he was a bit-part player when they became
domestic champions in 1979, largely focusing
on his role coaching the youth team.
In 1983, Wenger became first-team coach
at Cannes, helping to create an academy that
later brought through Zinedine Zidane and
Patrick Vieira. A year later, he earned his first
managerial job after being lured to Nancy
by Aldo Platini, father of Michel. It was a club
struggling to hang on to its place in the top
tier of French football.
“I started in management by learning my
job well, as I had to fight every year to stay
in the league – we always had to sell our best
players,” says Wenger, speaking to FFT as he
launches new book My Life In Red and White,
the colours of every team he’s ever managed.Wenger guided Nancy to an encouraging
mid-table finish in his first season, but a year
later they only avoided the drop thanks to
an end-of-season play-off against one of his
former playing clubs, Mulhouse. In his third
campaign, Nancy were relegated.
“It was a good humility teacher,” explains
Wenger. “If you start and you win straight
away, you can think, ‘Because it’s me’. If you
look in all the years since, Nancy have always
been in the lower leagues – they play in the
second division now. Their real potential was
down at that level.”
Thankfully, people in football understood
the constraints that he’d been working under.
Nancy tabled a new five-year contract, but
offers arrived from Paris Saint-Germain and
Monaco, who had expressed interest in his
services a year earlier.
After moving to the Principality, Wenger
needed only one season to make Monaco
champions for the first time in six seasons –
swiftly signing Hoddle and fellow Englishman
Mark Hateley. That 12 months was arguably
the most important of his career.
“I learned my job with Nancy – I learned
what it is to have no huge potential, and to
do your best with it,” he continues. “For me,
that always put things in perspective a bit,
whenever I enjoyed success as a manager.
But when I won the league the year after,
that was important too, because I could see
that I could do it.”
Monaco were beaten 2-1 on aggregate by
Galatasaray in their 1988-89 European Cup
quarter-final, but reached the Cup Winners’
Cup semis a year later, then the final of the
same competition in 1992. Wenger brought
through players like Emmanuel Petit, Lilian
Thuram and Youri Djorkaeff, and made a star
of George Weah – recruited from Cameroon
club Tonnerre Yaounde for just £12,000.
In 1994, however, Monaco lost 3-0 to Milan
in the Champions League semi-finals. Wenger
began to ponder a departure from the Stade
Louis II. The Marseille match-fixing scandal
of 1993 had angered him deeply – Monaco’s
rivals were found to have bribed Valenciennes
players in an end-of-season encounter, and,
while not proven, more allegations surfaced
relating to other matches. Wenger had lost
trust in the integrity of the league – Monaco
had finished as runners-up to l’OM in both
1991 and 1992.
Aware that he was unwilling to sign a new
deal, Monaco fired Wenger after a bad start
to the 1994-95 campaign. Soon, he accepted
the position as manager of Japanese outfit
Nagoya Grampus Eight.
“I had done 10 years in France and in the
end it wasn’t very enjoyable, so I felt it was
a good time to go,” he reveals. “On one hand,my passion for the game was so intense, and
on the other hand, I also did this job to have
experience of different cultures and different
people. I’ve always had that curiosity in my
life – to see how life was somewhere else.”
But Wenger was joining a club who’d just
finished second bottom of the J.League, in
Gary Lineker’s last season at Nagoya. Given
the Frenchman wasn’t short of admirers –
he’d turned down an approach from Bayern
Munich during his time at Monaco – moving
to Japan was a huge risk.
“Many friends told me, ‘You’re killing your
career’, and they could have been right,” he
says. “I remember after two months there,
Werder Bremen came to see me and said,
‘Come and take over’. But I said, ‘No, I’ve just
started here, I can’t move again’. It wasn’t
that I didn’t want to do it, because you feel
slightly homesick at the beginning, in such
a different world. But I’m happy that I chose
to stay there.”
Wenger adapted to life in Japan, growing
fascinated with sumo wrestling, and guided
Grampus Eight to third in the table – earning
him the J.League Manager of the Year award.
Midway through 1996, they were challenging
for the title when Arsenal came calling.THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTIOn
Working in England had become an ambition
for Wenger. In his late 20s, he’d travelled to
Cambridge for a three-week course to boost
his English language skills, hoping they might
prove important one day. On another trip, he
was enthralled when he saw his first match
in the country.
“I always wanted to come to England,” he
says. “For my first experience there, I went
to Liverpool against Manchester United with
a friend of mine and Gerard Houllier. While
I was watching, I thought, ‘F**k’s sake, it’s so
different here’. I had a shock, an emotional
shock. I realised, ‘Now I know why football
was created here, in this country’. I said to
myself, ‘If I ever get an opportunity to work
here, I want to take it’.”
Ever since that night of charades in 1989,
Wenger and David Dein had kept in touch.
Dein visited the manager in Monaco on more
than one occasion, and had recommended
him for the Arsenal job in 1995. Chairman
Peter Hill-Wood plumped for Bruce Rioch.
When Rioch’s relationship with the board
started to break down a year later, though,
this time Dein got his wish. Hill-Wood and
Dein met Wenger in Japan in June 1996 to
finally agree a deal – weeks before Rioch was
sacked. He knew he wanted to take the job.
“Yes, I had decided,” he says. “At that time,
my idea was to stay in Japan or go to a big
English or European team – the year before,
I didn’t completely convince Peter Hill-Wood!
But looking back with a distance now, I think
Arsenal’s choice was very brave.”
Particularly given the furore that followed
the Frenchman’s appointment. ‘Arsene who?’
guffawed the Evening Standard’s headline.
“I remember going to the training ground to
tell all the players before it was announced,”
Dein later recalled. “I said to the boys, ‘We’ve“GEORGE WEAH WOn THE BALLOn D’OR AnD THEn InVITED
WEnGER On STaGE TO HAnD HIS OLD BOSS THE AWARD,
SUCH HAD BEEn THE COACH’S InFLUEnCE On HIS CAREER”
Below Showing off
his stylish threads
alongside Hateley
and Hoddle; with
Weah; and as boss
of Grampus EightImagesGetty Images; PAARSEn E
WEn GERFourFourTwo.com The Managers 53