As Arsene Wenger bows out

The breaking news that filtered into the websites that Friday morning took the footballing world by surprise: Arsene Wenger, the embattled manager of Arsenal football club has at last thrown in the towel, giving notice to leave at the end of season. This dominated all the news portals dwarfing just any item that readers would have thought to have taken precedence. The Commonwealth Heads of States meeting was in session in London with our own President Muhammadu Buhari in attendance, the issue of raining bombs on Syria was still fresh, and here at home the brazen daylight abduction of the mace of the Nigerian Senate by suspected thugs was the talk of the town. 

Yet the entire media focussed on Wenger’s resignation for hours on end, putting all others on the back burner. Wenger was said to have surprised his team with the news of his retirement at the usual morning training. Thereafter he immediately issued a statement to that effect which was corroborated by another statement from the Board of Directors. In effect Wenger’s 22 year reign at the Emirate Stadium was practically over.   

What is so special about Arsene Wenger to have caught the attention of the footballing world and had us riveted on his travails? The answer is not far to find. He is arguably one of the most identifiable faces of football, now the most popular game in the world. As manager of Arsenal football club, probably one of the most popular football teams in the world in the last two decades, he was ubiquitous at the side lines in all their matches. You notice him, a gangly lithe form, mostly in his trademark grey sweater, his heavily lined face looking withdrawn, sullen and broody particularly in the last many years when things had refused to look up for his club. And as he seemed to be permanently in grief even if Arsenal scored Wenger would be one of the last to punch the air in the usual celebratory cheer, sometimes even after the applause from the audience had died down.

The footballing world took the news of Wenger’s ouster with equanimity. After all it had been expected for the last many years. The last ten years had particularly been so brutish to Wenger’s records at Arsenal that nobody really expected him to last this long. Since the heyday of the early millennium years it had been years of downward spiral for Arsenal. This season and the previous one were particularly bad for Wenger as Arsenal was dislodged from the first four positions in the Premier League that always guaranteed participation at the lucrative Championship League. To make the dislodgement more unpalatable it was their London rival Tottenham Football Club that shot ahead of them.

Many of the Arsenal fans had drifted once when they stopped winning. I was an ardent fan myself from the early days of Wenger’s tenure in the late 1990s when he was brought in as a relative unknown to run Arsenal. Then Wenger brought a fresh approach to building a football team as a means of overhauling Arsenal through dieting and conditioning the players. It was something that had never been tried in Britain and Wenger brought the idea from Japan from where he came to Britain. He was said to have insisted for a diet that contained less sugar, less fat and more vegetables for his players and also encouraged them not to succumb to the traditional chips and burgers while totally outlawing alcohol. He also introduced the technique of a new attacking football which delivered goals and was more entertaining to the fans as well as other onlookers. 

With the support of the Board of Directors he was given the leeway to acquire new players. Naturally he looked to the mainland Europe particularly to his home, France, from where he procured Nicholas Anelka, and Petit and others from his old Monaco club. Many of us even became more beholden to Arsenal when Wenger took our own Nwankwo Kanu, one of the young Nigerian players then making waves in Europe. He also acquired football prodigy, Thierry Henry, from Juventus at a whopping 11 million pounds. He had managed the boy earlier at Monaco, and getting him would prove decisive for Arsenal’s later successes.

Laurels started arriving quickly for the new Arsenal manager. In his first full season 1997/98 Arsenal shocked the footballing world by taking the Premier League for the first time. As an icing on the cake he added the FA Cup as well. Successes for the Arsenal team under Arsene Wenger continued unabated. He would give Manchester United, the leading English team at the time a good run for their money. Arsenal lost ground for the next three seasons though retaining the runner-up position throughout. They returned even stronger in the 2001/02 season by again completing the double: topping the Premier League charts as well as taking the FA Cup and pushing Manchester United to the third position. Arsenal was even more successful in the 2002/03 season when they were reputed to have canonized a Premier League record by going through the entire season unbeaten with 26 wins, 12 draws and 0 losses. With such numbers it would be needless to add that they topped the Premier League charts and as a bonus also picked up the FA Cup. 

Wenger was not finished yet. Though Arsenal never topped the league again he set another record for the club in 2006 when for the first time he took them to play in the finals of the European Championship with Barcelona as opponents. It was an epic battle that still resonates in the footballing annals. Arsenal played most of the game with ten men after Lehman was sent off in the 18th minute after bringing down Barcelona’s Samuel Eto’o. Even after that misfortune, Arsenal was the first to score but after a titanic struggle and by the final whistle they lost to Barcelona 2-1.

That would probably be the highest point Wenger took Arsenal. Then things started unravelling. They retained their position at the top four of the Premier League for years and were consoled a number of times with the FA Cup. Yet year after year Wenger plotted and hankered for the top of the Premier League and year after year he failed. Key players left, including Henry. Fans left in droves with some of them even carrying placards to matches asking Wenger to quit. I also drifted because it was untenable to continue to support a failed team, more so as all my sons supported the rival Manchester United. 

Though the years passed without the silver he wanted, yet Wenger never lost hope. To me he increasingly came to resemble that lovable Dickensian character Wilkin Micawber in David Copperfield, an incurable optimist who though in perennial debt believed as a guiding principle that ‘something will turn up’ to sort him out. Micawber spent time in debtor’s prison and by the end of the book something really turned up for him. He immigrated to Australia where he became a successful farmer and a magistrate. I hope something really turns up for Wenger for the remaining time he has in Arsenal. I pray he succeeds at least to fetch the Europa Cup which the club is in contention now as semi-finalists. That, plus the eleven million pounds the club will pay him as severance pay, should console him as he crosses the Channels to return to his native France.