Book Extract: Arsene Wenger in ‘Game Changers’

On being scared of retirement

“It’s been my life and, honestly, I’m quite scared of the day. The longer I wait, the more difficult it will be and the more difficult it will be to lose the addiction. After Alex retired and we played them over there [at Manchester United] he sent a message to me to come up and have a drink with him. I asked: ‘Do you miss it?’ He said: ‘Not at all.’ I didn’t understand that. It’s an emptiness in your life, especially when you’ve lived your whole life waiting for the next game and trying to win it.”

On being financially sensible

“I personally believe the only way to be a manager is to spend the club’s money as if it were your own because if you don’t do that you’re susceptible to too many mistakes. You make big decisions and I believe you have to act like it’s your own money, like you’re the owner of the club and you can identify completely with the club. Because if you don’t do that I think you cannot go far.”

On the change in attitude among young players

“I’ve fought all my life for footballers to make money but when you pay them before they produce it can kill the hunger. I’m scared we now have players under 17, under 18, who make £1m a year. When Ian Wright was earning that, he’d scored goals, he’d put his body on the line. Now, before they start, they are millionaires – a young player who has not even played.”

On finding more players from the lower leagues

“What I think will happen is that you will have more and more players coming out of the lower leagues who have had to fight their way through,” Wenger says. “Compare that with a player who has been educated here, who has had Champions League for 17 years, who has not known anything else. It’s not a dream [for that player], it’s normal for him. But if you play for a team in the lower leagues and watch Real Madrid or Barcelona on Wednesday nights you think: ‘I’d love to play in games like that.’

“I’ve said to our scouts to do the lower leagues because the good players are there now. Don’t forget we have many foreign players in the Premier League, but good English players have to go down to develop.”

via The Guardian.