Wenger would possibly have taken Arsenal from his home to Highbury, but the player himself is never ready for Emirates Stadium. Its center still rests on Avenell Road.
This is one of the contradictions of kids who are inevitable when a kid spends 22 years in a job. Progress has dictated that 38,000 seats would never satisfy a club that aspires to be among Europe’s top prestige, regardless of its magnificent Art Deco construction. He stayed them.
The Emirates is Wenger’s legacy in glass and cement. When it opened in 2006, it was a stadium for a club, whose coach had revolutionized the game in England by stripping his players of his bars and beers in March. you feel like you see it as his legacy at the club; in fact, when he describes it as the level he built, you can almost believe that he deceived his memory so as not to forget himself on the site, digging the foundations.
However, while his pride in the self-funded move to Ashburton Grove is significant, the new stadium never comes to join him at the same point as Highbury. It is transparent when reading Wenger: My Life and Lessons in Red and White. , which can now be obtained from the Chronicle Prism Editors that Highbury maintains a special position in the heart of Wenger. Maybe there’s nothing more to this than the fact that it’s on this floor that he’s won his three Premier League titles. many covered in the 14 years since moving in, however, it was Wembley that the United Arab Emirates set the stage for triumphs.
Even after Arsenal left Highbury, it may have only been Wenger’s house. I ended up with a remarkable neighbor.
“I’m thinking about buying an apartment, but I think, no, maybe it’s not the most productive thing to do, invest when we build it,” Wenger told CBS Sports in an exclusive interview. “I didn’t because, honestly, I didn’t need to be accused of doing anything to enjoy the club,
“During my time, I didn’t even use the Arsenal credit card to invite agents or players, I paid myself, you know, because I knew it at a very delicate moment and it starts with the leaders.
“But it is true that I have a date with Highbury, perhaps because you sit somewhere when you enter, you are part of the story and you have on your shoulders the duty to continue this history of the club, and where you feel a soul in each and every component of each and every corner.
“It’s something special about the stadium. And it also shows, you know, when you drove down Avenell Road, you walked through the followers. You’re driving in the stadium today, you don’t see anyone. Distances have been advanced between people. The human heat is gone a little longer. It’s even further apart. “
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The first time he entered Highbury’s marble corridors, Wenger said he knew there was something exclusive about Arsenal, which he might never have imagined would be more than two decades before he left the club.
When he left, it turns out that the latter made the last of the wonderful control giants that have connected with a club for a generation, who did not feel the desire to move from one to another and who enjoyed the possibility of reforming their camp under conditions. Wenger himself will notice that he liked to handle himself, in monetary terms, with one hand tied behind his back while Arsenal had to repay the bank loans that financed the stadium.
In fact, there are those who seem to be in a position to take deeper roots in England, Jurgen Klopp will have reigned for nine years if he reaches the end of his existing contract at Liverpool and in the days leading up to the interview Pep Guardiola has just committed a 6th and 7th year to the helm of Manchester City. Both, Wenger says, are “smart coaches who are at the forefront of clubs that have the monetary perspective to buy Europe’s most productive players right now. “to imply, would they have to move somewhere else?
There was a time when Arsenal simply weren’t offering him this but, as he is not afraid to point out several times in his book, there were some like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich who were willing to offer him what Guardiola and Klopp. Wenger has no regrets about staying loyal.
“Every manager works with his own personality,” he says. And I’m also the oldest coach in Monaco, which others forget, you know. Maybe it’s up to me.
“I also have a kind of personality who likes to belong to anything he thinks is bigger than him. And also an organization, in which I keep my values and beliefs. That’s been the case for a long time, at Arsenal. C’s why I’ve been here so long. “
These values have been reflected in the generations at Arsenal. His time at the club has been remarkable, which has not only produced and unearthed players of exceptional talent, but many have discovered the same deep connection to the club as Wenger himself.
Three of them now run the club’s operations almost entirely: technical director Edu, academy leader Per Mertesacker and manager Mikel Arteta are the triumvirate that defines the direction of the club.
Speaking of this latest duo, key figures in the costumes of their last good fortune at the club that won 3 FA Cups in 4 years, Wenger would like to point out that they are just two of the “many” former protégés who may have taken on their coat.
“They were selected and motivated and then they have to make their careers. It’s not over yet, you know, they just started.
“They are in a position where they can, I think, build Arsenal’s culture, how to behave, how to teach people, how to play football.
“I think they have some moral side to the way they do their work. They’re focused, they have preference internally, and that’s smart, a smart base. They’re smart. “
In fact, it turns out that in a sense Arteta and Mertesacker, in their playing days, arrived at Arsenal just as they needed them, following an 8–2 defeat to Manchester United, who were among the deadliest moments of Wenger’s reign. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve left him out in an e-book that focuses on the vast extent of his career rather than the old injuries of Ashley Cole’s move to that defeat at Old Trafford.
However, Wenger rejects the suggestion that this defeat alone has led to radical adjustments at Arsenal. “Great effects never make much sense,” he insists, recalling with remarkable clarity the extreme cases of this match: a series of injuries, a grueling but successful victory in El Udinese, which prolonged a streak of champions league success, would be 19 years old.
Meanwhile, he points out since this season that “Liverpool have already lost 7-2 at Aston Villa, and no one has made any noise. “This result has characterized a Premier League season in which mid-range groups enjoyed remarkable good fortune against the Big Six, while their own former club has already suffered losses at the hands of Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Leicester City.
Could this be a sign of a Premier League with a deeper quality than ever before?”I don’t think the Premier League is any better now than it was 10 years ago.
“If you look at Manchester United or Chelsea 10 years ago, they had more sensitive quality players. You know what other people when we played the Invincible season, Man United was Cristiano Ronaldo, [Ruud] Van Nistelrooy, [Paul] Scholes, [Ryan] Giggs, had an amazing team, you know, so the festival was all very high.
“After Chelsea there are Drogba, Lampard, Robben, all the players. I don’t think for a moment that that’s changed. In England, for the past 15 years, he has had the most productive players in the world.
“15 years ago they also had Jack Grealishes at Aston Villa, they had the most sensible players in the clubs. “
Then it turns out that he recommends that there is no explanation as to why Arteta, whose Arsenal team is lately 14 after 10 games of the season, is expected less than he was required. Certainly, the concept that the coach wants time is a perception. that he temporarily rejects.
“I don’t believe in patience in football, you know, you have 3 months to make an effect on when you get somewhere,” Wenger said. “And if I look at my clubs everywhere I’ve been, it did not take 3 years to influence.
“It’s a floating idea, it never works that way. You have an influence at first, or you never have it.
“I think [he had that influence]. But I’m not at the club. After that, it’s the way the team plays and the matches you win or lose, you know, it’s simple.
“These are results. That’s the way it is. “
These effects have not been the same since Wenger’s departure, although it will be discussed through supporters and experts to what extent he is to blame for what happened in the years following his departure.
He will do it himself, his career, he says he has questioned his ability to make the most of a collection of players.
“A coach’s fundamental task is to make the most of a team’s potential. I don’t think you ever know, did you get the most out of your team?When you win the championship by wasting a game, you can say yes, because there’s no room to do much better.
“I think I took the most of a team later, several times, but we didn’t have the same potential. I can perceive [when enthusiasts are dissatisfied] Array . . . they need to win the championship and the cup and the Champions League. “. what I can perceive. Overall, I would say that today they learned that this kind of consistency is not easy. “
It may be appropriate that when Wenger gave the impression of Desert Island Discs, a UK radio show inviting visitors to reflect on their lives and choose specific musical pieces they would like if they were away from the world, he chose My Way directed through Frank Sinatra. In fact, he regretted it. And yet, when he comes to reflect on his wonderful love story with Arsenal, there is no doubt, there is no preference to recover some of the time he gave the club.
“I’m not afraid to say that I’ve been faithful to this in my life because you have to locate the meaning of your life. And football, the meaning of my life.
“I know this might sound stupid. And the determination I had for my club might also seem stupid. But that’s what I am.
“So I couldn’t and maybe I didn’t even try to replace it because if happiness is to lead the life you love, I have to say I’m very happy. “
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