“I am only a guide. I enable others to express what they have within them. I didn’t create anything. I am a facilitator of what is beautiful in man.”
1996 was the year Spice Girls’ Wannabe made it known that in order for you to get on with somebody, you must also, indubitably, get along with the friends. 1996 was the year of the worst/best earworm, the Mission: Impossible theme, the one you smashed buttons to, playing Duke Nukem 3D on your swanky Windows 4.0. 1996 was the year of firsts. There was no Harry Potter overkill (five parts to the Fantastic Beasts saga, really?! The book is 128 pages long!), or Double-decker Domino’s pizza; and Jose Mourinho, Bobby Robson’s assistant at Barcelona, bossed Pep Guardiola around. 1996 was a lifetime ago, when an unassuming, fresh-faced Arsene Wenger found himself thrust into the spotlight of public consciousness, and he has since changed football as we know it.
“Arriving in London with complete scepticism. My first league title, my first double. Going from “Arsène Who” to the one who became a pioneer. Being the first non-British coach to succeed in England.”
Player conditioning, nutrition, recovery, rehabilitation, development, micro-management was fast-forwarded 10 years into the future at Arsenal FC. The discipline of the Orient overseen and inculcated seamlessly into the perceived standards of English professionalism. However, English football caught up in time.
“For me it doesn’t represent anything except doing a job that is exclusively turned to the future. Towards the next day. I always live in the future. It’s planned. Tight. “