For all its grandiosity and inordinate riches, the Champions League can be quite a savage place. So disturbingly barbaric at times that as neutrals, you manage to develop an unfamiliar surge of sympathy for certain teams and their managers — sometimes, feeling sorry is all you can do.
Along with emphatically dispelling one of those amplified modern-day football myths — that English football is the gold standard of the European game — the Champions League this week retold a more routine tale, one that comprised vapidity, implosion and spinelessness. A story so calamitous for Arsenal fans that it should — ideally, at least — now end with only one thing: Arsene Wenger’s exit.
It wasn’t only Wenger. There were the players, of course. The sight of Alexis Sánchez down on his haunches wondering why a man of his ability came to this club in the first place; the customary white handkerchief performance from Mesut Özil; and a defence minus Laurent Koscielny that seemed like it was made up of a couple of headless chickens ambling on a freeway. Wenger later admitted that his team was “mentally jaded” and just couldn’t muster a response to Bayern Munich’s heavy artillery.
Wenger himself has looked weary before. But never — not even during the 8-2 mauling against Manchester United, or the 6-0 against Chelsea — has the Frenchman looked so morose and clueless. During the course of this diabolic Munich evening, Wenger came perilously close to doing something no manager possibly ever has: Undo a 20-year legacy in one abject night of football.
Once upon a time, Wenger was a revolutionary; Arsenal’s modern, studious version of Herbert Chapman; a possession-loving clone of Helenio Herrera. He brought with him radical training methods and diet plans, and tactics so ingenious to English football that they find a mention in Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid, a quite brilliant critique of the history of football tactics. His teams were built around silk and steel, brawn and brains; a utopian world where Thierry Henry seamlessly fused with Tony Adams. It was football nirvana.
Not anymore.
In so many of his nightmarish days as Arsenal boss in the past, Wenger was castigated for being tactically too naïve, often fielding sides devoid of any physicality against more robust and well-drilled teams domestically, as well as in Europe. More disquieting was his mulishness in sticking to a philosophy that was clearly failing to win games — an unfathomable obstinacy that blurs his otherwise exceptional coaching acumen even today.
The great Brian Clough once famously exclaimed that “Arsenal caress a football the way he dreamed of caressing Marilyn Monroe”. Unfortunately, unless you have a certain Lionel Messi in your team, mindlessly caressing the ball doesn’t get you anywhere in the modern game. And guess what? Even Messi is struggling these days.
Recent embarrassments have had little to do with tactics. Against Bayern Munich, for instance, Wenger set up his team the best way he could. A lack of height and potential defensive frailties were obvious concerns but he had to make do with whatever he had. What undid Arsenal so spectacularly was — as banal as it may sound —a stunningly timid capitulation. Fighting back hasn’t been Arsenal’s thing ever since the Henrys and the Bergkamps and the Vieiras stopped roaming the hallowed turf of Highbury. We don’t know what Wenger says to his players but whatever that is, it is clearly having no affect. The players’ refusal to respond to the manager’s calls is becoming alarmingly apparent.
Just to disparage Jose Mourinho for a moment, no one really — apart from him, of course — thinks that Wenger is a “specialist in failure”. He has taken Arsenal from being perennial contenders to a European super-club, complete with a new stadium, and a sparkling identity built over two decades. On paper, they still hold their own against all major European teams. Just on the field, they come nowhere close to doing that. More than failure, let’s just say that Wenger has become a “specialist in tedium”, one who refuses to inspire or adapt.
Ideally, Wenger’s inability to win the domestic title for so long should’ve seen him leave a while ago. But conservative, change-averse clubs such as Arsenal are too afraid to a replace a man weaved so densely into the fabric of the club. Unfortunately for them, the manager is held in such veneration that sacking him seems like an unthinkable option — Wenger’s future rests pretty much in his own hands.
Contrary to what happens with players, age is often overlooked as a key criterion in managerial appointments. Wenger is no longer the coach he was 10 years ago; fatigue has become one of his dominant hallmarks. What Arsenal needs, apart from a kick up its backside, is ambition and belief. And, Wenger can’t give that anymore. “Le Professeur”, as he’s fondly called, may no longer have much to pass on to his pupils.
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