It was like an Englishman making wine in Bordeaux
CELEBRATING WENGER’S ARRIVAL AS ARSENAL BOSS 20 YEARS AGO
This morning, as he does almost every Friday morning, Arsene Wenger will climb the stairs of Arsenal’s London Colney training ground, a place he helped design some 17 years ago from the ashes of a fire.
On entering the press room, Wenger will walk past a colourised photograph of Woolwich Arsenal’s 1913-14 team. Then he will take his place at the top of a room where three Arsenal portraits hang on the wall: Alex James, David Rocastle and Cliff Bastin. The theme will be ‘history’.
Officially, the 20th anniversary of Wenger’s arrival at Arsenal will be marked by the club tomorrow.
his first game as he starts a third decade in charge is at Turf Moor on sunday. Turf Moor has been Burnley’s home since 1883; it is quite possible that Wenger will know this. As he said at his unveiling back in 1996 — on a sunday at highbury’s Clock End: ‘i love English football because the roots of football are here.’
Then his first match as Arsenal manager took him down the road from Burnley, to Blackburn Rovers, and a 2-0 win courtesy of ian Wright. Two Lancashire founder members of the Football League bookend Wenger’s 20 years.
how much he wishes to discuss it all this morning remains to be seen. Last Friday, even as the analysis and adulation had begun to flow, Wenger held himself back.
‘i like history,’ he said, ‘but not especially my history,’ adding: ‘i’m more interested in what is in front of me. And, when you get older, what is in front of you gets shorter, so it is even more important.’
At 66 — 67 in three weeks — and in the last year of his contract, there is much speculation as to what is in front of Wenger at Arsenal.
Another 10 years? Eight months and a job with England? At least he is certain about what tonight holds.
Asked if the eve of his 20th anniversary would see him watching Everton v Crystal Palace, Wenger’s deadpan reply was: ‘Of course.’
A smile came across his face, and this was before his latest Arsenal Xi tore apart Chelsea. it was put to him that when he arrived in late september 1996, Arsenal versus Chelsea was a London derby, a local affair played at highbury in front of 38,000 Londoners.
And indeed Arsenal did host Chelsea that month, with a British Xi, bar Dennis Bergkamp. Last saturday, Arsenal began with a team that included just one Englishman, Theo Walcott.
Nationality is a feature of the past 20 years and that bigger picture was offered to Wenger. Arsenal v Chelsea is now a global sports event; Arsenal, a club that had never signed a Frenchman until he acquired Patrick Vieira, have fan clubs in 20 countries in Africa alone. in 1996 Arsenal were English-owned, now their holding company’s major shareholders are from America and Uzbekistan.
‘That is what has changed in English football,’ Wenger said.
‘English football moved in that period, around 1996. if i give you the wages of my best players in ’96 and what they are today, you see the evolution — it is not because of the money but because how big the game has become worldwide.
‘it was an English game with English owners everywhere.
‘in 1996 every club was owned by English people and today it is world companies with world ownerships and interests.’
As if further proof were needed, in this week’s footage of sam Allardyce it was no surprise to hear him discussing hong Kong and singapore. These are places now seen as English football’s territory.
Wenger revealed that in ’ 96 the ‘average wage’ of an Arsenal player ‘was around £200,000 a year’. Today it is estimated Mesut Ozil earns £160,000 per week.
There has been a mushroom cloud of economic expansion. When Wenger landed in England from Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan the Premier League was in the last year of a television rights deal with sky.
it was worth £191million over five years and allowed sky to broadcast 60 matches a season. in 1997 that jumped to £670m over four years.
Along with Alex Ferguson and Kevin Keegan in the dugout, and the likes of Eric Cantona, Alan shearer and Bergkamp on the pitch, Wenger was at the heart of the Premier League as a developingping entertainment package, a daily drama. The League became a storyboard and Wenger brought Vieira and Thierry henry to it, he brought a style off play and, most importantly, he brought competition to Manchester United.
in Wenger’s first full season — 1997-98 — Arsenal won the e league by a point from United. . But for that, United would havee won six titles in a row — hardly y a marketing man’s dream. After r Arsenal came Chelsea, then n Manchester City and today the e re-emergence of Liverpool and d spurs.
The Premier League has its faults but global marketability is not one of them. sky and d BT have paid £5.14billion for the he rights to seasons 2016-19. Foreign rights on top of that take the total to around £8bn. From £191m for five years to £8bn for three — a per annum increase of almost 7,000 per cent.
Of his own role in this geographic and financial explosion Wenger said: ‘ it is always difficult to measure your own influence. i tried just to do well what i do and leave the judgment to other people, that is all you can do.’
That was modesty.modesty On Wenger’s first highbury morning in 1996 at least some part of him recognised the Premier League’s global future was already here.
‘Everything is internationalised today,’ he said at that introductory press conference, acknowledging that in terms of passport and background he represented a very different Arsenal manager to herbert Chapman or Bertie Mee.
The Premier League was four years old then and a 21-year- old David Beckham had just scored a goal from the halfway line. Wenger sensed change in England.
some couldn’t. They looked around and saw Joe Kinnear had just been awarded manager of the month. Wimbledon striker Efan Ekoku was rattling in goals — at selhurst Park.
English football was only beginning to move from parochial to international. Wenger came cloaked in ‘French Revolution’ headlines, yet he was cautious. he confirmed he had declined Glenn hoddle’s invitation to become the FA’s technical director and later he would say: ‘You know, when you go abroad you have first to test how far you can go. Because i was not in a position where i could come in as the master who had done it all.
‘i was an unknown figure. i was like an English guy who goes to Bordeaux and explains to them how to make the wine! A French guy who comes to this country to explain to English people how to play football? They’d say, “Who are you? What do you want?” ’ And they did. Arsenal’s capacity at highbury then was 38,000. Aston Villa, Everton, Leeds United, Manchester United and sheffield Wednesday all had bigger Premier League grounds. Wenger felt highbury’s ‘soul’, but he still pushed to leave it.
in the new stadium’s home dressing room — much bigger and
I like history, but not especially my history
better lit than the away dressing room — Wenger received praise for using feng shui. But a stadium named after an airline struggles with soul.
He said the Arsenal directors were ‘really brave’ to move from Highbury but it coincided with — or was part of — a downturn in achievement. Attendances and income soared but the trophy cabinet housed Highbury silver.
Touring the Emirates — cost, £20 — Wenger contributes to an audio commentary. His praise for Herbert Chapman is in no small way due to ‘vision’. Chapman could look into the future and foresee a new dimension. Wenger says it could take Arsenal 10-20 years to bed in.
Which brings us back to history. Even if he professes not be interested in his own, Arsene Wenger is essential to Arsenal’s. Downplayed by some as ‘Barca-lite’, his brand of football has altered English football and his club.
Today Arsenal are only called ‘boring’ in an ironic way.
His relationship with Arsenal fans may have travelled from unquestioning to questioning, but even the most critical would accept that Wenger had and retains a vision.
At his most philosophical, as in Bergkamp’s autobiography, Stillness and Speed, Wenger says football can be ‘spiritual’. He differentiates between those in the game for football and those in it for themselves.
‘ Most of the time what people call charisma is just big ego,’ he says. ‘I believe that the real great players are guided by how football should be played and not how football should serve them. If it becomes spiritual, it’s endless.’