My Life in Red and White: The Sunday Times Number One Bestselling Autobiography

Product Information

Wenger was known for having a huge influence over how Arsenal was run from top to bottom, but he’d long been involved in the minutia of his clubs’ business practises. Especially in his role at Nancy in Ligue 1. I did however learn a lot about Arsene Wenger the man. I knew that he was very committed to his role as a manager, but hadn't realised quite how much football had taken over his life. Although in many ways a solitary man, it was clear from the book that he had many friends and colleagues that he thought highly of. Although of course with this being an autobiography it is a subjective book, he came across as a very fair man who cares passionately for the wellbeing of his players and is prepared to put in a lot of effort personally to nurture up and coming players. Full disclosure, I have been an Arsenal fan for over 50 years, and an Arsene Wenger fan since the day I saw him announced as our manager on the Jumbotron at Highbury in 1996. I was devastated when he eventually left Arsenal, even though I knew the day had to come sometime. I do hope that history is sympathetic to Wenger. Many of his contemporaries, were not. He was very successful. He did bring great times to the club. He does make contentious claims in his book that the rivalry with the other lot, who play in white and blue does not hold the same 'tensions'. He also claims that it is 'harder to win the Premier League than the Champion's League'. On both points I am not sure. Unfortunately, his own fans that we gooners once were, would, I am sure, argue vociferously that the rivalry will be as fierce and tension filled as always and that if the second point was correct, why did we not win the Champion's League? Obviously I'm slightly biased, as a long-suffering Arsenal fan, but this was a great read. It plays out pretty much how you'd expect it to - beginning with his early years in starkly rural Alsace and all the challenges that encompassed, to his position as a player-coach as AS Nancy and Cannes, through his troubled tenure at Monaco, his famous 22-year life at Arsenal and ends on his current position at FIFA.

Such lego sentences. And beyond that, what did you like about Viera? How did he make you feel? How did he feel? Tell us! Or better yet share anecdotes to show us. How did he fit into your philosohy? What surprised you about him? What did you learn from him? Coaxing that level of introspection and detail would've made for a better read. I did enjoy it, and there were times (especially at the beginning and end of the book) where he went into more detail, which was a good read, but I wish he had done it more. I’m no wiser as to any specifics of what went on behind the scenes at arsenal in his 22 years there, for instance, nor was there any other real storytelling, insight into the specifics of management, or his side of the story on some of the most famous incidents he was involved in. I can’t help but feel he could’ve let the reader into much more. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. The next game-changer is neuroscience. Why? Because we are at the end of the improvement of physical speed. The next step will be to improve the speed of decision-making. The speed of execution, the speed of coordination and that’s where neuroscience will come in. In the last 10 years, the power and speed of individual players has improved, but now you have sprinters everywhere. The next step certainly will be to improve the speed of our brains. There are a million questions that Arsenal fans would want Wenger to answer. The answers, unfortunately, are either missing altogether from My Life in Red and White, or expressed in a way that is long familiar to us: the English players stopped drinking and eating Mars bars; he used to have his ups and downs with Ferguson but they get on fine now. Meanwhile Mourinho, who cast a long shadow over some of Wenger’s most difficult years, appears once in the book, in a table provided at the end showing his head-to-head record against rival managers. (Wenger beat Steve McClaren 83.3% of the time; he beat Mourinho 10% of the time.)

The book just fails to come to life – I was at many of the games featured in the book but almost never did I feel that the book was adding anything to spark my memories of the matches. And many iconic moments are simply not mentioned at all. His theories on player recruitment, scouting and management are for the most part thought-provoking and demonstrate why he is so in demand as a speaker amongst the denizens of the international business world. Towards the end of My Life In Red And White, former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger ponders the conversation that will take place should he eventually reach the gates of heaven.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. I asked my players why we hadn’t won the title,” Wenger writes. “They told me I was putting too much pressure on them, that the goal of winning the Premier League without losing a match seemed unachievable to them.” Gutted - I really wanted this book to be good but to be honest you don’t get anything you couldn’t have learned reading a few post match interviews, and really they would contain more detail. French. I speak German and English well, and French very well [laughs]. I can understand Italian, Spanish, some Japanese, but I speak them less well. But if I live for a while there it’s OK. Wenger has not returned to the sidelines since leaving Arsenal, but as of November he has brought characteristic rigour to his role as Fifa’s head of Global Football Development. He separated from his wife, Annie Brosterhous, in 2015; their daughter Léa is finishing a doctorate in neuroscience at Cambridge University. He divides his time between London, Paris and Fifa’s base in Zurich, often staying in hotels, and he admits that the hardest part of Covid-19 for him was when most of the leagues around the world were suspended. “I don’t know why but football games are my life and I don’t think that’s ever going to change,” he says. “So I missed it very much.”Including Real Madrid, twice. “It’s terrible to have to turn down your childhood club,” he says. “But I had a mission at Arsenal, a contract to honour, and I’d given my word.”

The book is perhaps most interesting on Wenger’s early life and career – as this is little covered elsewhere. Another area that is perhaps even clearer from the book than I already thought it was is how the Invincible Season was an extremely deliberate and very explicit target (and it was interesting to read this part only 5/6 games into the 2020-21 season when already every team in the Premiership has lost). In 1996, Wenger, tall, whip-thin, like a sixth-former in a suit, entered the British consciousness when he was announced by Arsenal as the fourth foreign manager in the history of top-division English football (the previous three had not fared well). He held the position for 22 years until 2018, during which time Arsenal won three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups. While his great rival at Manchester United, Alex Ferguson, motivated players with the famed “hairdryer treatment”, Wenger became known for “invisible” training: a holistic approach that went beyond fitness and ball skills and overhauled the lifestyle and nutrition of the squad. Players were given instruction on how to chew their food; the traditional half-time boost of a chocolate bar and fizzy drink was swapped for a sugar lump with caffeine drops on it. Wenger brought Arsenal to three English Premier League titles and seven FA Cups, making the team a constant presence in the UEFA Champions League. He is regarded as a transformative force within English football. At the end of his debut season, just he and Chelsea’s Ruud Gullit represented non-British or Irish managers in the top-flight. By the time he departed all but eight of the twenty teams could boast the same.What is socialist for you? For me, a socialist is trusting connectivity to sort the problems of a society. First, you need a collective environment that favours the expression of the individual. After that, I think it’s down to an individual’s initiative to make the most of their life. But the dominant thing is a collective environment for me. Wow, what a disappointment this book was. As a lifelong fan of the Arsenal and ‘Le Professeur’ Arsene Wenger I was hoping this would be a detailed look into the man, the teams, the players and the matches that defined them. Instead you get a whistlestop tour of his career with the author providing what is essentially a top line summary of some of the events, not even always chronologically.