Wenger by Arsène Wenger

Author:Arsène Wenger [Arsène Wenger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2020-10-01T05:20:58+00:00

Chapter 7

The Invincibles

I made an announcement at a press conference: We can win without losing. And never mind those who called us crazy or arrogant. I’d always thought a manager’s ultimate goal was to win a championship without losing a match. It was a kind of obsession I carried around with me.

In the 2002–03 season, we did not win the Premiership title. We came second to Manchester United, and yet I felt that we were very close to pulling it off again, to beating our great rival and leaving our mark on football history. I felt the team was united, experienced, powerful, playing at top form, with a positive mental attitude, a combination of older players who loved competition and solid young players who had everything to prove and a life ahead of them. We missed out on first place by virtually nothing; a touch of magic, and it would have fallen into place.

At the end of the 2002–03 season, we had not lost an away match in the league, but we finished second. I asked my players why we hadn’t won the title. They told me I was putting too much pressure on them, that the goal of winning without losing a match seemed unachievable to them at that point. I believed they could win, that they could even do better, so I responded to them with a challenge: Win without losing a match. This team that had finished second in the League championship was the same team that would become the Invincibles, but they didn’t believe they could do it. That has always been a lesson for me: believing and setting the highest ambitions, sowing the seeds one year and harvesting two years later.

To prove to them that I had confidence in them, that I was confident myself, I made an announcement at a press conference: We can win without losing. And never mind those who called us crazy or arrogant. I’d always thought a manager’s ultimate goal was to win a championship without losing a match. It was a kind of obsession I carried around with me. You can be top of the class with 90 percent, but you can’t be second with 100 percent.

At the start of the 2003–04 season, I repeated to them what I had declared earlier: They could win the title without losing. I believed in it, and it was our goal.

I remember every single player on that exceptional team. Obviously, everyone remembers the stars, the players who were the lynchpins: Patrick Vieira, Gilberto Silva, Ray Parlour, Cesc Fàbregas, Robert Pirès, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Nwankwo Kanu, Jens Lehmann, and Ashley Cole, who had been at academy since he was eleven and had debuted with me at Arsenal. There were also two defenders who were fundamentally important.

Sol Campbell arrived at Arsenal in 2001. He had been the mainstay at our rival Tottenham, where his contract with the club was about to expire. No one could have imagined for a single second that he would come to us.

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