When Arsène Wenger was hired a hundred years ago to manage Arsenal Football Club, a London tabloid printed out posters that read, “Arsène Who?”
In the print edition, they gave readers a guide on how to pronounce his name (the vogue for foreign talent was just beginning to dig its way out from under several layers of soccer xenophobia).
One of Wenger’s new players, Lee Dixon, later described his first thought upon meeting the tactician who would reimagine the English game: “[a] tall, slightly built man who gave no impression whatsoever of being a football manager.”
At the time – 1996 – the Premier League in general, and Arsenal in particular, had a reputation as a sort of hyper-fit drinking club. It was a hard-living conglomeration of brawlers and bon vivants. English managers, by and large gnarled former pros that mistook screaming for coaching, lived even harder.
Wenger – a man forever smoothing his tie while looking off thoughtfully into the distance – was a more cerebral sort.
They called him The Professor. Initially, it was not meant kindly. Only after he’d turned Arsenal from a crew of middling lumberjacks into an undefeated collection of artists did it become a term of praise.
Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger in 2016.Stefan Wermuth/Reuters
Wenger changed the way the English game was organized, though several people have done that. Like all true visionaries, he also redefined how the men who do his job should look and carry themselves. Where Steve Jobs had his squeaky voice and his turtleneck, Wenger had his air of imperturbability and those one-size-too-large suits. It’s a straight line from Wenger’s thousand-yard stare to Jose Mourinho’s sideline sneer.
When he arrived, the world had decided “beautiful“ was no longer an epithet when appended to soccer, but England hadn’t yet clued in. That was Wenger’s higher purpose – creating a brand of winning soccer that was never efficient at the cost of aesthetics. He wanted it both ways.
His obsession with that ideal made his reputation. After he’d been copied umpteen times, it also unmade it. The fact that he didn’t alter his approach once it stopped paying dividends means he is either the most stubborn or least cynical sports manager of the past quarter century. Likely both.
Wenger’s obsessive nature was all encompassing. It was said that after years spent living in London, he still knew the driving directions to only two places – Arsenal’s practice ground and its stadium.
On Friday, Wenger, 68, announced his intention to quit Arsenal this summer. He apparently did so because he feared being fired. His own exit will be his last bit of orchestration.
The idea of the “end of an era” is an overworn sporting cliché, but here is the exception that proves the rule.
Wenger isn’t just leaving a job he’s held for nearly 22 years. He’s killing off an idea – that there is such a thing as the manager-for-life. We may never again see the like on so bright a professional stage.
Wenger made himself indispensable by creating a personal mythology. It was thought that he could spot talent not just overlooked by others, but also wilfully disregarded.
His most famous protégés were discovered early – Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry. They formed the point of attack of the so-called Invincibles – the 2003-04 Arsenal team that went unbeaten in the Premier League. That season was Wenger’s high-water mark.
That same year, there was a seismic shift in the economics of European soccer. Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich purchased Chelsea, a good but seldom great side, in ’03.
Abramovich was the first of several super-wealthy dilettantes to treat soccer clubs as expensive hobbies. As their money poured in, bargains dried up. Teams were suddenly willing to spend huge amounts speculatively on the unfinished youngsters Wenger had once unearthed on the cheap.
Abramovich plowed hundreds of millions of pounds into the Chelsea roster, turning it almost overnight into a continental powerhouse. That was the new model.
Other top teams joined the spending binge. Though Arsenal had the funds, Wenger refused. Having successfully thought his way through problems, he was unwilling to start buying his way out of them.
He’d built a solid enough base that Arsenal was competitive for several more years, but a reputation for cheapness attached itself to him and to the club.
“You are absolutely convinced that I don’t want to spend the money,” Wenger said in 2016, after Arsenal had already been lapped. “I just would like to reassure you that we are ready to spend the money we have, as always, not the money we haven’t got. It’s not my money.”
He behaved as though it were. Nobody, including the team’s American owners, thanked him for it once the club began a slow slide out of the top four. That’s the benchmark of Premiership relevance for a club of Arsenal’s size.
Every so often, Wenger would pull a reasonably budgeted rabbit from his hat. Lately, the FA Cup became his professional life preserver.
But supporters could not help but notice that Arsenal no longer featured in the rumour mill surrounding the world’s best available talent. It was the idea of becoming second tier – even while the team was still winning things occasionally – that doomed Wenger.
This season will be the worst of his tenure and 2004 now seems an awfully long time ago. The man who’d once changed the game lasted long enough to watch the game change on him. As tombstone inscriptions go, it’s not the worst you could say.
Even the most iconic modern managers can’t survive more than two disappointing seasons in a row. Wenger took Arsenal to the very top, and then managed an orderly retreat for the next dozen years.
There will be other managers who will match his success. But it is difficult to imagine anyone anywhere replicating the manner in which he did it.
Cathal Kelly