Gazidis should save his breath – Wenger will not back down
By publicly rejecting the chief executive’s suggestion to bring in a director of football, the Arsenal manager has made clear there will be no change while he is in charge
If one imagines an Arsène Wenger for the new millennium, in his early 30s now, after a modest playing career, with a brilliant eye for a talented footballer, contacts at clubs all over France, an economics graduate and multilingual, what path would he end up taking today?
He would wish first to be a manager, like so many others in a new era of successful coaches who did not play consistently at the top – but what if that was not possible? If one was assessing his early résumé now with a view to a career in the game, it would be hard to ignore the fact that he looks like perfect material for a director of football.
And of course that was in part exactly what Wenger was in his first decade at Arsenal, one of the greatest recruiters the English game has ever known, bringing new kinds of players from new, rich recruiting grounds. There was Patrick Vieira, Nicolas Anelka, Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars, Freddie Ljungberg, Kanu, Thierry Henry, Lauren, Robert Pirès – an absurdly high return on investment even before we get to Cesc Fàbregas, Kolo Touré and Robin van Persie.
Two decades since his arrival and Wenger’s reaction to the suggestion that the club might appoint a director of football was the response of a man who knows that he set the standard in the discipline of recruitment 20 years ago, and has watched as much of football has adopted his best practice. Wenger could easily have sidestepped the issue of a new director of football at Arsenal, or defused it as gently as he does so many of the impossible questions thrown his way. adopted by