to third place in the table. Arsenal fans had long craved somebody who could pass the ball in midfield, so they welcomed Vieira. The powerful, skilful, exciting number four was exactly what Arsenal needed.
Had any of those fans been able to ask the new manager one question that day, it would probably have been, `Please sir, can you sign six more like Vieira?’ David Dein had sent videos of each game by courier to Japan and Wenger had addressed the team’s biggest and most long-standing problem even before he had arrived.
Although his arrival seemed to have been messy, there was a feeling that it might turn out to be remarkably well timed. He did not have to follow George Graham directly, and since Chelsea now had Ruud Gullit at the helm, it seemed less risky, less radical, for Arsenal to hire a foreign coach. In terms of British football, and in terms of Arsenal’s history, that Sunday morning conference proved to be a milestone, a signpost pointing to a promising future.
Listening to Arsene Wenger that day, you could not help thinking: this guy is different class. If this guy is half as good at talking to footballers as he is at talking to us then Alex Ferguson will have a serious rival again. George Graham built a winning team, but this guy might go one step beyond that. This guy might build a great team, a magnificent team, a thrilling team that can win everything in sight: the Premier League, the FA Cup, the European Champions Cup, the Grand National, the Olympic Games, everything !
For another excerpt from The Professor, clickwww.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/product-description/0753510979/ref=dp_nav_2/026-9647029-5945234