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da betcris： ‘I want to go to the end of my job here. I built this team, I want to deliver with this team and I feel if I left I would have in some way betrayed my own beliefs. It is as simple as that’- Arsene Wenger
A week on from Arsenal’s humbling defeat to Barcelona and the annual criticism of Arsene Wenger and his ideology can be heard from fans and rivals alike. Scattered through forums and discussion boards online are gloating rivals and disgruntled members of the Arsenal faithful, quick to fault and even quicker to offer remedy, demanding high profile signings. One such fan elaborated; ‘all we need is a world class goalkeeper, centre half, holding midfielder and striker’. Is that all? I would first suggest a little calm, a little context and little fairer analysis.
Arsenal were out-passed, out-paced, out-played and generally outdone in every facet of football over the two legs against Pep Guardiola’s men (and the intergalactic Lionel Messi). This fact no one is refuting. Wenger himself publicly stating, for the first time, that they were beaten by ‘a better team’. Not ‘the better team today’ as idiomatic match day language proffers with a degree of consolation implicit, that perhaps on another given day the outcome may have differed. The lack of the usual indefinite article renders his admission all the more resounding in its simple, painful truth. Barcelona do now what Wenger and Arsenal aspire to do. Although this is bitter for any fan to admit, that their team do not measure up to another, is it really that damning an indictment when considering the historical context of the respective clubs? Barcelona have had a brand, an expectation, to playing football since their inception over a century ago. With the managerial appointment of Barca legend Johan Cruyff in 1988 the club found an ideological identity and, crucially, married this ideology with not merely singular success but repeated successes: four successive La Liga titles, a European Cup Winners’ Cup and a European Cup. Cruyff played for Barcelona before managing them. Interestingly Guardiola played under Cruyff . This narrative is rich in historical and ideological resonance. What Guardiola is achieving is the product of over two decades’ worth of implementation, determination and belief. This current crop of Barcelona players is the apogee of an ethos cultivated from the tender age of seven through every youth team at La Masia. Wenger has had five years. We are comparing a team at the peak of their evolution with one in the infancy of its own. Barcelona went five years without a trophy between 1999 and 2004 and did not compete nearly as successfully or constantly as this Arsenal team has on both domestic and European fronts. So before we crucify this manager for his policy let us at least give him a fair hearing.
He undertook this task with the club’s future at the forefront of his reasoning. Many commend Arsenal and Wenger for the long term approach but castigate him for not delivering silverware. I understand that elite sport is fickle, ruthless and judged only by result. In this respect we can ask the question: has Wenger delivered a tangible success, a title of some kind, in the last five years? The answer is no. Is this now considered a failed investment of time and belief? The answer is, categorically, no. Wenger has offered the football world far more than a sustainable business model (though I hope the magnitude of such an achievement is not lost in my rhetoric). Wenger has subscribed his current group of players to an identity, an ideology, and a purpose. His belief is simple: to take a group of similar aged, talented, young footballers and, by creating bonds between them over a sustained period of time, teach them an attack-minded, passing-oriented approach to football. This means little to many considering the lack of titles to show and even less on the back of a resounding European exit. But its weight cannot be underestimated – just ask the current group of Barcelona players who have spent the better part of their lives living and breathing an approach to football that has seen more than a generation to evolve. Albeit this is much easier to subscribe to when it has already bred success whilst the Arsenal trophy cabinet sits empty under the current belief system. But Barcelona are themselves proof that style can eliminate functionality, that ideology and implementation can overturn the mendacity of the claim that pretty football is not winning football.
Evidently Wenger has not realised his own ambition yet. Arsenal’s deficiencies are well documented: his team relinquished a commanding lead at the top of the table in the final matches of the 2007-2008 campaign. This year they have been comprehensively beaten twice against Chelsea and Manchester United. His team’s defensive naivety was brought to the fore with Messi’s four goal haul, as if Ibrahimovic’s dress rehearsal a week earlier was not warning enough. Does this however mean that Wenger’s is a fruitless pursuit, or that his policy is a failure? Again, with a little more time to reflect we may see that elite sport is not always as black or white, as win or lose, as it makes out to be.
We may judge Arsene Wenger when his tenure at Arsenal is over. Only then will we know if his faith was misplaced. I am one who believes that the true fruit of Arsene Wenger’s conviction is coming, whether it is this Arsenal team or an Arsenal team of the future who – I hope – looks back at their French professor of Economics as the beginning of a belief system. I am moved to believe this because I simply cannot subscribe to a world where a manager can take a group of players whom he values so highly, stands by so vehemently and places his faith in so unwaveringly, only to fail.
Written By Suminder Sandhu