‘There was a lot of scepticism about foreign managers when I arrived,’ he admits, ‘because you had no history of successful managers from abroad and there was a kind of belief that foreign managers couldn’t adapt here. There was a double scepticism about me because nobody knew who I was, and it was, “Arsène who?” I could see as well from the way the players looked at me that they were thinking, “What does this guy want?” One of the problems is that you always have to convince the players, but to start well you also need luck. And my luck was that I inherited a good team, players who were all basically over thirty, very experienced and very intelligent.
‘I had Seaman, Dixon, Adams and Winterburn – they were all over thirty and they were winners – and I had players like Platt, Merson, Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp. It was a team. They were all experienced. The other good thing was that they had not made money. When I arrived it coincided with the TV money that was coming into the league. Ian Wright was a star and he was earning £250,000 a year, and from the time I arrived until a year or two later it went from £250,000 to £1 million. So when you are over thirty and suddenly you go from £250,000 to £1 million or £1.2 million a year, if you can gain one more year you’re hungry. In fact, in British football we’ve gone from people who made their money after thirty to today, where they make their money before twenty! And that’s a massive problem.
‘So when I arrived I was able to convince the players that if they were serious, if they were dedicated, if they did my stretching and my preparation they would have a longer spell as a player. And I always gave them one more year, so the carrot was always there. They knew they had to fight for one more year. They were ready to die on the football pitch and that was my luck. They had the quality and they were hungry, and of course that helped. I believe when you come here from a foreign country you have to adapt to the local culture. You bring your own ideas, but you must not forget that you have to adapt to the culture.’
Part of the culture that confronted Arsène was something very different to what he had been used to. Back then it was still quite normal for players to enjoy themselves and go out for a drink after matches. They played hard and put the work in on the pitch, but then enjoyed themselves off it. It was still often a case of a team eating fish and chips on the coach when they were travelling back from an away game.
‘I changed that, but the fact that we were winning and the players were getting bigger contracts helped,’ he says. ‘When you multiply your wages by four as a football player, that’s not common, but they were intelligent and they were men. I did feel sometimes, “Are they going to be able to play on a Saturday?” I came from France where in training you worked hard, but on Saturday sometimes the players disappointed me. But I discovered here a generation that when the game started on a Saturday, they were competitors. I think you can play to play, you can play to compete – and you can play to win. These guys played to win. On Saturday they were ready absolutely 100 per cent to play to win.
‘I slowly changed the diet, the training, and put across my ideas. I adapted a little bit as well, I changed things slowly and I encouraged my players at the back to play more. I came here with the idea that they could not play football, and that’s when I discovered they were much better technically. It was a pleasant surprise because I encouraged them to play – and they liked it, they were capable of doing it. Bould, Adams, Winterburn – they were players, and I think we all met at the right time.
‘I came here because of David Dein – he believed in me. I was lucky enough to meet somebody who gave me the chance to come to England and I will be grateful forever for that. He came a few times to Monaco when I was manager and we had a good relationship. Before I went from Monaco to manage in Japan I met with him and Peter Hill-Wood, but in the end they decided to go for Bruce Rioch as Arsenal manager. I went to Japan for a year and in the second year they came to see me and said, “We want you to take Arsenal.” The most important thing in this job is to have good players. That’s the only thing that matters, basically. No one can make miracles. I was lucky that when I came here I had a top team.
‘What I like in England is the respect for tradition, but they are also crazy enough to innovate. It was surprising, but that’s what I think I admire about this club – they have respect for the traditional values of the game and they keep them alive. But they took a French guy, who at that moment nobody knew, and there was no history of successful foreign managers in England. When I arrived it was nearly impossible to get a chance if you were foreign. I would say that today it’s the reverse. It’s much more difficult for an English manager to get a job in the Premier League than for a foreign manager. It was down to David Dein believing in me and giving me that chance.’
I can remember reading that Arsène had signed Patrick Vieira and then Emmanuel Petit on five-year contracts, and at the time it was quite unusual for a British club to be signing players from France or any other country, really, because we were pretty insular when it came to our football. With a few exceptions managers tended only to sign British players, so it all seemed very different, and not a lot of people knew that much about either of them.
‘At that time, on the French market, I was alone,’ he says. ‘I could go and pick a good player and they were ready to come over to England with me. I knew Vieira from the French league and I had Petit as a player when he was at Monaco. I thought at the time that they both had the physical stature – as well as the ability – to play in the Premier League. I remember when we went out in the tunnel before matches you had Bould, Adams, Petit, Vieira, Bergkamp, Ian Wright. They were massive, the guys were absolutely massive, and you won half the game before you went out. So at that time I could take from the French market what I wanted, and there were good players in France. Today, if you go to the French league there are forty-three scouts and twenty-five are English – so it’s much different now.’
I was at Charlton as a manager for fifteen years, Alex and Arsène have even more years at one club, and I honestly can’t see that happening again. Managing at any level, particularly in the Premier League and the Championship, is much more short-term now for a manager. If Arsène was walking into Arsenal today he probably couldn’t afford to think beyond three or four years. That’s the reality for a manager these days, and it’s one of the big changes to have taken place during his time in England.
‘Firstly, what has changed is ownership,’ he says. ‘When I arrived it was all local. The owners had bought “their” football club. They were fans as kids, were successful in life and then bought the club they loved. It’s different today, it’s an investment – and people are scared to lose their investment. We as managers are under pressure to be successful. It’s a billionaires’ club today.
‘What you did at Charlton, and what I have done, is carry the values of the club through the generations, and you have that as a reference when a player comes in. I can say to the player, “This is the way we do things. We do this, we don’t do that, you have to behave like this and not like that,” because I’ve been here for a long time. If the manager changes every two years he’s in a weak position to say things like that. The manager is not the carrier of the values of the club any more. I think it’s very important that the values of the club are pushed through by the manager.
‘I believe a manager has an influence on three levels. The first is on the results and the style of play. The second is the individual influence you can have on a player’s career. Players can have a good career because the manager has put them in the right place, given them the right support, the right training. So you can influence people’s life or career in a positive way, and the third is the influence you have on the structure of the club. I was lucky because when I arrived we had no training ground; we had Highbury, which is the love of my life, but it only had a 38,000 capacity. We got the training ground and the new stadium, and I was part of that, so that gives you a kind of strength as well. We had to pay back the debt. We knew we had limited money and we had to at least be in the Champions League to have a chance to pay off the debt.
‘That was the most difficult period for me. For a while it was