WENGER SPEAKS OUT
In the depths of winter, everything started with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Arsene Wenger has broken into a chuckle, as he thinks back to what may well have been the most important game of his life.
This game did not take place on a football field, but inside a London house in January 1989. “We played charades,” smiles Wenger, recalling the memory to FourFourTwo.
Back then, he was 39 years old, midway through his second season in charge of Monaco. His first had delivered the Ligue 1 title.
Les Monegasques were getting ready to play a European Cup quarter-final, so, during France’s winter break, Wenger visited Turkey to scout opponents Galatasaray. Before his return to the Cote d’Azur, he fancied seeing a game in England. He phoned the agent of Glenn Hoddle, his star man at Monaco, who suggested an Arsenal fixture at Highbury. There, at half-time, Wenger met David Dein for the very first time.
The Gunners’ vice-chairman invited him to dinner later that evening, at the home of a showbusiness friend, where a game of charades broke out. Wenger had to describe A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the William Shakespeare play written in the 16th century.
Given that charades originated in France, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that he passed with flying colours. Dein was impressed by Wenger that night. Whether the Monaco coach realised it or not, his job interview to become Arsenal manager had begun – aided by a game in which he’d said nothing at all.
“It was an unusual test for a manager to be successful,” laughs Wenger. “A musical group hosted us, and it was an interesting evening. I don’t know how good I was at charades – I don’t play any more now. But David always told me, ‘I realised that night you were not stupid!’”
“YOU’RE KILLING YOUR CAREER”
Things could have turned out differently for the Frenchman, but for a pivotal 12 months early in his coaching career. Just a year before he won the league with Monaco, Wenger had been relegated.
He’d become a manager for the first time at 34, after a largely undistinguished playing career. Wenger grew up in a farming village in the Alsace region, near the German border, where tractors didn’t even materialise until he was 14. He learned to milk cows, but soon became obsessed with football – developing a love for his local club, Strasbourg, and the great Real Madrid team of Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas.
As a teenager, Wenger was found to have a hollow at the top of his spine, thought to be caused by heaving heavy sacks of coal. Doctors warned him that he could be in a wheelchair by 40, but he still moved into amateur football, playing in midfield for Mutzig while studying economics at the University of Strasbourg. By 28, he’d worked his way up to boyhood club Strasbourg, in France’s top division – although he was a bit-part player when they became domestic champions in 1979, largely focusing on his role coaching the youth team.
In 1983, Wenger became first-team coach at Cannes, helping to create an academy that later brought through Zinedine Zidane and Patrick Vieira. A year later, he earned his first managerial job after being lured to Nancy by Aldo Platini, father of Michel. It was a club struggling to hang on to its place in the top tier of French football.
“I started in management by learning my job well, as I had to fight every year to stay in the league – we always as he launches new book , the colours of every team he’s ever managed.
