ARSENE WENGER THE MARTYR OF ISLINGTON

In November, things were going badly at Arsenal: theyd conceded three times in the
last 30 minutes to draw at home against Champions League minnows Anderlecht,
lost away to Swansea after leading, and lost at home to a Manchester United side
that had exactly two shots on target to Arsenals nine. It wasnt at all exceptional, and
to some Arsenal supporters that was precisely the problem: for the past decade
Arsne Wengers side has been among Europes best footballers and among its
worst winners.

Also infuriating to Arsnes detractors was his post-match refusal to offer the
improvised hysterics that usually follow one bad result, let alone three. Most big
managers are sociopaths, and fans and media have learned to treat Mourinho-ish
despair or Fergusonian recrimination as a necessary shamanism: the tantrum that
presages imminent improvement.

But in interviews, Arsne only ever acts like Arsne. He listens faithfully, head canted
forward like an Alsatian schoolboy nodding for communion. Before answering, he
glances upwards quickly, looks beyond the camera, and answers in thick hammocks
of French English. Between thoughts his head ticks like a Jesuit second hand. He
smiles when he talks about his players, sneers a little when hes lost, and smirks
when hes signed Mesut zil.

Most of all, Arsne stays calm. In 17 years as Arsenal manager hes arrived at a
Vatican caginess: There was a lot of quality in our game we could have won
easily we [have] to keep faith and our belief, he said after the United match. It
was iconically Wengerish, both in its sensibility (theyd led two of three and nearly
played United off the park before conceding an own goal and to a breakaway) and its
emphasis on maintaining faith within the squad over offering catharsis to supporters
but it galls a fan when the constant prescription is to say a few Hail Marys, buy
more replica kits, and show up again next weekend.

For better or worse, this is Wenger: Pope Arsne, recently the Martyr of Islington, the
Premier Leagues last magical perfectionist, last crusading aesthete, last Catholic. Its
not just his age, 65, nor the opulent fiefdom or the whispered politics, nor the
dogmatic reluctance to purchase a defender, nor that Arsenal fans in equal parts
consider him infallibly anointed or inoperably deluded. Its his faith his belief that
theres a code of rightness other than success; his Catholic claim that virtue, magic,
and beauty might be more important than the trophy case.

It didnt always look like it had to be a choice. In the 1998 run-in to his first Premier
League title, or when his 200304 Invincibles won another undefeated, Arsnes
sides were both beautiful and dominant. He was a messiah from the future and
Arsenal was the club of osteopathy, abstention, and sophistication, where banning
Mars Bars from the team bus and passing quickly led directly to competitive success.
Arsenal did well by living right.
Arsnes planned next virtue was kitchen table sustainability: Arsenal would develop
cheap young prodigies instead of overpaying for veterans and use the savings to
replace tiny Highbury with an enormous new stadium, the gate receipts of which
would bootstrap the club into footballs financial elite. But in 2003, just as Arsne
made his first mortgage payments on the Emirates, Roman Abramovich brought
modern hyperspending to Chelsea, and Arsenal landed in the vanishing middle class
of footballs late-capitalist inequality moment. For most of the past decade, as
footballing success has increasingly resembled a Marxist drama of investment,
Arsenals looked instead like a club from Dickens, a maudlin attacking-midfield
orphanage that develops young players and cries them out the door the minute they
get good.

Advertisement

Still, the stadium-building period was, in Arsnes words, the most sensitive and
important of my career. The Europa League is littered with clubs that were like
Arsenal on the day Arsne arrived in 1996 gallant old contenders owned by well-
respected baronets, playing on cramped but hallowed grounds, splashing out a timid
million here or there on an exciting Dutchman, and happy to contend for cups once or
twice a decade, keep a tight back four, and polish the old trophies.

Arsne averted this toffee-coloured future, built a financially revolutionary stadium,

and managed, incredibly, to keep the club in the Champions League throughout. But
a decade of austerity remade the club or unmade it, considering how many great
careers were sold to pay for it, how many Invincibles retired at the clubs that bought
them. Other clubs have Giggses, Gerrards, Terrys; Arsenal have only Arsne the
living codex, the insect in amber, the last ageing link to the Arsenals of Graham and
Chapman.

If 200414 is the decade thats made him papally essential, though, it also must have
agonised him. On Sky or NBC hes calmly satisfied with the current Arsenal, but can
Arsne enough of a competitor to win the league undefeated, enough of a
perfectionist to call for league-wide grass height regulation really have been happy
with a decade of desultory fourths, watching Mourinho and Mancini lift the trophies
instead? More than anything, Wenger seems to take joy in the development of
players; worst must have been losing Cesc and Robin and Samir, all figurative sons,
just as they were grasping their potential.

The proof of his faith is that, through all that, hes stayed at Arsenal. Manchester City
would have taken him sometime in those years they took the rest of Arsenal. Or
Madrid, Bayern, PSG at any hed have had 100m every summer and a better
chance to win the Champions League. He could have watched the worlds best
arriving every year instead of leaving. Why stay? Willingness to suffer is a sign of
faith. Nothing in Mourinhos functionalist cosmology could justify captaining an
austerity project nor would most clubs have kept Abou Diaby, a player of enormous
quality and character whos played 22 games in the past four years, for anywhere
near as long as Arsenal. Whether this reads as laudable loyalty or competitive
irresponsibility is an open question, but Arsnes decided: Hes stayed at Arsenal,
persisted with Diaby, borne all the pain, because he believes in something. Arsenal is
the club of my life, he says, the club that gave him a chance, the club hes invested
in rebuilding. The club that, at least for now, shares in his beliefs.

A puzzling faith?
What Arsne Wenger believes in on the pitch is beauty. Ive been inspired, he says,
by people who just did not want to win for themselves but wanted to win with a
certain style. [If a fan] wakes up in the morning and thinks, Oh! Today Arsenal play, I
have a chance to have a great experience today, Ive done my job. If we win the
game Ive done a very good job. But at least I have to try to give people that level
that emotionally they will experience something beautiful.

Listen carefully: beauty is the job, victory the pleasant possibility. This is the most
common and incisive of the anti-Wengerisms, that in tactics, transfers, and selections
Arsenal too constantly pursue perfection and neglect the insulating virtues of their
rivals. Each seasons collapses look the same a small and wounded team pour
forward elegantly, barely fail to score, and concede ugly, deflating goals on the
counterattack. Arsne should coach a different way, is the suggestion. The pursuit of
beauty ought to follow after the pursuit of victory.

The argument has power, partly because on the few recent occasions that Arsenal
have played more pragmatically than usual, theyve often looked quite good. In
January, Arsenal won 2-0 at Manchester City possibly their best league result in
five years despite a Stoke-ish 35% possession. And since 2003 they have taken a
ridiculous 22 of 24 points away from home when theyve had 43% or less of the ball
when theyve played like the away team. But even against City, Wenger admitted it
was the players whod demanded pragmatism: The team sometimes needs to be
reassured your tactics have to be aligned with the feeling of the team. Still, in
most matches, Wengers Arsenal revert to a faith in possession, passing, and beauty.

Its a faith that can be especially puzzling because football is an awkward place for
the pursuit of beauty. The hands are the consensus sites of human beauty and
intention the primate-distinguishers, the opposable gripper-maker-doers. But in
football, hands are legal for just a single player, in the most desperate moment of the
game. Everything else is done with the feet lumpy obliged balancers, appendages
of comic accident and limit, required elsewhere regularly for standing-up purposes.

Arsne seems to have another answer beauty as a valuable goal even in an

accidental world

Foot-scarcity is footballs original sin the awkward sentence no side can escape. A
match is 90 minutes, and because attackers have to play the ball and defenders can
just run, 88 of them are plotless jostling. But in those other minutes, when intention
does emerge, the sport opens into impossible, epiphanic beauty. A triangle appears
from unconnected points, a yard of space opens unexpectedly, an intended leg whips
forth. Its in these moments that football can be mistaken however briefly for a
sport about perfection.

But if beauty in football is the obverse of rarity, every Arsenal fan knows that the price
of rarity is accident. For every 70 Brazil theres a 74 Oranje. For every Wilshere
against Norwich theres two years of ankle injuries, Diaby shattered by Dan Smith,
Eduardo by Taylor, Szczesny and Koscielny slicing the League Cup to Birmingham.
Teams Barcelona, recently win by playing prettily, but its treacherous. You cant
have all the ball, not against Chelsea or Inter, and the more you commit to having it,
the more vulnerable you become without it. Theres a Grand Moff Tarkin arrogance in
beautiful football, a doomed attempt to control a sport thats fundamentally about how
much you can do while standing on one foot at a time. The answer is not
everything. Football may require faith, but its a hard place to be faithful: here the
ravings arent a prophecy, the bread does not become messiahs flesh, the foot is
never quite a pair of hands.

Poignant and infuriating, then, to watch Arsnes decade-long attempt to teach his
players feet to paint. Especially poignant, especially infuriating, to watch this in a
world where cynicism about unmarketable virtue has become the safest, canniest
stock response of all. Success is value, virtue is worth; beautys great if you can find
investors. Otherwise its hubris, a vestige, a precious doomed indulgence you should
flip for some defenders.

Thats one answer to footballs elemental tragedy: sell Mata, Matic-up your midfield,
drop Oscar for the big games and bar the door. Admit the sport and world are fallen
and win whatever following contingencies. But Arsne seems to have another answer
beauty as a valuable goal even in an accidental world. Last year Geoff Shreeves
asked him about the 6-0 loss to Chelsea. Wenger reminded him that the same team
drew away against Bayern and beat Spurs, and of course everybody after says, You
were too open all right, but before the game it was very difficult to guess, because
we had as well to win this game when you win a big game everybody forgets
about it, when you lose a big game everybody says you should have played
differently. But the results, Arsne knows, are capricious champions lose or draw
about a third of their games against worse teams.

So whats a manager to do? If the difference between first and third and fifth comes
down, as it sometimes must, to who benefits from more own goals by Anton
Ferdinand? Every manager wants to win, but every manager has something else in
mind as well, a plausible precursor to victory that can be relied on week to week.
Some cross, others hoist, some make chances, some want not to give them up.
Arsne wants to play beautifully. Is that really so detestable? As a compromise, a
consolation? Arsenal cant always win, but they can always try to play well. Can
always entertain. At least the losses were for something. If youre going to lose,
Arsne might say, why not lose while playing well? Why not lose expressing yourself
rather than panting back and forth across your own 18-yard-line for 90 minutes
hoping nothing beautiful will happen?

Wenger is maybe the last manager wholl stay with one club long enough to be
confusable therewith. Mourinho, Ancelotti, Pellegrini, even the monastic Guardiola all
flit from club to club as frequently as players. Mourinho in his career has won the
Champions League twice and left behind him a spiteful, pining Chelsea, an unfulfilled
Madrid, and the trophied ruins of an Inter. In this model the victories belong to the
manager, but the future health of the club belongs to someone else, owners or
arriving billionaires or directors of football.
That isnt Wenger for an idealist, hes paradoxically realistic. In the Emirates racing
chairs on weekend afternoons Wenger seems a species of crusader, an aesthete
hoping that eventually his Large Inside-Forward Collider will produce an all-whirring,
all-passing singularity of simultaneous artistic and competitive excellence. But when
he manages the club, Wenger is a similarly rare pragmatist, shrewd and self-
sacrificing even beyond Daniel Levy: the man who sold Henry, Nasri, Vieira,
Fbregas, and Van Persie for a stadium project intended to ensure that future
managers could compete with the leviathans. And over the past decade, the
pragmatic virtues of the stadium project have taken precedence over the aesthetic
virtues of the sporting side.

Compare: Mourinho is Wengers actual opposite on each of these counts an

appalling match-day pragmatist whos almost never managed any club other than the
richest in his league. Pulis, Allardyce, Hughes are twice as pragmatic, looking for a
simple win on Saturday and always conscious of their budgets. Late-Ferguson was
one of these as well, figuring just how little he could win with and just how ugly he
could let the wins become. And Pep? Pep, whos defined the last two World Cups
and done what Wenger couldnt in the Champions League? A double romantic, an
aesthetic radical with unlimited transfer budgets at any club he chooses. Wengers
the only Wenger left, the only romantic who does his own accounting, which maybe is
why youll find an Arsenal kit in every bar in Brooklyn on a Saturday at 10am. Arsne
is an artist with a day job.

What unites Arsne the aesthete and Arsne the mortgage payer is their shared
indifference to winning. Not that winnings unimportant, but hes chosen consistently
whether by building a stadium or by not signing an experienced defender so that
Calum Chambers could have games to develop players or the clubs future instead
of winning points in the present season.

Arsne knows that any good saint is remembered for the miracles rather than the
daily sacraments. And the greatest moments in his career are emphatically not
moments about victory. Victory is a brief thing, a trophy brandished from a bus and
left to gather dust. But no other club in Europe has managed a self-improvement like
the Emirates, a trophy that seats 65,000. And his most notable on-field achievement,
the 49-game Invincible run, is less about the league title than the brief triumph over
the surly incident by which teams lose. A religious experience, an ecstasy. A year-
long suspension of the awkward rules of football, when Arsenal were blessed, when
an assassin like Van Nistelrooy would sky a penalty just because theyd risen up
above the sport itself. The games the champions lose are the deaths head in any
sport, the grim reminder that no matter how much humans may become, well always
be subjects to some kind of chance subjects of loss, and distance, and difficulty.
Those are the rules, of life as well as football, and once, Arsne and his team
managed to break them. Isnt that suspension, that perfection, so much better than
mere Mourinho-ish winning?

Hell always be a Catholic

In the end, maybe football is a little thing. A shoving of men, ending two hours after it
begins. A reason to drink beer in the afternoon and yell at the television. A distraction
from lifes other work, which at least ends a little less immediately. But if people care
so much, then somehow it must extend. Something in football must walk out past the
doors of pubs and stadiums, out into London and New York, and give us something
that matters in our lives.

If Arsne extends, its because of the Catholicism the argument on virtue as

opposed to winning. Because whats been happening lately has had a lot to do with
virtue and with winning. Probably 2003 was the high point, winning-wise: Arsenal
began their undefeated season, Roman came to Chelsea, the Premier League
watching world got together and invaded a small country. Winning was ascendant;
missions were accomplished; being first or wealthiest indicated a singularity of
human excellence.

By the middle of the decade that victory in Iraq felt as transient as any Wembley
afternoon for Pompey or Birmingham or Wigan a nice day before the world went to
hell. And by the end, economic winning seemed doubtable as well: the game was
rigged, or winners were jerks, or theyd been cheating all along at everyones
expense. Maybe there was such a thing as too much winning, too much emphasis on
trophies and bonuses and competition.

Virtue hasnt been looking like a very good alternative. There used to be when
Arsne started managing, in an older and less precarious economy a tidy little path
for Westerners from birth to death. One attended university, took a job, acquired
mortgage, spouse, and offspring, mowed the lawn and punched the clock all in
exchange for a little safety, an adequacy of casseroles, weekends, barbecues, and
then a pension. In that life, virtue mattered; it converted daily decency into a
guarantee of something. But between 2004 and 2014 for Occupiers, for millennials,
for Arsenal the guarantee doesnt seem to have held. Football, like life, has often
looked like a drama of virtues obsolescence. In this world winning seems important,
even if its awful four teams, the 1%, make the Champions League and the other
99% is in the relegation fight.

By now Arsnes built his stadium and mostly paid the mortgage, and the wounds of
all those filial departures are close to healed. In the past two seasons Arsenal have
spent 132m, which is to say that for the first time in his career Arsne looks like hes
playing in the same league as everyone else, with neither the enormous rational
advantages of his arrival nor the crippling financial constraints of the past decade.
Hes just going to be a manager.

Except hell never be just a manager. Hell always be a Catholic, always insist on
valuing something other than results. And so hell remain stubborn, remain only
modestly interested in his defence, but also remain as fascinating and divisive as the
church itself to the wishers for virtue less a coach than a crusading saint, and to the
desperate to win a despicable relic. Either way, judgments on Arsne say far more
about the judges than they do about him about our comfort with the idea that sport,
or football, or life itself, can be worth our while even if it doesnt end in victory. That to
be beautiful, or to be decent, to improve ourselves or leave something for the future,
might be as or more important than the trophy case.