It’s now five years since he finally stepped down as the manager of Arsenal FC after two decades at the helm – an occasion marked by the recent unveiling of a statue outside the Emirates Stadium of a triumphant Arsene Wenger holding aloft the Premier League trophy. The occasion made me reflect on his tenure at the club and return to one particular aspect of the Frenchman who became such a high-profile character in England: was Wenger really an intellectual?
There is scant evidence of great intellect in any of his post-match utterances
He was certainly popularly portrayed as one. The sports writing fraternity was so invested in the idea that Wenger was a man of considerable depth that they nicknamed him ‘Le Professeur’. Match reports routinely linked him to other renowned thinkers: it became quite routine for these to mention his philosopher countryman, Jean-Paul Sartre, in connection with Wenger; Albert Camus, famously a goalkeeper as well as a tortured soul, ditto.
And it’s easy to see how this association came about. For starters, his demeanour suggested he was more thoughtful than many of his managerial peers. His contemporary Harry Redknapp, for example, talked a lot but no one mistook him for a philosopher. And with his Samuel Beckett-like lined face, Wenger indeed looked more like some rive gauche existentialist than a retired journeyman midfielder.
Eric Cantona had done considerable groundwork, equating Frenchness with cerebral insight. His enigmatic comment after his kung fu kick court case – ‘When the seagulls follow the trawler it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea’ – was mind-blowing for fans more used to strikers saying: ‘Over ‘ere son, on me ‘ead.’
I was there when Cantona said this, reporting on his court case and the circus surrounding it. As the following day was 1 April, our press agency let me concoct an April Fool on the back of it. I had ‘Professor Rufus Doisneau of the University of Strasbourg’ saying: ‘This confirms Cantona as one of the great thinkers in sport.’ It was used in every paper and read out on the Today programme; the idea of intellectualism and French footballers was fertile ground already.
Wenger, coincidentally, came from Strasbourg, but he had more recently spent time in another country associated with enlightened thinking, Japan, prior to arriving in London with his Zen-like calm – a contrast to, say, Sam Allardyce who had spent time in Bolton. There were also the modernising policies Wenger introduced – persuading players like Tony Adams not to drink ten pints of lager the night before a match, getting his squad to move on from pies and burgers to poached chicken as a means of taking their athlete status more seriously.
His relatively calm demeanour – at least compared to his red-faced, ranting nemesis Alex Ferguson – seemed to make this notion of depth more plausible too. But was he really a great thinker?
There is scant evidence of great intellect in any of his post-match utterances. His most renowned expression in these was ‘I didn’t see it’ as a means of avoiding discussion of any controversial incident. His most memorable quotes are often astonishingly banal. Take this one: ‘Football is about happiness together and every time you are manager, you feel that your target is always to make people happy and have a positive experience by watching your team.’ It’s not going to trouble Michel Foucault, though it might enrage José Mourinho.
But the moment when the myth of Wenger’s intellectual weight was definitively shattered came some three years after he finally stepped down, on Sunday 22 November 2020. The occasion was his guest appearance on Desert Island Discs.
There have been many guests with dud taste over that show’s 80-odd-year history. But few have been quite as lame as Wenger. If you remove his two French choices, which would be unknown to most of his UK audience, the rest of the Wenger list was cheesier than the ripest Camembert. The one French tune that everyone knows is ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’. Then there was ‘Could You Be Loved’ by Bob Marley; ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon; ‘Your Song’ by Elton John, ‘The Wonder of You’ by Elvis and ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra. He even talked about how he identified with that last one.
It was like the radio dial had flipped from BBC Radio 4 to Gold FM’s Greatest Golden Greats. I was reminded of Alan Partridge being asked his favourite Beatles album and pausing to reflect before replying: ‘I’d have to say The Best of The Beatles.’ Wenger may have done it his way, but it wasn’t in the style of a French philosopher. He was just a continental Sam Allardyce after all.
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