Wenger: My Life and Lessons in Red and White

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Hostility no, competition yes. It was vital [at Arsenal] that you beat Tottenham for the respect of the club. Competition is important, as long as it’s not crazy. When you [were due to] play Tottenham, at the start of the week everybody was a bit more nervous than usual.

Banished was the players’ diet of fizzy drinks and chocolate, introduced were caffeine drops on sugar cubes at half time, physical and mental preparation was revolutionized, relative to what was then the norm. Facilitating the improvement of human performance through tailored man-management is a constant ambition. Being hard on him doesn’t work. Like all artists, he needs to feel supported in his creativity. He has a feel for passing and an exceptional sense of timing when he passes,” he says. “There is something magical and simple about his playing style. The Premier League is a train that goes by at 200 kilometres per hour, and Özil doesn’t always go at this speed, but you always have great affection for his artistry.” His first match was a victory… or was it? The pictures include a picture of a banner-trailing plane – but unfortunately not the one I helped crowdfund. The book just fails to come to life – I was at many of the games featured in the book but almost never did I feel that the book was adding anything to spark my memories of the matches. And many iconic moments are simply not mentioned at all.The interesting aspect of the title is that Arsene Wenger's career has been with football teams that played in Red and White as home colours. It is interesting to understand the journey he was on and how complete he was in his commitment to the job and the details, even inspecting the grass on the pitch on a daily basis and discussing its improvement daily with the groundsman. He truly committed his life to football and I am proud that he managed my team. Including Real Madrid, twice. “It’s terrible to have to turn down your childhood club,” he says. “But I had a mission at Arsenal, a contract to honour, and I’d given my word.”

I do hope that history is sympathetic to Wenger. Many of his contemporaries, were not. He was very successful. He did bring great times to the club. He does make contentious claims in his book that the rivalry with the other lot, who play in white and blue does not hold the same 'tensions'. He also claims that it is 'harder to win the Premier League than the Champion's League'. On both points I am not sure. Unfortunately, his own fans that we gooners once were, would, I am sure, argue vociferously that the rivalry will be as fierce and tension filled as always and that if the second point was correct, why did we not win the Champion's League? His theories on player recruitment, scouting and management are for the most part thought-provoking and demonstrate why he is so in demand as a speaker amongst the denizens of the international business world. 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.”

You received a lot of criticism over your career, more so towards the end of your time with Arsenal. Was there any that particularly affected you? Many times I was approached to coach the English national team. I turned it down for two reasons. Because I felt that, first of all, it’s better an English guy does it. And secondly, because I was happy where I was. I was at a club where I loved to do what I did.