Being a massive fan of Arsenal Football Club and having such respect and admiration for the achievements and work of the Frenchman, Arsène Wenger’s autobiography was always going to be a must read for myself.
Wenger is one of the most successful managers of the English game and has also managed the most games in the English topflight. He won the double in his for season for the Arsenal, winning the Premier League and FA Cup. However, without doubt his greatest achievement was with the ‘invincibles’ where he led the Gunners through an entire league campaign without losing a game.
This book gives you a great insight into the life of Arsène, his unwavering passion for football and his obsession to constantly win and his unhealthy relationship with losing, his passion for improving standards and developing young talents and finding world class players from the connections and relationships he made over his many years in the game, but mostly his love affair with Arsenal.
However, as a fan of his and Arsenal’s I can’t help but be slightly disappointed with the book as I feel it was played very safe and only scraped the surface of what fans wanted to read.
I wanted to learn about his beliefs and opinions, his tactics and his relationships with ex-players and managers. Which we didn’t really get.
The start of the book gives you a great insight into his childhood and how he developed his love for the game. How a boy from a small French village ended up becoming one of the most famous names in football. He talks in-depth about his life and his family, growing up with religion and hard work and how with every chance he got he was playing football.
The autobiography is 300+ pages with over 60 of them at the back of the book being statistics and facts. It came across as an easy way to fill pages and a way of cutting the book sort.
He talks about his bitter rivalry with Sir Alex Ferguson and how they constantly battled and competed to be the best of the best. It was disappointing that he didn’t talk about his feud with Jose Mourinho and how he felt when his biggest players left for rivals. Like I said, it felt safe.
He finishes the book with his emotional goodbye with Arsenal and his exciting new challenge as FIFA’s head of Global Football Development.
For football fans this is a must-read book. I would highly recommend; it gives an amazing insight of an incredible man. However, I was disappointed as I felt the book held back and didn’t really give you any of his deepest thoughts and opinions.
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