Arsene Wenger admits to being a prisoner to obsessiveness

Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger admits he stayed too long at club, a victim of his own obsessiveness.

Arsene Wenger left Arsenal in May after a stint of 22 years as the club’s manager. Picture: AFP

Arsene Wenger has revealed that he created a jail for himself at Arsenal and that he considers staying on as manager at the club for so long as possibly the biggest mistake of his career and one that meant he neglected family.

“I realise I’ve hurt a lot of people around me,” the Frenchman told the broadcaster RTL. “I’ve neglected a lot of people. I’ve neglected my family, I’ve neglected many close ones. Deep down though, the obsessed man is selfish in his pursuit of what he loves. He ignores a lot of other things.”

Asked about his biggest mistake, Wenger, who won 17 trophies while at Arsenal, admitted that it was “perhaps staying at the same club for 22 years. I’m someone who likes to move around a lot, but I also like a challenge. I’ve been a prisoner of my own challenge at times.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Wenger, who left Arsenal in May after a prolonged period of unrest among supporters, appeared as the football obsessive he was often assumed to be but also showed a quirky side to his character.

He revealed that he would like to spend an evening chatting to Moses about the Ten Commandments, he grew up in an environment where football was the distraction from religion, he has a weakness for pastries, he likes Bob Marley, has no furniture at home, only videos, and when he submitted to a DNA test he was told he had the addictive gene.

“I just used it entirely in my professional life,” he said. “It could have been used on something less beneficial for me.”

The 68-year-old admitted that he was “lambasted as pretentious, arrogant” when he told the media in 2002 that his dream was to win a title while going unbeaten.

“We lost the title the next season to Manchester United,” he said. “In 2002-03, I asked the players why we didn’t win the title. They said, ‘It’s your fault.’ I asked why. They said, ‘You put too much pressure on us.’ ”

Despite this, he said that he had planted the seed for the “Invincibles” season of 2003-04, in which Arsenal won a record of 26 matches and drew 12.

“Often, I’m asked if Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira (both part of the unbeaten side) will be good managers and I always answer yes,” Wenger said.

“They have all the qualities, they’re intelligent, they know football, they have excellent skill set, but do they want to sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed? It’s an obsession which bounces around your head day and night.”

The most talented player he coached was Henry but Wenger refused to name the players he wished he could have slapped. He did, however, say that he would like to ask for forgiveness from “all the people who I’ve made suffer”.

“In my line of work, we are constantly making decisions that punish people, while making others happy. When you work with a 25-man squad, it’s basically making 14 people unemployed every Saturday or Tuesday.”

Despite not having a football coach until he was 19, Wenger found that he had a natural talent for management.

“Firstly, I wasn’t convinced that I had the qualities to be a coach given I hadn’t had an illustrious playing career,” Wenger said. “And I wasn’t convinced I had the natural authority either.

“I found myself propelled into this job by the people around me and what they saw in me. Something I didn’t see. I started out with players older than me.

“One weird paradox is that I’ve never struggled for authority, even with the older player, without screaming.”

THE TIMES