Arsene Wenger Quotes & Sayings

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding. — Arsene Wenger

The real revelation of a player's character is not in his social life but in how he plays. In my social life I can hide my real personality. — Arsene Wenger

I have only been here since 1996 but between 1966 and 1996 England had thirty years without foreign players and didn't win any more competitions in that time. — Arsene Wenger

Sometimes now, when I watch continental games on television, I'm a bit bored. I ask, 'where is the intensity?' — Arsene Wenger

Messi's like a PlayStation. He can take advantage of every mistake we make. He made the impossible possible. He has something exceptional. He has six or seven years in front of him, touchwood that nothing happens to him, and he can reach unbelievable levels. — Arsene Wenger

If you have the money and you find the one player who can make you win and make the difference, no matter how expensive he is, you should do it. But there are not many players in the world who will make a real difference. — Arsene Wenger

For a while, you could decide when you loan the player out whether he plays against you or not, and I always decided that he could play against us. But I must say I didn't get any protection from the media because when the player I loaned out scored against us, it's 'aaahhh, look at him, stupid ... ' — Arsene Wenger

Everyone plays the ball over the top and, at the moment, we only concede goals from crosses or balls over the top. I feel we will adapt to that. — Arsene Wenger

Some are wrong because they are not strong enough to fight temptation and some some are wrong because they do not know. — Arsene Wenger

I am still hopeful we can go through the season unbeaten - a frightening thought. — Arsene Wenger

When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren't the people who are motivated, but have consistency in their motivation. — Arsene Wenger

I am, of course, delighted but there was never any doubt about Sol staying. — Arsene Wenger

To achieve great things you have first to believe it. — Arsene Wenger

The background looks like a lot of red cards. — Arsene Wenger

Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don't know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am. — Arsene Wenger

The moral values I've learnt in my life I've learnt through football. — Arsene Wenger

What makes him special? He has a mixture of physical talent and technical ability, as well as remarkable intelligence and above all a great passion for the game. — Arsene Wenger

The biggest things in life have been achieved by people who, at the start, we would have judged crazy. And yet if they had not had these crazy ideas the world would have been more stupid. — Arsene Wenger

You cannot play for Arsenal and give up, no matter what the score is. — Arsene Wenger

At some clubs success is accidental. At Arsenal it is compulsory. — Arsene Wenger

As a club, we have an educational purpose: to give back to those people who love Arsenal so that they learn moral values from our game and how we behave. — Arsene Wenger

Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home. — Arsene Wenger

Unfortunately apparently I am to blame because I don't produce enough English players. — Arsene Wenger

Messi is a Playstation. — Arsene Wenger

He made the impossible possible. — Arsene Wenger

What motivates me is an ideal of thinking about how football should be. And to try to get near this way of playing. And to try to improve all aspects of my personality that can help me get near this ideal way of playing football. — Arsene Wenger

Sol has experience, pace and physical power, which nobody else has together. — Arsene Wenger

I don't kick dressing room doors, or the cat - or even journalists — Arsene Wenger

I believe in work, in connections between the players, I think what makes football great is that it is a team sport. You can win in different ways, by being more of a team, or by having better individual players. It is the team ethic that interests me, always. — Arsene Wenger

If I left I would feel a deserter - like the guy who walks away from the army once there is a war. I am highly committed to this club. I love what I do here and love the spirit of the team. — Arsene Wenger

A football team is a like a beautiful woman, when you do not tell her, she forgets she is beautiful — Arsene Wenger

Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him. — Arsene Wenger

Sometimes you have to swallow the unswallowable — Arsene Wenger

As a coach you can influence the diet of your players. You can point out what is wrong. — Arsene Wenger

I am in a job where you always look in front of you. Unfortunately, the older you get, the less distance there is in front of you. — Arsene Wenger

When you're dealing with someone who only has a pair of underpants on, if you take his underpants off, he has nothing left - he's naked. You're better off trying to find him a pair of trousers to complement him rather than change him. — Arsene Wenger

I'm French. I have not become an Englishman. I have the impression of living on an island called Arsenal. If you fancy a sightseeing tour of London, don't ask me. You would get lost. — Arsene Wenger

I think generally the Japanese players have more intensity in practice but generally I do the same things. — Arsene Wenger

If I go into a season and I say, 'For f***'s sake, if we don't win anything, they will all leave,' I have already lost. The problem of the media is always to imagine the worst. The problem of the manager is always to imagine the best. — Arsene Wenger

I take pride in the fact that people go home having felt that for 90 minutes today, life is beautiful - and that's it, basically. That's why professional football exists. — Arsene Wenger

What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art. — Arsene Wenger

You build a player like you build a house. You start with the foundations. The fundamentals. — Arsene Wenger

Football is an art, like dancing is an art - but only when it's well done does it become an art. — Arsene Wenger

One of the things I discovered in Japan was from watching sumo wrestling. At the end you can never tell who has won the fight, and who has lost, because they do not show their emotion because it could embarrass the loser. It is unbelievable. That is why I try to teach my team politeness. It is only here in England that everybody pokes their tongue out when they win. — Arsene Wenger

It is one of my biggest regrets that Niall Quinn was not here during my time ... I felt he was an intelligent player. It would have been a good combination with Thierry Henry. What I like with Quinn is if you look at the player who played next to him, he always scored 40 goals because he had a hand for his head and he just put the ball where you were. He was a team player. A top-class player makes other players look good and he had that player. — Arsene Wenger

English players are as easy to coach. The problem is that the Premier League has the best players in the world, and statistically not all of them can be born in England. But we don't have enough English players: we are working very hard on it. — Arsene Wenger

In England, football is important for everybody. — Arsene Wenger

I didn't know the English were good at swimming. I have been in this country for 12 years and I haven't seen a swimming pool. — Arsene Wenger

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art. — Arsene Wenger

If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from. — Arsene Wenger

You cannot say that you are happy when you don't win. — Arsene Wenger

I do not think about the national team too much because footballistically it is not of too much interest. — Arsene Wenger

I believe one of the best things about managing people is that we can influence lives in a positive way. That's basically what a manager is about. When I can do that, I am very happy. — Arsene Wenger

I would be much more annoyed if we hadn't won the game. As a manager, you have to see the positives and I think Pires has a vaccine for the rest of his life. — Arsene Wenger

At a young age winning is not the most important thing ... the important thing is to develop creative and skilled players with good confidence. — Arsene Wenger

I believe I do my job the way I have to do it. — Arsene Wenger

Nobody has enough talent to live on talent alone. Even when you have talent, a life without work goes nowhere. — Arsene Wenger

We didn't think he would play on Sunday because he was suspended - that makes me think he has all the qualities to join Arsenal! — Arsene Wenger

In a competitive world, not everybody can follow the pace; you will leave people out. We now accept that we must take care of these people. You cannot let them die in the streets; people will not accept it. And that is right, too. — Arsene Wenger

If somebody stamps on your head in that way, you wouldn't say, 'thank you very much' and turn the other cheek. Only Jesus Christ did that. — Arsene Wenger

Young players need freedom of expression to develop as creative players ... they should be encouraged to try skills without fear of failure. — Arsene Wenger

Have Tottenham closed the gap on Arsenal?
Last time I checked they were still 4 miles and 11 titles away — Arsene Wenger

In England you have a good phrase. It is 'to bring the game into disrepute. — Arsene Wenger

If you want to win a horse race, you need your horse to be 100%. — Arsene Wenger

As far as I'm concerned, this guy should never play football again. The answer you normally get after a tackle like that is 'he is not the type of guy who does that.' It's like a guy who kills one time in his life - it's enough. You have a dead person. This tackle is absolutely horrendous. — Arsene Wenger

I've told him to cut off his ponytail. I think it makes him less aerodynamic. — Arsene Wenger

When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent. — Arsene Wenger

The best football players in the world still earn very little money compared to people who really earn money. — Arsene Wenger

We have tried to get closer to them, but we never copied anybody, we always tried to play our football — Arsene Wenger

No matter how much money you earn, you can only eat three meals a day and sleep in one bed. — Arsene Wenger

For me, motivation is a person who has the capability to recruit the resources he needs to achieve a goal. — Arsene Wenger

Ferguson's out of order. He has lost all sense of reality. He is going out looking for a confrontation, then asking the person he is confronting to apologise. He's pushed the cork in a bit far this time. — Arsene Wenger

I have been accused of not taking seriously the FA Cup on Saturday. I have won four times the FA Cup. Who has won it more? Give me one name. — Arsene Wenger

If you don't question the officials' role then you've got to ask what they are doing — Arsene Wenger

I also think we live in a competitive world, and I love competition. — Arsene Wenger

Their diet is basically boiled vegetables, fish and rice. No fat, no sugar. You notice when you live there that there are no fat people. — Arsene Wenger

Private life is private life. Off the pitch, there is private life, and the rest is social life, where of course you have to behave responsibly. — Arsene Wenger

In my job, you expect to suffer. That's why when I go to hell one day, it will be less painful for me than you, because I'm used to suffering. — Arsene Wenger

If I were going to war I would want to be alongside an Englishman not a Frenchman. The Frenchman would think too much. — Arsene Wenger

The communist model does not work economically, we all realised that, but the capitalist model in the modern world also looks to be unsustainable. — Arsene Wenger

I am supposed to take the bullets and absorb them. Like a bear. A polar bear. — Arsene Wenger

Work on your strong points because they are what made you. — Arsene Wenger

It's silly to work hard the whole week and then spoil it by not preparing properly before the game. — Arsene Wenger

My target is to make the players as rich as possible within the financial constraints of the club. My target is not to give them less money. I'm happy to make them rich. — Arsene Wenger

Spare me the articles about how nice Shawcross is because that was a horrendous tackle. People say we don't fancy the physical side of it, but this is the result. If you see a player getting injured like that, it's not acceptable. — Arsene Wenger

If you eat caviar every day it's difficult to return to sausages. — Arsene Wenger

I am not against being pragmatic, because it is pragmatic to make a good pass, not a bad one. If I have the ball, what do I do with it? Could anybody argue that a bad solution like just kicking it away is pragmatic just because, sometimes, it works by accident? — Arsene Wenger

People who work make the world live better and to reward these people well is normal. Yet they are not the people who are the wealthiest. — Arsene Wenger

It's like you wanting to marry Miss World and she doesn't want you, what can I do about it? I can try to help you, but if she does not want to marry you what can I do? — Arsene Wenger

If you do not believe you can do it then you have no chance at all. — Arsene Wenger

I don't think it's because of my eyes, my beautiful eyes.
(on Henry staying at Arsenal for the money) — Arsene Wenger

I think in England you eat too much sugar and meat and not enough vegetables. — Arsene Wenger

I know how important it is to have a helping hand. — Arsene Wenger

It's like a child who is used to having ice cream whenever he wants. When it doesn't come when he asks he tends to get confused and nervous. — Arsene Wenger

You weren't world-class when Arsenal signed you. — Arsene Wenger

Nobody will finish above us in the league. It wouldn't surprise me if we were to go unbeaten for the whole of the season. — Arsene Wenger

I think training of better Youth Coaches is essential. — Arsene Wenger

It's a strange atmosphere always over there, it is darker and less glamorous, and you don't feel as high. It is a different kind of test - can you raise your level in a less exciting environment and perhaps still a very difficult one? — Arsene Wenger

The score is high and very brutal but does not reflect what we saw on the pitch. The first shot on goal was a goal. The second was an own goal. The third was straight after half-time. They defend like mad and they catch us on the break. — Arsene Wenger

Thierry Henry could take the ball in the middle of the park and score a goal that no one else in the world could score. — Arsene Wenger