From Malek : new book
Hi Myles,
So I went ahead and bought TSF on your recommendation, and it certainly didn’t disappoint.
Here is an extract about Wenger that I think you and many members of the media and fans can learn from:
Arsène Wenger. The genius.
Wenger is this constant point. The man on the hill. Day after day, alone on the hill, the man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still … He is waiting for the football world to come around to him again. He is waiting for beauty and thinking to be the things that matter. He isn’t chasing anything else. Mourinho is out there somewhere in the rough and tumble. Whatever way teams are playing this year, Mourinho has his team playing that way, only better.
But Wenger isn’t down and dirty. Wenger doesn’t see that he needs another Vieira. He will wait for a time when teams don’t need a Vieira. Mourinho wants Robben? He sees he needs a Makélélé to protect him. ‘Show me what you have in the line of a Makélélé.’ Done.
Wenger will wait.
Wenger said recently he tried to sign Ángel Di María when he was 17 years old (Di María was 17, not Wenger). The Argentinian couldn’t get a work permit. Years later Wenger won’t pay Manchester United-type money for the player: £67 million or whatever the fuck it is.
The thought makes him sick. It should make Di María sick too. He would have grown at Arsenal. But maybe £60 million of that £67 million has gone off to Spain now to make Real Madrid stronger, to make it more insanely expensive to catch Real Madrid. Manchester United think they will catch Real Madrid?
Wenger sees the senselessness of that game, and he stands still and waits for the game to change. He discusses his thinking, and nobody listens. Every now and then the know-nothings in his own ground get together and sing, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
I am a Spurs fan and that embarrasses me. Here is something that can’t be said too often, and I make no apologies for saying it again. Arsène Wenger is a genius. Get out of his grid and leave him be. He knows what he is doing. It’s just a pity that the flak he has taken from sections of his own fans has bled into the media, though I guess that was unavoidable. And it is even more of a pity that some of Wenger’s most intriguing comments are routinely thrown away by journalists who are unwilling or unable to engage with the same footballing firmament he inhabits.
When Wenger leaves Arsenal behind they should build a library dedicated to him in north London in the style of dead American presidents. We could then take our time analysing his thoughts and influence instead of being bounced about by tabloid headlines.
Earlier this year the headline WENGER’S RED HERRINGS appeared in a national newspaper the day after a press conference in which Wenger had given one of the most impressive and pinpoint articulations of not only why foreign players come to this country in such great numbers, but also why certain countries are prone to producing a collection of strikers or defenders in the same generation. Most managers now know this to be fact, but only because Arsène Wenger had pointed it out.
Wenger has reached an age where it must frustrate the hell out of him that the footballing world has not yet understood how he views the game. He started out his managerial career giving nothing away, and has latterly dumbed down for the idiots in the media who simply don’t possess the in-depth knowledge of football required to understand just how deep you have to go to be successful. Despite the numerous deconstructions of Wenger’s footballing philosophy, most of those same journalists still stick to the business of pointing out that the spine of Arsenal’s team is weak. The spine of Arsenal’s team is anything but weak.
It used to cause much amusement among the footballing fraternity, and equal consternation among journalists, that whenever Patrick Vieira was sent off for Arsenal his manager always claimed to have had his gaze concentrated elsewhere. Wenger’s straight bat to interviewers over the years regularly antagonised the media, because Arsène Wenger doesn’t miss much; his observations on the game are as sharp as they are intelligent. I enjoy the musings of the Frenchman very much; he digests football and the ramifications of social demographics around the game in a way that feels like a breath of fresh air – even if, at the age of 66, he is anything but new to this.
His comments on the art of defending came almost at the expense and dignity of his own defenders. ‘Maybe because our societies are less aggressive in the football education system you cultivate less than intense desire. It’s more about the quality of the technique and maybe that creates less defenders,’ said Wenger in response to a reporter at an Arsenal press conference who questioned why it has been so difficult to recreate the solid Gunners defences of days gone by. ‘I believe as well that young boys practise well on quality pitches,’ he continued, ‘whereas before it was muddy and you could tackle and throw your body in – it created opportunities for defenders to work naturally on their defensive techniques. Today it’s all more standing up. There is less physical commitment because the quality of the pitches is much better.’
For reasons known only to themselves, the media didn’t buy that.
For me, though, it was an insight, the like of which most managers would never make public. Previously Wenger had made some shrewd remarks regarding the trend for South American strikers in today’s game – remarks that all but went under the radar. But I was very taken with them, not only because I’d just written the Guide to the Modern Game.
Wenger said, ‘Look across Europe and where are the strikers from? Many of them, at least 80 per cent, are from South America. Maybe it’s because in Europe street football has gone. In street football when you’re 10 years old, you want to play with 15-year-olds; then you have to prove you’re good, you have to fight and win impossible balls. When it’s all a bit more formalised, it’s less about developing your individual skill and fighting attitude. We’ve lost that a bit. Not every South American has that, but if you go back 30 or 40 years in England, life was tougher. Society has changed. We’re much more protective than we were 20 or 30 years ago. We have all become a bit softer.’
For me, those comments were gold dust.
They were an acute observation of football colliding with social demographics, both at home and abroad. They opened a window on to the level of detail that successful football clubs need to employ.
Arsenal signed Alexis Sánchez as a direct result of that thinking, and he proved to be the best player in the squad in 2014–15. At the same time Wenger was turning that shrewdness to his defence and, once again, he was dismissed. But the new approach explains the Belgium central defender Thomas Vermaelen’s departure from Arsenal. Despite the fans pointing out that his departure left the squad short-handed, it was the right decision: given his style of football Vermaelen should have been playing in Spain all along, where the league is slower.
Despite being bound by his mantra ‘we buy quality, not players to fill up our reserve team’ (something that is incredibly easy to do), I absolutely believe that Wenger is finally about to unveil the Arsenal team that so many pundits and fans have been asking him for.
Regarding Wenger’s views on the trends that can sometimes dictate transfer dealings at the top level, a journalist once asked me why it was that certain types of players come out of certain countries, almost at the same time.
In particular he wanted to know why it was that in recent times, given its size, a disproportionate number of top defenders have emerged from Serbia – players like Nemanja Vidić, Branislav Ivanović, Aleksandar Kolarov and Matija Nastasić. Could it be, he wondered, that the war which preceded the break-up of the former Yugoslavia had hardened players coming from the region?
He never did write an article on such a ‘red herring’ though.
And Wenger never wanted to talk about Vieira’s dismissals because no good could come of it. He has always preferred to talk about football at a level that few people understand, and so they dismiss it or ridicule what he says. ‘Professor Wenger’ they call him, winking at each other like fools.
Two weeks after my own column, musing on red herrings, appeared, Arsenal signed the Brazilian centre-half Gabriel Paulista from Valencia for £13.5 million. Rocket science it is not.
All that aside, and despite Wenger’s brilliance, as Tottenham fans, none of my friends ever wanted to come to watch me play against Arsenal. The first time I invited them was when we played at Highbury.
The Spurs fans in the group said that they’d rather throw themselves under a train than go anywhere near Highbury. And it is vicious. I’ve been at Tottenham v Arsenal derby matches and the hatred is intense. As a player I don’t identify with it, but the fans do. I only see 90 minutes of action, but for the fans the game is only a small part of the overall package of derby day football.
Myles says:
My copy of the book arrived this afternoon while I was at the gym.
I’d been waiting impatiently for delivery.
I came home at 5pm and started to read p.287 (about Swansea) immediately.
Then I got your email and saw you’ve beaten me to it.
Personally, I don’t think Arsenal now need a genius or a polymath in charge – they just need a good coach.
That will never happen. Wenger will stay long enough to beat Sir Alex’s 26 years at Manchester United.
His legacy will be his longevity and no manager in the next 80 years will come close to lasting that long at one club. And no manager in the 100 years that follow 2099 will come close either.
Wenger stayed after Manchester United beat him 8-2 and he stayed after Bayern thumped him 5-1 and if Spurs win 3-0 on Sunday he’ll tell us he’s got 11 injuries.
He’s already hinted that injuries could cost us the title. This after only 11 games!! Talk about getting your excuses in early!
His crafty and strategic release of old secret information is annoying to all the switched-on Gooners I know.
Di Maria is an improvisational antelope-footballer who has raw power. He would not have fitted into any of Wenger’s teams.
When it was Defoe or Reyes, he phoned Defoe and said: I’m sorry, I’ve decided to go with Reyes because he can do more with the ball and play in various positions, whereas you’re a specialist goalscorer.
He phoned up Carrick and said :Vieira has decided to stay.
But he should have signed Carrick anyway.
He sold a lot of crocks to Barcelona. And he had Reyes watched 47 times!!!
Jock Stein would have gone to see Reyes once and said, ” Duplication. I’d love the boy but he takes up the same positions on the field as Thierry does, so I won’t sign him.”
Brian Clough’s players had to go for a 50-50 balls. Clough would have watched Reyes once, bought him, and flogged the diva.
Clough was bold enough to give Trevor Francis a public bollocking. Trevor’s reply to that was to win two European Cups for Forest, with a bit of help from John Robertson and 9 others.
Wenger allowed his diva to glare daggers at Reyes and, allegedly, treat him like a peasant, while applauding every almost-good pass from the appalling Adebarndoor, who sucked up to Thierry and copied his habit of hiding behind defenders when a cross came over.
Memo 1 to TSF: Wenger wanted 3 players before the World Cup: Debuchy, Sanchez and Griezmann.
Memo 2 : ANR reader Alex Tenenbaum believes this Arsenal team could win the title if they had another manager.
Memo 3: If Danny Fiszman was still alive, Wenger would have been removed years ago.