FourFourTwo November 2020 33Bergkamp was already at Arsenal, so I found
a good mixture between the long-serving
players and the foreign ones.”
Gaining his nickname of ‘Le Professeur’,
Wenger attempted to transform his players’
diet – to such an extent that they’d chanted
“We want our Mars bars!” on the bus before
that first match at Blackburn. His methods
worked, though – after a third-place finish
in 1996-97, Arsenal became Premier League
champions in his first full campaign, before
pocketing the FA Cup for good measure with
a 2-0 victory over Newcastle.
“It’s true that I did change their nutrition
a little bit,” he smiles. “The players had habits
based on the nutritionist at Liverpool, who
found out that players should eat chocolate
before a game. But I didn’t want that. It was
funny because the long-serving players were
all intelligent but over 30, so were real men.
They’d grown up in a tough football world –
when you won, you went down the pub! But
they were clever, they were ready for a fight,
and they were much better footballers than
I’d thought from the outside.”
He’d had no such doubts about the player
who was pivotal to Wenger’s second Premier
League success, four years later. In fact, the
person who initially had most doubts about
Thierry Henry was the player himself, after
arriving from Juventus in 1999.
“I gave starts to Thierry at Monaco when
he was 17 years of age, and I played him as
a centre-forward,” explains Wenger. “After
that, because David Trezeguet joined Monaco,
he played on the wings and didn’t score any
goals. I always had in my mind that one day,
this guy could play as a centre-forward for
me. When I went to Juventus to see him, he
played left-wing-back and wasn’t very good- because he was anything but a wing-back.
They wanted to send him on loan to Udinese.
“But we reached an agreement – Juventus
wanted to buy Nicolas Anelka and we were
really close to exchanging him with Thierry,
plus £15 million for us. Anelka wanted to go
to Real Madrid, however, so we still bought
Thierry and I played him upfront, I think from
November onwards. At the start, he thought
he couldn’t score goals. But when they came,
he never stopped.”
Henry plundered 228 goals for Wenger, to
become the Gunners’ all-time leading scorer.
Arsenal didn’t lose an away match en route
to the title in 2002 – another Double-winning
campaign after defeating Chelsea 2-0 in the
FA Cup final – and went unbeaten for the last
21 league fixtures.
In 2002-03, Wenger publicly declared his
aim to go the entire league season without
a loss. His hopes were dashed in match 10,
when Wayne Rooney announced himself to
the world with a stunning 90th-minute goal
at Goodison Park.
Arsenal lost six times that season, finishing
second to Manchester United. Players told
Wenger that by revealing the target to avoid
defeat, he’d put too much pressure on them.
“That’s true,” he says. “It just shows you
sometimes – and the media know it so well –
that when you’re too ambitious and you don’t
achieveyourambition,youfeelstupidand
humiliated. But you shouldn’t be scared to
put high ambitions into the brains of people.”
One season later, Wenger’s ambition was
realised – the Gunners went unbeaten for the
entire league campaign, as the Frenchman
bagged his third Premier League crown. That
side will forever be known as the Invincibles,
and one of the greatest teams in the history
of English football.
“For me, it was my big dream in life to do
that, because I felt there wasn’t much room
to do better,” he continues. “It shows that
you prepared very well for every single game.
It’s not easy. In France, Paris Saint-Germain
are ahead of everybody, but they’ve never
won the title without losing a game. In 2004,
we managed to do it.
“I’d told the players that you can become
immortal by achieving that goal. I knew that
usually when you win a championship, you
lose the match straight after that because
concentration isn’t the same any more, and
everything is a bit loose. But the fact that we
didn’t give up, that I’d put these ingredients
in their heads, helped a lot. It convinced me
that the mental impact can be so important.
When we did it, I was very proud because it
was a deep dream.”ROMAN’S GOT HIS TANK OUT
Wenger has won many trophies in his career,
and even has a space rock named after him:
asteroid 33179 Arsenewenger is between
three and nine kilometres in diameter, and
orbits between Mars and Jupiter.
But European prizes proved more elusive
than extraterrestrial ones. In all three major
continental competitions, Wenger suffered
defeat in finals – to Werder Bremen in the
Cup Winners’ Cup with Monaco in 1992, to
Galatasaray in the UEFA Cup with Arsenal in
2000, and to Barcelona in the Champions
League with Arsenal in 2006.
He has never been able to watch back the
footage of that Stade de France showpiece,
when Barça came from a goal down to win
2-1 late on after Jens Lehmann’s early red
card. Until then, the north Londoners hadn’t
conceded a goal in the knockout phase that
season, having ousted Real Madrid, Juventus
and Villarreal to reach Paris.
In his list of achievements, Wenger admits
continental glory is the main thing missing.
“Yes, the European trophy,” he says. “I never
cared much about the UEFA Cup or Europa
League, but I truly miss not having won the
Champions League. I left a knowledge behind
me at Arsenal that is there, after nearly two
decades of continuous Champions League
presence – they’ve never won it and I hope
they do one day. When I arrived, they’d only
playeda fewChampionsLeaguematchesin“WHEn I HAD HEnRY, I COULD HAVE SIGnED ROnALDO –
IMAGInE WHAT THEY COULD HAVE DOnE TOGETHER? IT
MAKES YOU SWEAT A BIT. I THOUGHT IT WAS ALL DOnE”
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