‘Not having VAR is a disaster for a league which wants to be ahead’
Premier League needs to change, warns Wenger Manager demands more chances for young players
Arsene Wenger’s 22-year reign at Arsenal ends at Huddersfield today but his love affair with English football endures as he departs with characteristic words of concern for the future of the Premier League.
The Frenchman arrived at Arsenal as an unknown, cherry-picked from Japanese football by eagle-eyed chief executive David Dein in 1996, but is now a staunch Anglophile, who cares deeply about the future of the country’s national sport.
And his departing words of warning are based in a fear that the Premier League could fall victim of its own suc- cess and the England team suffer unless they dare to innovate and adapt.
Wenger sees football’s rulers gripped by fear of change and topping his reasoning is the Premier League’s failure to accept the introduction of VAR next season and short-termism preventing clubs from playing more young English players.
“The Premier League has done really well, but they are a little bit a prisoner now of the fact they have that superiority and are reluctant to change,” he said.
“The innovating factor for me is important. They missed the first step with VAR. They should have it next season because Europe is moving to it, Fifa is moving to it. That is definitely a terrible decision that they have made. I don’t know who voted for that but it was a disaster for a league which wants to be ahead of everybody else.”
While remaining an advocate of most of the changes he has seen in over two decades at the helm of developments, he claimed progress has come at a cost for Gareth Southgate’s World Cup side.
Wenger said: “I would give more chances to young players. For managers it is more difficult today to play young players than it ever has been before. Why? Because the level has gone up. There is no patience any more and if you look at benches in the Premier League, you have international players but never young players.
“English football has invested a lot of money in developing young players. Where we have all the problems is that last step to get them from youth level to the Premier League.
“When you see now how they do in the Under-19s, Under-20s, Under-17s, they make good results and it’s because they are better prepared. But when it comes to the final step, the Germans are better. They play young players [in first teams]. They are behind England at 17, 18, 19, but after they are better because they get a chance to play.”
Wenger’s solution is to encourage players to go abroad for first-team football, but he fears his suggestion will be ignored.
He explained: “The problem I found with English players was that they don’t like to go out of their country. When I said to a player, and we had Beveren [Arsenal’s feeder club], ‘Go to Beveren. Belgium is a good championship, play a year there’. ‘No, I prefer to play a year at a Championship club’.”
Wenger conceded that his international recruitment policy, copied throughout the game, could be partly responsible.
He recalled: “When I arrived here you had no scouts in France from England. I could pick a French player from anywhere. Now, you go to a Championship game in France and there are 15, 20 scouts from England. So there is competition now from everywhere – Spain, Poland, everywhere.”
The one thing he does not want at Huddersfield, however, is to finish like arch Manchester United rival Alex Ferguson – with a 5-5 draw. “No,” he smiled, “I want to win 6-5!”