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

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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.”

In 2002/03, the season in which Arsène Wenger announced to the press that Arsenal could go the whole season unbeaten, his team fell short. They won the FA Cup, but gave up an early lead in the title race to Manchester United, eventually losing by five points. 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. The pictures include a picture of a banner-trailing plane – but unfortunately not the one I helped crowdfund.Gone for three because I love the man and couldn’t bear to go any lower, but it probably should be a two. It was definitely readable, and I’ve got a deep respect for anything Wenger has to say. However, he doesn’t say all that much. With the wide margins, large font and the fact that the book is fairly short anyway, it doesn’t really go any deeper than as to briefly describe a situation (sometimes a whole premier league season in a couple of paragraphs) before adding a passing comment or two, or a general description of how he felt during each period. It’s one example but there were so many. The history of a big club is full of missed great players! Banished was the players’ diet of fizzy drinks and chocolate, introduced were caffeine drops on sugar cubes at half time, physical and mental preparation was revolutionized, relative to what was then the norm. Facilitating the improvement of human performance through tailored man-management is a constant ambition.

Arsenal fans have waited a long time for this book in the hope of Arsene dishing the dirt but I knew this would never happen. This is the story of a principled, proud man. Someone who would never knowingly offend or hurt, and whose love of football has cost him dearly in his relationships. I just loved Real Madrid. I thought it the strongest, the most beautiful, the most impressive of all clubs,” he writes. “The players were all in white, looking magnificent. There were players I admired, like Kopa, Puskás and Di Stéfano. It really was the dream club.” He rejected a lot of top jobs 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. 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. Wenger was born in 1949, grew up in a village in Alsace, eastern France, and had an early insight into human psychology watching the patrons of the bistro that his parents ran. “Alcohol, brawling, violence, everything that used to scare or disgust me as a child,” he recalls in My Life in Red and White, his new autobiography. He became a hard-grafting midfielder, eventually playing for Strasbourg in France’s top division, but he always thought deeply, even obsessively, about the game, and in his early 30s he moved organically into coaching, first at Cannes and Nancy then Monaco and in Japan at Nagoya Grampus Eight. I don’t know why but football games are my life and I don’t think that’s ever going to changePrvá časť bola pre mňa najzaujímavejšia - čo bolo pred Arsenalom, odkiaľ Wenger pochádza, ako sa tam dostal, ako v klube zmenil pomery a zaužívané veci, prvé roky. To som nevedela, nezažila, bolo to pre mňa nové, pekný príbeh, autor sa ešte necyklil. Arsenal fans may benefit from, but ultimately take issue with his insights regarding finances and the reality of the restraints on the club’s ability to delve into the transfer market in his latter years. Being hard on him doesn’t work. Like all artists, he needs to feel supported in his creativity. He has a feel for passing and an exceptional sense of timing when he passes,” he says. “There is something magical and simple about his playing style. The Premier League is a train that goes by at 200 kilometres per hour, and Özil doesn’t always go at this speed, but you always have great affection for his artistry.” His first match was a victory… or was it?

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. By being transparent. Fifa has to be completely open, their accounts have to be open. Fifa is not owned by the people who lead Fifa, it’s owned by the people who love football. I believe that Fifa needs an education mission and I’m the head of that and we want to reach people all over the world. At the moment, football is well organised in Europe but not in the rest of the world. Everybody in the world deserves a chance in the game and we have to be guided by that at Fifa. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.I found myself invited to David Dein’s house that evening. He had said to me: ‘We’ll talk about football.’ I mainly recall a very sociable evening with a lot of laughter and games, a kind of charades. I seem to recall one of the subjects they asked me to enact was A Midsummer Night’s Dream – no easy task – and I got through it pretty well!” He says. “The friendship, complicity and understanding between David and me date from that first dinner, and from all the times we’ve seen each other since.” Sometimes Wenger’s competitiveness spilled over, notably in his epic, bristling clashes with first Ferguson and then Chelsea’s José Mourinho. But anyone expecting mud-slinging from his autobiography has misread Wenger. There’s mention of Ferguson’s “crushing authority” on English football, but he nimbly sidesteps anything more damning; Mourinho isn’t mentioned once. “I didn’t want it to be a book of revenge or frustration or of injustice,” he says. “I didn’t want to show: ‘Well, he did that to me’ – all these things. But you know what happened in your life and you have to rise above that. I wanted it to be a positive experience of life. You cannot have the life I’ve had until now and be negative.” Therefore, as I am sure you have realised, I have a profound emotional investment in Mr Wenger's autobiography; or certainly a huge part of it. The one that got away: Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Manchester United in 2003, the year he signed for the club. Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP