Soccer Manager Profile – Arsene Wenger
With the benefit of hindsight, the Evening Standard headline writer who dreamed of ‘Arsène Who?’ headline in September 1996 must feel pretty silly now.
There can be few football club managers anywhere in the world who are as identified with their team and their style of play as Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger. In a profession where staying in a job for more than two years should qualify you for a testimonial match, the suave Frenchman has been at Arsenal for nearly 13 years. In any other country, without Sir Alex Ferguson, he would be by far the longest-serving manager.
During that time, Arsenal have won the Premier League three times and the FA Cup four times, as well as reaching the Champions League final twice and being runners-up in the UEFA Cup. And, throughout his tenure at the north London club, Wenger has produced kits that play football with royal flair and, at times, stunning beauty.
Arsene Wenger belongs to that tradition of coaches who were never great players and therefore started coaching relatively early in their lives. With degrees in both Engineering and Economics, and fluent in Spanish and German, as well as French and English, education was a priority for him as a young man and he did not become a professional with RC Strasbourg, his hometown. . until 1978, when he was 29 years old. He only played for the first team twelve times, in their title-winning 1978/79 season, including one game in the UEFA Cup.
Wenger’s first managerial role was with Nancy, when he was 34, and he followed up this relatively unsuccessful period by joining AS Monaco, ironically the team he made his first-team debut against for Strasbourg, in 1987. It was here where his career really began. blossom: he won the French league in his first season (1988) and the cup in 1991. He also brought players of the caliber of Glenn Hoddle, Jurgen Klinsmann and George Weah to play for the Principality. However, always wanting to broaden his education and his horizons, he moved to the Japanese J League to manage Grampus Eight for an 18-month period that brought the Emperor’s Cup to the club. In 1995, he became the first foreign manager to receive the Manager of the Year Trophy.
As soon as he joined Arsenal, Arsène Wenger set out to transform the face, not just of the Highbury club, but, indirectly, of all of English football. By completely transforming training methods and introducing entirely new dietary requirements, as well as using a variety of coaches and experts unprecedented in English football at the time, clubs across the country began to reassess their structures. Needless to say, he helped his cause when Arsenal won the League and FA Cup double in just his second season in charge.
Gradually, Wenger was able to turn what had been a favorably cautious Arsenal into a vibrant attacking force, without losing the ability to defend when necessary. The greatest achievement of his Premier League career, and one that will always be regarded as one of the greatest feats in history, was going through the entire 2003/04 campaign without losing a single defeat.
The key to all of Arsenal’s success under Wenger has been his talent for bringing young players into the first team and signing relatively unknown players and turning them into global superstars. Patrick Viera, Nicolas Anelka and Emmanuel Adebayor became Arsenal. Players like Anelka were bought for £500,000 and then sold for over £22 million!
The recent injury to striker Robin Van Persie, who had previously been extremely successful this season, has placed the onus on the Arsenal manager to find a similar player during the January transfer window. To outsiders, it looks as if the comparatively long period since the team’s last trophy, the FA Cup in 2005, is perhaps beginning to put much of the self-imposed pressure on the manager. Famous for not seeing controversial incidents involving his players, his recent uncharacteristic outburst at a press conference when asked about Theo Walcott’s fitness was followed by some bizarre comments about Didier Drogba not doing much in the game. league match in which they completely dominated Arsenal. defending. Finally, after the defeat in the quarter-finals of the League Cup against Manchester City, Wenger left through the Eastlands tunnel without shaking hands with Mark Hughes after a small ‘quarrel’ between the two during the game.
Despite this sometimes ungallant attitude, Arsène Wenger continues to produce football kits that can delight the neutral spectator with their passing, movement and fluidity. Already the longest-serving manager at Arsenal, Arsène Wenger, OBE and Freeman from the Islington district, is sure to bring a trophies or two to north London in the near future.