He’s one of the most respected managers in the history of football, and his unique standing is such that he was appointed as FIFA’s first-ever chief of global football development in 2019. So it might seem like a strange question. But does Arsene Wenger actually get football?
Wenger, of course, was once one of football’s great revolutionaries. His reforms when manager of Arsenal forced everyone to reconsider their approach to the sport: the physical preparation, the multinationalism of club squads, the idea football should be played as if it were a branch of the arts. He was so transformative because he approached the game in such a grandiose manner.
Johan Cruyff, for example, is often cast as a footballing philosopher, but he also talked about the game in detailed, specific ways. Wenger, by and large, does not.
His long-awaited autobiography in 2020 was a remarkably vague tome, summarising a storied career with such broad brushstrokes that you wondered how much of it he actually remembered.
As a manager, he was obsessive about detail in off-the-pitch matters. He used to time training drills to last precisely 15 minutes, and not a single second more. When Arsenal were building the Emirates Stadium, he specified the shape of the dressing rooms and the steepness of the stands.
Arsene Wenger paid attention to the little details at Arsenal, apart from on the field (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
But Wenger never talks about on-pitch matters with such regard for detail. Frankly, he doesn’t seem to see, or understand, football in a spatial manner.
When managing Arsenal, he never offered precise explanations for why his side won or lost a match. His reasons were always about intangible (if important) qualities. He would talk about sharpness, or confidence, or nervousness, or tiredness. Fine. But he didn’t ever seem to consider that his side might have been exposed in one particular zone, or ineffective in one aspect of the game.
He didn’t talk about, say, compactness the way Rafael Benitez did, or the transitions in the way Jose Mourinho did, or the half-spaces in the way Pep Guardiola has done. If Wenger arrived in English football today, he wouldn’t be a manager at all. That job is now largely about tactical preparation and decision-making. Wenger didn’t make many specific plans for individual matches, and didn’t make particularly decisive interventions midway through those matches. Today, he would surely be a sporting director.
And, on that basis, Wenger’s job at FIFA seemed to suit him.
He can speak about football in a wide sense, and analyses the big-picture things well. If Wenger concludes that — to invent a scenario — an under-21 tournament should actually be reconfigured to an under-23 competition to help younger players progress, he’s probably talking sense. But the problem is that, as part of Wenger’s role, he’s on the panel of the International Football Association Board, which is in charge of the Laws of the Game.
It’s logical to have a well-respected former manager on that board, but he might be the worst person for it.
The clearest sign that Wenger doesn’t quite get it is in his attempted reform to the offside law. Wenger is, like many, frustrated that attackers can be adjudged offside by VAR when, say, their big toe is poking out ahead of the last outfield defender, and wants to change the rule so that you are onside if any of your body is onside. To a certain extent, it can be seen in relation to the old, unofficial concepts of ‘level’ and ‘daylight’.
But there are two issues.
First, Wenger has implied that football would “no longer have decisions that are about millimetres”, which is plainly untrue. Whatever you make the rule, and wherever you draw the offside line, there will always be marginal decisions in relation to it.
Offside calls like the one against Manchester City at Newcastle on Tuesday would not be eliminated by Wenger’s proposals (Sky Sports)
The second issue is about how players would adapt.
Attackers could, in theory, make lateral runs in an offside decision, then effectively dip a toe back into an onside position, and be able to run onto any through balls. This would be a very stark revolution in how football is played. The knock-on effect might be defenders feeling unable to keep a high line, and instead dropping back to defend deep. It would transform football into a different sport — maybe better, maybe worse, but are we really going to change the entire shape of the game because of an issue about VAR offsides?
“It would change the offside law so drastically that there would be huge unforeseen consequences,” said Darren Cann, an assistant referee in the 2010 World Cup final, in an interview with The Times this week. “I believe it would mean more VAR decisions, so more delays, and would make it much harder for an assistant referee to judge if a player is offside or not. If I was still an assistant referee, I would have resigned if it had come in.”
Few of Wenger’s other plans seem to make sense.
He has suggested players should be able to take free kicks to themselves — replicating a similar change made in field hockey — in an attempt to speed up the game. Again, there are surely various unintended consequences here — players would be able to flick the ball up to themselves and shoot over the wall at a free kick, for example. Again, you can argue this is desirable, but it would fundamentally change the game. And do we really need to speed up football further anyway?
Similarly, Wenger favours kick-ins over throw-ins, although only in a side’s own half. But this would make football even more based around set pieces, and allow teams to launch the ball further downfield with their feet than they could with their hands.
Wenger has also suggested legalising corners which bend out of play and then drift in again, which seems like an incredibly niche issue in the first place, and, once again, who benefits from this? Those teams who want to ‘get it in the mixer’ and challenge the goalkeeper in the air.
Almost all of Wenger’s potential reforms would be bad for sides like the one he created at Arsenal — who, for all their flaws in the latter years, were generally an attractive and entertaining football team.
It’s sad to talk about one of football’s great statesmen in such a way, but there’s a real danger that FIFA’s first chief of global football development might be doing more harm than good.
