Arsene Wenger’s name is synonymous with the 22 years he spent at Arsenal. The Invincibles, Thierry Henry’s 175 Premier League goals, nuisance zips, “I did not see it”, all of that.
But he demonstrated his pedigree as a special manager long before moving to north London with Monaco a decade earlier.
Responsible for the club’s fifth league title, Wenger also laid the foundations for the success Monaco would enjoy in the late 90s. This is the story of the legacy he left behind.
Working his way up
After spending a large part of his playing career juggling amateur lower league football with studying, Wenger eventually broke through to play in the top flight in the periphery of Strasbourg’s squad, at the age of 28.
It was there that Le Professeur first developed his coaching, taking charge of the reserves while making the odd appearance for the first team. Soon enough he had an assistant manager gig, offering opposition analysis for Cannes manager Jean-Marc Guillou, like a kind of proto Andre Villas-Boas to Jose Mourinho.
Even working behind the scenes, he was earning a reputation as the bookish obsessive that he would later become famous as. It brought him a first coaching job, Ligue 1 side Nancy, when he was just 34.
With a limited squad, at a club selling its better players, Wenger managed to fight off the tide of relegation before they were eventually swept away. Nancy finished a decent 12th in his first season, maintained their top-flight status by virtue of a relegation play-off win in the second, but slumped to a 19th-place finish in his third and final season.
Nobody held the relegation against him, however, and his good work had not gone unnoticed by Monaco. After failed earlier attempts to release him from his Nancy contract, Wenger was eventually free to join the club in the summer of 1987 – an appointment that would make club history.
Instant impact
Monaco would be quite different to Nancy. Wenger was taking over a side that had finished fifth in the season before, with an owner willing to back him in the transfer market.
He was given free rein to sign his transfer targets. After spending three years in Milan, Mark Hateley was brought in to play up front. That led to them to securing his England team-mate Glenn Hoddle, Monaco hijacking his move to Ligue 1 rivals PSG.
Speaking in an interview with The Set Pieces, Hateley reminisced: “I didn’t know anything about Arsene Wenger. All I knew was that he was a very young manager…
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