Arsène Wenger: 22 Years of Filling Unforgiving Minutes

There was one understandable reason why Arsène Wenger should have left his post as manager of Arsenal Football Club.

And that is that he had had enough. Enough of the bogus calls of English referees. Enough of the lies of the English media. Enough of the abuse from people who claim to be Arsenal fans.

Now, about to close his 22nd and final season in North London, he has given up the greatest job he will ever have. But, like a former President who no longer has to deal with the stress, he is free at last.

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Arsène Wenger (no middle name) was born on October 22, 1949, in Strasbourg, in Alsace, a region that France and Germany spent the better part of 1870 to 1945 fighting over. He grew up in neighboring Duttlenheim, where his German father and his French mother ran a bistro named La Croix d'Or (The Cross of Gold), where he would spend hours studying the behavior of the football-loving customers. He would later say:

There is no better psychological education than growing up in a pub, because, when you are five or six years old, you meet all different people, and hear how cruel they can be to each other. From an early age, you get a practical, psychological education to get into the minds of people.

It is not often that a boy of five or six is always living with adults in a little village. I learned about tactics and selection from the people talking about football in the pub – who plays on the left wing and who should be in the team.

He got an economics degree at the University of Strasbourg, and played as a sweeper with FC Strasbourg, winning the Ligue 1 title in 1979 -- but that club has since been liquidated and reformed, its successor club RC Strasbourg Alsace finally having been promoted to the top tier of the French football system for this season, after 10 years away.

As a manager, he led AS Monaco – keep in mind that Monaco is a separate, though very small, nation but their soccer team is in the French league – to the 1988 Ligue 1 title and the 1991 Coupe de France, and Nagoya Grampus Eight to Japan's Emperor's Cup in 1996. That's when he was signed to manage the Arsenal Football Club of London.

Known as "Le Boss" for being French and "The Professor" for his scholarly demeanor, Wenger led "the Gunners" (whose fans are called "Gooners") to the Premier League title in 1998, 2002 and 2004, and to the FA Cup, England's national tournament, in 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2014 – taking both titles, a.k.a. "The Double," in 1998 and 2002.

The 2004 Arsenal team is known as "The Invincibles," as they went through an entire league season undefeated: 26 wins, 12 draws, 0 losses. It is the only undefeated season in the Football League since its very first, 1889, when Preston North End did it in far fewer games. Their undefeated streak eventually reached 49, breaking the former record of 42 set by the Nottingham Forest team of Brian Clough in 1978-79.

Arsenal infamously went 9 seasons without a trophy until the 2014 FA Cup, thanks to the addition of perhaps the best player in the world, Mesut Özil, who next won the World Cup with Germany. Wenger won the FA Cup again in 2015, and again in 2017. That made 7 FA Cup wins, the most of any manager in history. Aaron Ramsey, cruelly injured and missing a year in 2010 and 2011, scored the winning goal in extra time in 2014, and in the dying minutes of regular time in 2017, with Laurent Koscielny as the team's defensive rock. This season, he bought international superstars Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

In his 1st 20 seasons, he:

* Won the Premier League 3 times, twice having also won the FA Cup to "do the Double," and once going through an entire season without a loss: As a broadcaster said, "Played 38, won 26, drawn 12, lost exactly none."

* Never finished lower than 4th place.

* Never finished behind Arsenal's North London arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur FC, a.k.a. Spurs.

* Won 6 FA Cups in 7 appearances in the Final and 11 appearances in the Semifinal, never once losing in the first available round.

* Qualified for the UEFA Champions League every year since the 1997-98 season -- and reaching the last 16 of it every year since the one after after it, reaching the Quarterfinal 3 times, the Semifinal twice, and the Final once.

* Built the Emirates Stadium, a 60,000-seat sports palace that generates enough revenue for Arsenal to sign world-class players in a way that Highbury, the beloved 38,000-seat old stadium whose sideline stands went up in the 1930s, simply couldn't.

* And kept Arsenal playing at a high level despite having to pay off the debt from that stadium, meaning that, at first, world-class players would have to be scouted and developed, rather than bought.

But he went 9 years, from 2005 to 2014, without winning a trophy, unless you want to count winning preseason exhibition tournaments. And it's now been 14 years, since 2004, since he's won the Premier League. And he's never won the Champions League, hasn't reached the Final in 12 years, hasn't reached the Semifinal in 9 years, and hasn't reached the Quarterfinal in 8 years.

Many times, it looked, going into the Spring, like Arsenal would not finish in the Top 4, would not qualify for the Champions League, would not finish ahead of Spurs. And, thanks to Wenger's brilliance and Spurs' annual late-season fold, they always achieved these things anyway.

But last season, for the 1st time in 22 years, Tottenham finished ahead of Arsenal. They will do so again this season. For reasons I won't get into here, Arsenal finished 5th last season, and are currently 6th. They did not qualify for this season's Champions League, and can only qualify for next season's by winning the Europa League -- but they are in the Semifinal of that tournament.

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Yesterday morning, Arsène released this statement:


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Some soccer teams name sections of their stands for great players, great managers, or chairmen. If Arsenal were to do the same at the Emirates, here's how they should do it:

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The best tribute I ever saw to Arsène was a video made by someone who, ironically, quoted that most British, and least inclusive, of British writers, Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too.
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,
and treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make a heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
and lose, and start again at your beginnings
and never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
and so hold on when there is nothing in you
except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
or walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
with sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
and, which is more, you'll be a man, my son!

Who has faced as many "unforgiving minutes" as Arsène Wenger? And, of those, who has filled them so well?

I submit that the answer is, "Nobody."