Wenger: My Life and Lessons in Red and White

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But what really twines the book together is a showcase of just how far dedication, obsession and loyalty can take someone. By any measure, Wenger is obsessive, and has often been excessively so. His passion for the sport in general has never wavered, and his vision is as clear now as it has ever been; something that strikes a power chord in the final chapter, where he outlines his plans at FIFA to increase development of the rules, young players and contribute to the growth of women's football too. More than that, Wenger wants to make clear that, when the dust settled, there was always respect. “Every manager goes through good and bad periods. They are human beings,” he says. “It’s difficult to measure the quality of our job. For example, last season, Liverpool won the championship and [Jürgen] Klopp got praised for that. And rightly so. But you must say the guy at Sheffield United [Chris Wilder, whose team finished ninth] has done a great job as well. Who has done a better job? You don’t know.” 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.

In My Life in Red and White, Wenger charts his extraordinary career, including his rise in France and Japan where he managed Nancy, Monaco and Nagoya Grampus Eight (clubs that also play in red-and-white, like Arsenal!) to his 22 years at the helm of an internationally renowned club from 1996 onwards. He describes the unrest that led to his resignation in 2018, and his current role as Chief of Global Football Development for FIFA.

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I just loved Real Madrid. I thought it the strongest, the most beautiful, the most impressive of all clubs,” he writes. “The players were all in white, looking magnificent. There were players I admired, like Kopa, Puskás and Di Stéfano. It really was the dream club.” He rejected a lot of top jobs Wenger brought Arsenal to three English Premier League titles and seven FA Cups, making the team a constant presence in the UEFA Champions League. He is regarded as a transformative force within English football. At the end of his debut season, just he and Chelsea’s Ruud Gullit represented non-British or Irish managers in the top-flight. By the time he departed all but eight of the twenty teams could boast the same. Passages relating to the 2003/04 season where Arsenal’s Invincibles won the League unbeaten provide great insights, particularly of the mental toll exerted on him. The anguish of losing the 2006 Champions League - to Barcelona - is recalled in one of the book’s best passages. Arsene Wenger on a recent Late Late Show interview 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. In 1996, Wenger, tall, whip-thin, like a sixth-former in a suit, entered the British consciousness when he was announced by Arsenal as the fourth foreign manager in the history of top-division English football (the previous three had not fared well). He held the position for 22 years until 2018, during which time Arsenal won three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups. While his great rival at Manchester United, Alex Ferguson, motivated players with the famed “hairdryer treatment”, Wenger became known for “invisible” training: a holistic approach that went beyond fitness and ball skills and overhauled the lifestyle and nutrition of the squad. Players were given instruction on how to chew their food; the traditional half-time boost of a chocolate bar and fizzy drink was swapped for a sugar lump with caffeine drops on it.

What to say? That this book left me underwhelmed is an understatement. I don't think anyone going to read this ever thought Wenger would lift the lid and dish out some nastiness or air vendettas against people, but what I expected was more emotion. More honesty. I was there for all the events he described. I know what happened. But I didn't need that. I wanted to know how he felt after the big decisions, the big games. Especially where he felt there were injustices. The one that got away: Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Manchester United in 2003, the year he signed for the club. Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP I did however learn a lot about Arsene Wenger the man. I knew that he was very committed to his role as a manager, but hadn't realised quite how much football had taken over his life. Although in many ways a solitary man, it was clear from the book that he had many friends and colleagues that he thought highly of. Although of course with this being an autobiography it is a subjective book, he came across as a very fair man who cares passionately for the wellbeing of his players and is prepared to put in a lot of effort personally to nurture up and coming players. The one that hurts the most and that I’ve never been able to watch again since is the match in the 2006 final against Barça,” he says of the night in Paris, in which Arsenal lost 2-1. “Victory in the Champions League would have been a wonderful end to the adventure of the Invincibles, rewarding all the efforts made by the players and the club during the construction of the new stadium.” He was even more involved in the small details of his previous clubs

Full disclosure, I have been an Arsenal fan for over 50 years, and an Arsene Wenger fan since the day I saw him announced as our manager on the Jumbotron at Highbury in 1996. I was devastated when he eventually left Arsenal, even though I knew the day had to come sometime. 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? For the very first time, world-renowned and revolutionary football manager Arsène Wenger tells his own story. He opens up about his life, sharing principles for success on and off the field with lessons on leadership, and vivid tales of his 22 years managing Arsenal to unprecedented success.

Asked what he did in life, he proposes that his answer will be that he tried everything within his power to win football matches. In isolation, it is a statement which could be considered an attempt at humor but taken in the overall context of this published reflection on his career it is not an unreasonable assessment of what appears to have been Wenger’s primary objective in life. What is socialist for you? For me, a socialist is trusting connectivity to sort the problems of a society. First, you need a collective environment that favours the expression of the individual. After that, I think it’s down to an individual’s initiative to make the most of their life. But the dominant thing is a collective environment for me.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? As a life-long enthusiastic Arsenal supporter (God help me), this was a book I was always going to buy - well get as a Christmas gift. The overall feeling is that to a large extent it was missing so much. Arsene Wenger was such an innovative coach who looked holistically at players development, the cohesion of the team and the structures within the club itself. So why were the details of that creative thinking missing? Unless it wasn't as creative or innovative as I imagined. I appreciated watching Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger just how important the manager was to a club, how they instilled the culture, the belief and all the science and training that helped develop players. I would love to have learned how they achieved that and what their secret sauce looked like. 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.”