Arsene Wenger
Arsene Wenger
Arsène Wenger, OBEɛʁ]; born 22 October 1949), is a French football manager and former player. He has been the manager of Arsenal since 1996, where he has since become the club's longest-serving manager and most successful in terms of major titles won. Football pundits give Wenger credit for his contribution to the revolutionising of football in England in the late 1990s through the introduction of changes in the training and diet of players...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth22 October 1949
CityStrasbourg, France
CountryFrance
I have only been here since 1996 but between 1966 and 1996 England had thirty years without foreign players and didn't win any more competitions in that time.
It's a strange atmosphere always over there, it is darker and less glamorous, and you don't feel as high. It is a different kind of test - can you raise your level in a less exciting environment and perhaps still a very difficult one?
I take pride in the fact that people go home having felt that for 90 minutes today, life is beautiful - and that's it, basically. That's why professional football exists.
I do not think about the national team too much because footballistically it is not of too much interest.
I have been accused of not taking seriously the FA Cup on Saturday. I have won four times the FA Cup. Who has won it more? Give me one name.
I am not against being pragmatic, because it is pragmatic to make a good pass, not a bad one. If I have the ball, what do I do with it? Could anybody argue that a bad solution like just kicking it away is pragmatic just because, sometimes, it works by accident?
When you're dealing with someone who only has a pair of underpants on, if you take his underpants off, he has nothing left - he's naked. You're better off trying to find him a pair of trousers to complement him rather than change him.
Of the nine red cards this season we probably deserved half of them.
Sometimes I see it [a foul by an Arsenal player], but I say that I didn’t see it to protect the players and because I could not find any rational explanation for what they did.
Thierry Henry could take the ball in the middle of the park and score a goal that no one else in the world could score.
Gerard is an open-minded and passionate man. I am the opposite: stubborn and stupid. But sometimes stupid behaviour makes you win.
Unfortunately apparently I am to blame because I don't produce enough English players.
If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from.
For me, motivation is a person who has the capability to recruit the resources he needs to achieve a goal.