Arsène Wenger: ‘I try to read everything that helps me understand human beings’
Arsène Wenger often imagines what he will say to God when he dies. In most of these exchanges, God asks Wenger to justify his time on Earth, how he gave meaning to his own life and to others. “I tried to win football matches!” Wenger will explain. God looks at him, sceptical: “That’s all?” Wenger goes on: winning matches is really hard to do. If you do your job well, you bring joy to millions, a collective euphoria and catharsis. And if you don’t… At this point Wenger snaps back to reality.
“Sometimes I feel I’m scared for having only done football in my life,” says Wenger, who is 70, on a video call from Zurich. “So, when I speak to God, it’s a bit pretentious. It’s just that if God exists and they have a test to see if you go to hell or to heaven, it might look ridiculous to only have dedicated your life to winning football games. And that’s why I came up with that idea. I feel sometimes it could feel meaningless that you dedicated your whole life to that.”
Wenger was born in 1949, grew up in a village in Alsace, eastern France, and had an early insight into human psychologywatching the patrons of the bistro that his parents ran. “Alcohol, brawling, violence, everything that used to scare or disgust me as a child,” he recalls in My Life in Red and White, his new autobiography. He became a hard-grafting midfielder, eventually playing for Strasbourg in France’s top division, but he always thought deeply, even obsessively, about the game, and in his early 30s he moved organically into coaching, first at Cannes and Nancy then Monaco and in Japan at Nagoya Grampus Eight.
In 1996, Wenger, tall, whip-thin, like a sixth-former in a suit, entered the British consciousness when he was announced by Arsenal as the fourth foreign manager in the history of topdivision English football (the previous three had not fared well). He held the position for 22 years until 2018, during which time Arsenal won three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups. While his great rival at Manchester United, Alex Ferguson, motivated players with the famed “hairdryer treatment”, Wenger became known for “invisible” training: a holistic approach that went beyond fitness and ball skills and overhauled the lifestyle and nutrition of the squad. Players were given instruction on how to chew their food; the traditional half-time boost of a chocolate bar and fizzy drink was swapped for a sugar lump with caffeine drops on it.
Underpinning everything was Wenger’s profound, all-consuming desire to win – and win with style. In My Life in Red and White, he describes football and Arsenal as “a matter of life and death” – not once, but three times. Does he really mean that? “I would say football at a top-level experience is like that,” Wenger replies. “Because if it’s not a matter of life or death, it doesn’t mean enough to you and you don’t survive a long time in the job.”
Sometimes Wenger’s competitiveness spilled over, notably in his epic, bristling clashes with first Ferguson and then Chelsea’s José Mourinho. But anyone expecting mud-slinging from his autobiography has misread Wenger. There’s mention of Ferguson’s “crushing authority” on English football, but he nimbly sidesteps anything more damning; Mourinho isn’t mentioned once.“I didn’t want it to be a book of revenge or frustration or of injustice,” he says. “I didn’t want to show: ‘ Well, he did that to me’ – all these things. But youknow what happened in your life and you have to rise above that. I wanted it to be a positive experience of life. You cannot have the life I’ve had until now and be negative.”
More than that, Wenger wants to make clear that, when the dust settled, there was always respect. “Every manager goes through good and bad periods. They are human beings,” he says. “It’s difficult to measure the quality of our job. For example, last season, Liverpool won the championship and [Jürgen] Klopp got praised for that. And rightly so. But you must say the guy at Sheffield United [Chris Wilder,whose team finished ninth] has done a great job as well. Who has done a better job? You don’t know.”
Wenger has not returned to the sidelines since leaving Arsenal, but as of November he has brought characteristic rigour to his role as Fifa’s head of Global Football Development. He separated from his wife, Annie Brosterhous, in 2015; their daughter Léa is finishing a doctorate in neuroscience at Cambridge University. He divides his time between London, Paris and Fifa’s base in Zurich, often staying in hotels, and he admits that the hardest part of Covid-19 for him was when most of the leagues around the world were suspended. “I don’t know why but football games are my life and I don’t think that’s ever going to change,” he says. “So I missed it very much.”
Still, there is a lightness to Wenger this afternoon: his face often crinkles into that distinctive he-he-he laugh; no question is off-limits. It feels in contrast to his final years at Arsenal, when he often appeared embattled, forced relentlessly to justify why he hadn’t stepped aside yet, annoyed that his work to balance Arsenal’s performances on the pitch with the financial strictures of moving to the new Emirates Stadium wasn’t being acknowledged. Scratch the surface and those frustrations still exist, and certainly Wenger is not about to renounce what some consider to be his most hubristic flaw: that his unbudging convictions about how football should be played were ultimately his undoing at Arsenal.
“Arsenal had a style of play that was criticised, but there was a style of play,” he says. “I can understand that people want only to win, but you need to have the desire to transform the team expression into art. When the supporter wakes up in the morning, he has to think: ‘Oh, maybe I’ll have a fantastic experience today!’ He wants to win the game but as well to see something beautiful.”
We received a record number of reader questions for this You Ask the Questions interview – more than 800 – and many unsolicited outpourings of admiration and affection (from north London, but also Slovenia, Peru and India) for how Wenger’s ethos has affected people’s lives. He is clearly touched when I read some of these to him – perhaps he will slip those in when he has that chat with God.
Questions from cultural figures Mark Strong Actor
Having managed Arsenal for 22 years, what was the single most important thing you learned? And what advice would you give your younger self if you were taking over again today?
What I learned is that the way we behaved created huge popularity all over the world. And it made me realise that in sport, football especially, the values we carried through were respected all over the world. It was not only about winning: of course, what created the popular image of Arsenal was the fact that we won the championships, but it was more than that. People respect clubs for the values as well, for the identity of the club.
And the second part, what advice would I give my younger self? Do better! [Laughs] Do better than what you did!
Diane Abbott Politican
What motivated you: the fear of losing, the joy of winning, or the beautiful game itself?
All of that. But I must say, I have intrinsic motivation that means there’s something within me that pushed me to try to improve. And the fact that I believe I am at the service of something bigger than me. After that, of course, we’re all a mixture of hating to lose and willing to win. But I would say that the hate of defeat is dominant. That creates big scars in your heart. One day, if somebody opens my heart, I think every defeat is in there.
Michael Rosen Author
Do you think taking part in football at your level teaches a person a form of philosophy?
Yes, I would say without a form of philosophy you cannot work at that level. You are the guide. And the guide needs first of all to know where he goes, no? That’s why it’s important to have a clear idea of what you want from people, and that you can share that in a clear way with your players. Why do players listen to some people and not to others? I don’t know. But you need a clear philosophy, because it gives you a consistency as well. You always have to know: why am I here? Why do I do that? That gives you strength when it’s tough.
Nines Rapper
A lot of artists (like me) started supporting Arsenal because of the style of football and because we were fielding black players. Were you aware at the time that you were making the fan base more diverse and influencing a new generation?
I wanted to show the whole world that, yes, what is important in life is how good you are. That we have to rise above all the other problems. I always say that sport is a great meritocracy. It just is based on merit, on competence. So I was happy to contribute to it if that happened. For me, in life, it’s just how good you are and how well you behave; the colour of your skin doesn’t matter.
Patrick Marber Playwright
Which theatre, plays or musicals have meant the most to you?
I must confess that I didn’t go anywhere for theatre. I’m not a music specialist at all. I like music, but my life was completely dedicated to sport. I am quite ashamed to say that. But after 20 years, when my friends came to my home and said, “What do I have to visit in London?”, I always told them: “I know only the way to the training centre and to Arsenal, to the Emirates.” I don’t know what is in London. It’s a box I never opened. In the evenings, I watch football.
José Mourinho Football manager
I had the opportunity to get to know you at Uefa and Fifa meetings and dinners. With your culture and vision, I believe you have the qualities to be a top exec, such as a CEO or director of football, at a club. Would you have ever considered such a role at Arsenal or was your desire always to remain on the pitch?
No, I would have considered being on the board at Arsenal as an adviser. I believe that honestly there is a deficit of knowledge in the big clubs of top, toplevel competition and games of toplevel sport. And I believe we have seen recently that there are many ways to be successful in football. For example, there’s the Bayern [Munich] way, where the whole success and continuity relies on people who know the values of the club, and they transfer that from generation to generation: Beckenbauer, Hoeness, Rummenigge. Or there are models in England of quick money and quick success. Both can work. I like the fact that a club is first an identity and has knowledge that is transferred from generation to generation. So that’s why I saw things that way.
Simon Armitage Poet
Will we ever see men and women playing together in the same Premier League team?
I would say that the trend in the last 10 years has been mainly physical in the Premier League and in football in general. So it will need to be a woman with exceptional physical potential. It could be a woman who is a 100-metre runner with an exceptional technique. Why not? I don’t rule it out, but it will be only exceptional, never routine.
Paul Gilroy Academic
How did your immersion in Japanese life alter your understanding of both sport and aesthetics?
It was beneficial for me because it made me more open-minded. Let’s not