E-Paper
Kunal Pradhan, Executive Editor, picks his favourite read of 2020
Arsene on Arsenal
Arsene at Arsenal. Some would say it was destiny that a man named Arsene Wenger would one day control a club called Arsenal, and transform it in his own image.
Arsene for Arsenal. Some would insist it was fitting that he would be both the club’s longest-serving (22 years) and most successful (3 league titles, four FA Cups, and an “invincible” season) manager.
Arsene is Arsenal. Some would chuckle that it perhaps came as no surprise then that an entire generation of millennial football fans around the world grew up thinking, even if for a moment, the club was named after him.
And now, Arsene on Arsenal. What greater joy for a football fan and an Arsenal fanatic to read an autobiography in which Arsene captures his journey, his chemistry, and his alchemy with Arsenal’s Red and White.
The club was Wenger’s whole life for 22 years – he was, as he writes in the first paragraph of My Life in Red and White, able to influence players, instil a playing style, experience some truly wonderful victories, and enjoy a freedom and power that managers no longer have today.
But this book is not just about Arsene’s life at Arsenal.
It’s a moody, visual, brilliantly crafted memoir about growing up as an innkeeper’s son on the French-German border town of Alsace (where the Alsatian comes from) in the 1950s; about hearing about football from the sweaty local team huddled over tiny tables at the pub; about slowly falling in love with the game as a child in tiny alleys with the entire village as your babysitter; about playing the sport professionally with some degree of success; and finally, about dedicating every fibre of your being to experiment with what can be done within the framework of a 100-yard pitch over the course of 90 minutes. All delivered with the crisp sentences and languid prose that reflect the brand of football he presided over.
To love Arsenal under Arsene was not about the trophies; it was about celebrating the unconfined joy of football. So the book may not reveal new secrets, or relate new anecdotes; it may not be a tell-all that settles scores. But it makes you feel quite like you did watching Arsenal in Arsene’s heydey – uplifted, enlightened, entertained, and devoid of all negativity.
Arsene of Arsenal. And Arsenal of Arsene.
