Wenger legacy has served Japan well
TOKYO: Nearly 20 years after his brief stay in Japan Arsene Wenger’s influence still echoes, following its rise from a backwater of world football to one of its emerging powers.
The serious Frenchman left a lasting impression not only on his colleagues at Nagoya Grampus, where he was manager for 18 months in 1995 and 1996, but also on the Japanese game as a whole.
‘‘Pass the ball to the future. The side pass is present and the back pass is past,’’ Wenger was fond of saying at the time, according to former Nagoya midfielder Tetsuo Nakanishi, 43, who doubled as his interpreter.
‘‘He advocated positive attacks with thrusts forward. It was entertaining to watch and the players enjoyed it,’’ Nakanishi said.
When Wenger returned to Nagoya for the first time last with Arsenal, a largely red-clad crowd of 43,000 turned out to greet him, waving banners such as ‘‘Welcome home, Bengeru [Wenger]’’.
Before Arsenal’s 3-1 win over Nagoya, former players of the club — including current manager Dragan Stojkovic — played a commemorative game in honour of the Frenchman.
‘‘Manager Wenger remembered the name of everyone,’’ said former striker Takafumi Ogura, now 40. ‘‘I felt nostalgic when I saw them [Wenger and Stojkovic] together. It’s been 17 years already.’’
Excitement is understandable in Nagoya after Wenger transformed the club, in the early years of the J-League, from a foot-of-the-table outfit to trophy winners, and then went on to lead Arsenal to three English Premier League titles.
‘‘It was a great loss and disappointment to Japanese football that they abruptly decided on Wenger’s transfer to Arsenal in the middle of the 1996 season,’’ veteran Japanese football writer Yoshiyuki Osumi said.
‘‘But he has since made a great success in England and become one of the most outstanding managers in football history. This does Nagoya as well as Japan’s football community proud.’’
While ‘‘the Professor’’ is not the only man to influence Japanese football, the attractive, short-passing game of their national team bears a resemblance to Arsenal’s distinctive style.
And it’s been successful for Japan, who won their fourth Asian Cup title in 2011 and will contest their fifth straight World Cup in Brazil next year. At the 2012 Olympics, Japan stunned ‘‘tiki-taka’’ experts Spain — the world and European champions — in the group stage.
Asian influences also shaped Wenger following his arrival after seven years at Monaco. He was inspired by Japan’s healthy diet and the feng shui concept of design when he began his project to revolutionise Arsenal’s training habits and culture.
‘‘Japanese football has moved forward fantastically,’’ Wenger, 63, told Arsenal’s website, citing its Europe-based stars and well-organised youth system.
‘‘I don’t think they are a candidate to win the World Cup today, but when you look at their youth teams Japan are dominant forces in the international tournaments. That means that their next step is to reach the semi-finals or final of the World Cup.’’