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Doctor Wenger's diagnosis
Sunday September 30, 2007
The Observer
Arsene Wenger spoke to France Football magazine last week about his misgivings over the departure from Arsenal of David Dein and Thierry Henry, took a dig at Chelsea in emphasising the importance of 'growing' a team rather than buying one, and assessed the health and ailments of English football - a game that is, in Wenger's view, 'at a crossroads'. Here we give British readers the first chance to read in full Wenger's frank and wide-ranging interview
Were you ever tempted to leave Arsenal when you found out your friend David Dein was leaving the board? Did you have doubts about staying?
I had my doubts, yes, at certain moments. You always have this type of thought when you come to the end of your contract. But where would I go? I mean, I've never entered into discussions with other clubs. David Dein leaving was something that was very difficult to accept at first, but as I've always said, I have a responsibility to a very young team, to players who I've brought here. I also have a responsibility in regard to the supporters and to the club who have always trusted me, away from the internal differences that there have been at the club. They've always had faith in me, letting me work how I want. It was a very difficult situation, which put me between David and the club a little bit. But even David is still, above all, an Arsenal fan. And he has always encouraged me to stay at the club.
Wasn't allowing Henry to go to Barcelona, paradoxically, a sign that you wanted to stay for the long term?
A paradox? No. Thierry was coming up to 30 years old [born 18 Aug, 1977]; he knew we were moving forward with a young team. He wasn't exactly sure of my plans about staying. He had come to a stage, where, as a forward he didn't have much time left. I understand that completely. He said to me: 'Coach, it's true we have a good team, it's also true we have a young team. It will become very strong, for sure, but me, I don't have the time to wait. Will it be strong next season, or the one after that? I don't know - but me, now, I've faced up to this decision.
And I said to him: 'But Thierry, I understand your problem completely. I think the team will be very strong, very soon but I understand why you ask the question.' So, he told me: 'I want to leave,' and that's why he left. With hindsight, it's true that David leaving had a bearing on Thierry's decision, made it easier in some way. Thierry's injuries also contributed to his leaving. He was less involved with the team and then, after a few games, you had to say, no, we are not going to win the league. The strength of a team depends on self-belief and once we were out of the title race, we lost our belief. I mean the belief the players have in themselves. Maybe, at a certain stage, Thierry thought the belief had gone.
You said recently that you couldn't really remember the teams you had managed before Arsenal. Was that a joke?
Oh no. I've had 10 intense years here [he looks for the right word but can't find it]... This is something I will not experience anywhere else. You know, every morning, every day there are so many things to get on with here. You have to get involved down to the last detail if you want to endure in the game, because there is such intensity around football in England. And you get so involved you end up forgetting where you've been before.
If you stay until the end of your contract, in 2011, you will have beaten the record held by George Allison [Arsenal manager 1934-47], for staying as manager at the club. Do you cast your eyes forward into the future and dream of the place you will have in Arsenal's history, alongside legends like Herbert Chapman?
No, not really. I look forward into the future, but not like this. I try to do the best I can, so that people will remember me fondly. I think yes, that I will have contributed to the history of the club, and it makes me extremely proud that people compare me to Chapman now, for he was an exceptional person and gave Arsenal such impetus. If you look at what he did in the context of that time, you would say it was out of this world. Unbelievable.
But how do you explain such longevity? In top-level European football, there are only two managers who have been in their job for 10 years - Sir Alex Ferguson and you. Is there a secret?
I don't know. I've had tremendous luck. I spent seven years at Monaco and now 11 here. I had the good fortune to find good people here, people I've trusted.
Do you believe in destiny?
Yes. For me, success in life is a happy turn of events that you make with your own attitude.
The club have just announced remarkable financial results. You are now the second-richest club in the world behind Real Madrid. Has the bet on the Emirates completely paid off?
Yes, without any doubt. The figures demonstrate that. We have entered another dimension. And when the debts are paid...
When exactly?
Between 20 and 23 years' time... but I believe that we will see the difference after the end of the 2008-09 season. We will have much greater resources at our disposal. My priority will be to keep the players I already have. Above all I believe in the virtues of a collective ethos and I believe that you can only maintain that and develop that if you have a culture to impart; a culture that you can pass from generation to generation. And these generations of players must be imbued with that culture to be able to pass it on. If the clubs only become a place to go to and a place to leave, then the club won't go very far. The love for our game must be passed on. I will stick to that policy strictly - but if, one day, there is a player who can take us up a level, and who costs a fortune, we can still buy him.
So continuity remains the order of the day?
Always.
It's not an accident that one of your former clubs, Nancy, is leading the French league, having the smallest turnover of players over the past three seasons.
[Visibly very interested] Well, that's a real lesson. There is such a thirst in this society for new things, that there is the tendency to throw things away because you want something else. You forget the magic of team sport stems also from the development of a group of players who come together for a certain length of time. For example, take this young Arsenal team... It has matured together. Which also means it has suffered together; it's important to share the pain. Think of the disappointments of last year and, in spite of all that, I felt they turned the corner. When we've been knocked back - walked into a head-wind, so to speak - we've never given up, we've always fought on. And I told myself, hang on, there is something growing here, a mental force that will astonish everyone even more when things are going well.
And you are staying to see where this strength will lead?
Yes.
At the end of the 1990s, faced with the inflation of transfer fees and salaries, you said English football was about to hit the wall. All transfer records have been beaten this summer; does this mean that crash has come and gone?
Money itself is not guilty; it's what the people do with it that can be bad. If the aim is to improve things while the players earn even more money, then that's fine. But if that sends us into an inflationary spiral which leads to debts and clubs collapsing, then that's a catastrophe. There are three factors in play... the wealth of the clubs themselves, the wealth produced by television and the wealth of the owner.
And doesn't that bother you?
What bothers me is when a club lives beyond its means. In some places you are seeing a return to financial trickery. A European law would not be a bad idea at all. But it would be much better if the people in charge of clubs were sensible enough so you didn't need to make laws. You end up creating organisations that control those who have to be controlled, which results in a bureaucratic society preventing any creativity. And that's not a solution either.
But aren't you worried when you see more and more clubs in the Premier League becoming the target of foreign investors who want an immediate return on their investment?
The real danger these days is the people who buy big clubs and re-finance their acquisition by borrowing money from banks and putting the debt on the club's books.
That's what the Glazers have done at Manchester United.
Yes, more or less: Man United generate so much income that they can get away with it, but their example, reproduced on a smaller scale, could be fatal. That is the biggest danger which is threatening English football today.
But isn't there a danger which threatens all of European football, namely the creation of a football world with two gears, with the English and several big clubs able to negotiate their TV rights for themselves, and everyone else left behind.
Yes, but I believe that is inevitable. You have to remember that the football world has always had several gears. Do you remember the time when English players went to France because they weren't getting paid as well here as over there, thanks to [TV channel] Canal Plus. And who complained about that in France at the time? No one. Right now, Romanians and Bulgarians can talk about a world of football with two gears if they compare their leagues to France's top division. Unless you decide tomorrow to create 53 European countries that have exactly the same population and resources, that will always exist.
But there is some money which has arrived in English football whose origins...
[He cuts in] That is indefensible. But unfortunately that also exists in the public sector and in banks.
One gets the feeling you are very attached to the moral dimension of football, including the way it is played.
Yes, and it's one of the things I'm most proud of. Arsenal has a tradition that I like to respect, but Arsenal also has moral qualities for which I feel responsible and which I defend in my team. Everyone has their values that they pass down to the generations that follow. That's why, when there was the Ashley Cole affair, I wanted someone at Chelsea to explain what their values were. I understand completely that they wanted to nick a player because he is one of the best. But what are their values?
Do you feel that English football is in the process of losing its soul?
A little, yes. Because the scale of things has changed. We've gone from owner-supporter to owner-businessman. Where the danger wasn't there before, it might be present today. But, that said, you can't condemn people just like that. You can have businessmen who respect perfectly English football's values. But in this regard, I can understand why there is worry now when it did not exist before. You used to have a boy who went and stood watching at games, who became a Liverpool fan and who after having succeeded in life, had a dream of buying 'his' club. Things have changed a lot since then.
But if Dr Wenger had to give a diagnosis of English football, what would it be?
English football is in extraordinary health. And I believe it has preserved its spirit - up to now - while improving its quality. It is now the football that is the most-watched and best-loved in the whole world. And now it finds itself handed an even greater responsibility: how to continue improving the quality without losing its soul. It's the challenge which we face today and it requires an enormous amount of vigilance.
And who has to be vigilant? The fans?
Of course. They are the guardians of football. They either come to matches or they don't and their verdict is usually right. They understand the game. I find it so fascinating that English football has realised how to keep progressing, and kept its uncalculated way of playing and kept the enthusiasm of its supporters, but still I think we have reached a crucial moment. The first signs of the game being over-exposed are being felt. The grounds are less full, there is saturation coverage on TV. There is a limit as to how much people can eat and digest, as much in terms of what they will pay as what they will watch.
Trevor Brooking... [Wenger interrupts: 'Whose intelligence and analysis I regard highly'] is worried about another aspect of English football at club level; only 37 per cent of players were English, among those who played the first day of this season.
[Very animated] That's really where we've arrived at a crossroads. Should the Premier League only try and improve its standard as much as possible to remain the best championship in the world or does it have a responsibility to produce players for the English national team? That is the real debate.
And where do you stand in this debate?
Me, I'm not part of this debate at all. I'm not a great fan of national teams. If Europe does something about foreign players, it would be to the detriment of national teams. Now Uefa is in a position where it is obliged to protect the national teams, seeing how big the audiences are on TV. But what interests the football fanatic in me [smiles] is whether the game gets better and better.
But that does not explain the reduction in the number of English players every season, especially in the big clubs? Are they not good enough or are they too expensive?
I think it's a fundamental problem of quality. But why aren't there good players from England? Someone has to do something. It's not normal that a kid coming from South Africa or Brazil is better than those here. It's what I'm trying to do with the academy at Arsenal... and it's that area that Brooking has analysed fairly and objectively: he says let's bring up some English kids who are as good as those who come from abroad. Those young English players will be of a good enough quality as soon as I go and see the French under-17s and I say to myself, no I'm not going to take that player there, because I have an English boy who is under 17 and as good as him. But one of the beautiful things in sport is being able to say: 'Why shouldn't a kid who is passionate and talented - and born in Zimbabwe - have the chance to play with the best footballers in the world?' It would be an injustice.
So morals still come into it?
Morals always come into it.
Sunday September 30, 2007
The Observer
Arsene Wenger spoke to France Football magazine last week about his misgivings over the departure from Arsenal of David Dein and Thierry Henry, took a dig at Chelsea in emphasising the importance of 'growing' a team rather than buying one, and assessed the health and ailments of English football - a game that is, in Wenger's view, 'at a crossroads'. Here we give British readers the first chance to read in full Wenger's frank and wide-ranging interview
Were you ever tempted to leave Arsenal when you found out your friend David Dein was leaving the board? Did you have doubts about staying?
I had my doubts, yes, at certain moments. You always have this type of thought when you come to the end of your contract. But where would I go? I mean, I've never entered into discussions with other clubs. David Dein leaving was something that was very difficult to accept at first, but as I've always said, I have a responsibility to a very young team, to players who I've brought here. I also have a responsibility in regard to the supporters and to the club who have always trusted me, away from the internal differences that there have been at the club. They've always had faith in me, letting me work how I want. It was a very difficult situation, which put me between David and the club a little bit. But even David is still, above all, an Arsenal fan. And he has always encouraged me to stay at the club.
Wasn't allowing Henry to go to Barcelona, paradoxically, a sign that you wanted to stay for the long term?
A paradox? No. Thierry was coming up to 30 years old [born 18 Aug, 1977]; he knew we were moving forward with a young team. He wasn't exactly sure of my plans about staying. He had come to a stage, where, as a forward he didn't have much time left. I understand that completely. He said to me: 'Coach, it's true we have a good team, it's also true we have a young team. It will become very strong, for sure, but me, I don't have the time to wait. Will it be strong next season, or the one after that? I don't know - but me, now, I've faced up to this decision.
And I said to him: 'But Thierry, I understand your problem completely. I think the team will be very strong, very soon but I understand why you ask the question.' So, he told me: 'I want to leave,' and that's why he left. With hindsight, it's true that David leaving had a bearing on Thierry's decision, made it easier in some way. Thierry's injuries also contributed to his leaving. He was less involved with the team and then, after a few games, you had to say, no, we are not going to win the league. The strength of a team depends on self-belief and once we were out of the title race, we lost our belief. I mean the belief the players have in themselves. Maybe, at a certain stage, Thierry thought the belief had gone.
You said recently that you couldn't really remember the teams you had managed before Arsenal. Was that a joke?
Oh no. I've had 10 intense years here [he looks for the right word but can't find it]... This is something I will not experience anywhere else. You know, every morning, every day there are so many things to get on with here. You have to get involved down to the last detail if you want to endure in the game, because there is such intensity around football in England. And you get so involved you end up forgetting where you've been before.
If you stay until the end of your contract, in 2011, you will have beaten the record held by George Allison [Arsenal manager 1934-47], for staying as manager at the club. Do you cast your eyes forward into the future and dream of the place you will have in Arsenal's history, alongside legends like Herbert Chapman?
No, not really. I look forward into the future, but not like this. I try to do the best I can, so that people will remember me fondly. I think yes, that I will have contributed to the history of the club, and it makes me extremely proud that people compare me to Chapman now, for he was an exceptional person and gave Arsenal such impetus. If you look at what he did in the context of that time, you would say it was out of this world. Unbelievable.
But how do you explain such longevity? In top-level European football, there are only two managers who have been in their job for 10 years - Sir Alex Ferguson and you. Is there a secret?
I don't know. I've had tremendous luck. I spent seven years at Monaco and now 11 here. I had the good fortune to find good people here, people I've trusted.
Do you believe in destiny?
Yes. For me, success in life is a happy turn of events that you make with your own attitude.
The club have just announced remarkable financial results. You are now the second-richest club in the world behind Real Madrid. Has the bet on the Emirates completely paid off?
Yes, without any doubt. The figures demonstrate that. We have entered another dimension. And when the debts are paid...
When exactly?
Between 20 and 23 years' time... but I believe that we will see the difference after the end of the 2008-09 season. We will have much greater resources at our disposal. My priority will be to keep the players I already have. Above all I believe in the virtues of a collective ethos and I believe that you can only maintain that and develop that if you have a culture to impart; a culture that you can pass from generation to generation. And these generations of players must be imbued with that culture to be able to pass it on. If the clubs only become a place to go to and a place to leave, then the club won't go very far. The love for our game must be passed on. I will stick to that policy strictly - but if, one day, there is a player who can take us up a level, and who costs a fortune, we can still buy him.
So continuity remains the order of the day?
Always.
It's not an accident that one of your former clubs, Nancy, is leading the French league, having the smallest turnover of players over the past three seasons.
[Visibly very interested] Well, that's a real lesson. There is such a thirst in this society for new things, that there is the tendency to throw things away because you want something else. You forget the magic of team sport stems also from the development of a group of players who come together for a certain length of time. For example, take this young Arsenal team... It has matured together. Which also means it has suffered together; it's important to share the pain. Think of the disappointments of last year and, in spite of all that, I felt they turned the corner. When we've been knocked back - walked into a head-wind, so to speak - we've never given up, we've always fought on. And I told myself, hang on, there is something growing here, a mental force that will astonish everyone even more when things are going well.
And you are staying to see where this strength will lead?
Yes.
At the end of the 1990s, faced with the inflation of transfer fees and salaries, you said English football was about to hit the wall. All transfer records have been beaten this summer; does this mean that crash has come and gone?
Money itself is not guilty; it's what the people do with it that can be bad. If the aim is to improve things while the players earn even more money, then that's fine. But if that sends us into an inflationary spiral which leads to debts and clubs collapsing, then that's a catastrophe. There are three factors in play... the wealth of the clubs themselves, the wealth produced by television and the wealth of the owner.
And doesn't that bother you?
What bothers me is when a club lives beyond its means. In some places you are seeing a return to financial trickery. A European law would not be a bad idea at all. But it would be much better if the people in charge of clubs were sensible enough so you didn't need to make laws. You end up creating organisations that control those who have to be controlled, which results in a bureaucratic society preventing any creativity. And that's not a solution either.
But aren't you worried when you see more and more clubs in the Premier League becoming the target of foreign investors who want an immediate return on their investment?
The real danger these days is the people who buy big clubs and re-finance their acquisition by borrowing money from banks and putting the debt on the club's books.
That's what the Glazers have done at Manchester United.
Yes, more or less: Man United generate so much income that they can get away with it, but their example, reproduced on a smaller scale, could be fatal. That is the biggest danger which is threatening English football today.
But isn't there a danger which threatens all of European football, namely the creation of a football world with two gears, with the English and several big clubs able to negotiate their TV rights for themselves, and everyone else left behind.
Yes, but I believe that is inevitable. You have to remember that the football world has always had several gears. Do you remember the time when English players went to France because they weren't getting paid as well here as over there, thanks to [TV channel] Canal Plus. And who complained about that in France at the time? No one. Right now, Romanians and Bulgarians can talk about a world of football with two gears if they compare their leagues to France's top division. Unless you decide tomorrow to create 53 European countries that have exactly the same population and resources, that will always exist.
But there is some money which has arrived in English football whose origins...
[He cuts in] That is indefensible. But unfortunately that also exists in the public sector and in banks.
One gets the feeling you are very attached to the moral dimension of football, including the way it is played.
Yes, and it's one of the things I'm most proud of. Arsenal has a tradition that I like to respect, but Arsenal also has moral qualities for which I feel responsible and which I defend in my team. Everyone has their values that they pass down to the generations that follow. That's why, when there was the Ashley Cole affair, I wanted someone at Chelsea to explain what their values were. I understand completely that they wanted to nick a player because he is one of the best. But what are their values?
Do you feel that English football is in the process of losing its soul?
A little, yes. Because the scale of things has changed. We've gone from owner-supporter to owner-businessman. Where the danger wasn't there before, it might be present today. But, that said, you can't condemn people just like that. You can have businessmen who respect perfectly English football's values. But in this regard, I can understand why there is worry now when it did not exist before. You used to have a boy who went and stood watching at games, who became a Liverpool fan and who after having succeeded in life, had a dream of buying 'his' club. Things have changed a lot since then.
But if Dr Wenger had to give a diagnosis of English football, what would it be?
English football is in extraordinary health. And I believe it has preserved its spirit - up to now - while improving its quality. It is now the football that is the most-watched and best-loved in the whole world. And now it finds itself handed an even greater responsibility: how to continue improving the quality without losing its soul. It's the challenge which we face today and it requires an enormous amount of vigilance.
And who has to be vigilant? The fans?
Of course. They are the guardians of football. They either come to matches or they don't and their verdict is usually right. They understand the game. I find it so fascinating that English football has realised how to keep progressing, and kept its uncalculated way of playing and kept the enthusiasm of its supporters, but still I think we have reached a crucial moment. The first signs of the game being over-exposed are being felt. The grounds are less full, there is saturation coverage on TV. There is a limit as to how much people can eat and digest, as much in terms of what they will pay as what they will watch.
Trevor Brooking... [Wenger interrupts: 'Whose intelligence and analysis I regard highly'] is worried about another aspect of English football at club level; only 37 per cent of players were English, among those who played the first day of this season.
[Very animated] That's really where we've arrived at a crossroads. Should the Premier League only try and improve its standard as much as possible to remain the best championship in the world or does it have a responsibility to produce players for the English national team? That is the real debate.
And where do you stand in this debate?
Me, I'm not part of this debate at all. I'm not a great fan of national teams. If Europe does something about foreign players, it would be to the detriment of national teams. Now Uefa is in a position where it is obliged to protect the national teams, seeing how big the audiences are on TV. But what interests the football fanatic in me [smiles] is whether the game gets better and better.
But that does not explain the reduction in the number of English players every season, especially in the big clubs? Are they not good enough or are they too expensive?
I think it's a fundamental problem of quality. But why aren't there good players from England? Someone has to do something. It's not normal that a kid coming from South Africa or Brazil is better than those here. It's what I'm trying to do with the academy at Arsenal... and it's that area that Brooking has analysed fairly and objectively: he says let's bring up some English kids who are as good as those who come from abroad. Those young English players will be of a good enough quality as soon as I go and see the French under-17s and I say to myself, no I'm not going to take that player there, because I have an English boy who is under 17 and as good as him. But one of the beautiful things in sport is being able to say: 'Why shouldn't a kid who is passionate and talented - and born in Zimbabwe - have the chance to play with the best footballers in the world?' It would be an injustice.
So morals still come into it?
Morals always come into it.
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