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Arsène, if I say 6945, today on the 9th of October, what comes to mind ?

AW: Nothing

You have been manager of Arsenal for 6945 days. That’s as many days as all the current Premier League managers put together.

AW: Really? And how many seconds is that if you’re so good at maths (laughs) ?

Easy: 6945 x 24 x 3600!

AW: For me it doesn’t represent anything except doing a job that is exclusively turned to the future. Towards the next day. I always live in the future. It’s planned. Tight. My relationship with time is filled with anxiety. I’m always fighting against it. That’s why I ignore what’s in the past.

How is the coming minute a source of anxiety?

AW: I’m always afraid of being late. Of not being ready. Of not being able to accomplish what I’ve planned. My relationship with time is distressing in every way. Going back in time, looking back is just as scary. First of all it’s scary because there’s not as much to come as what has already been lived… The only way to fight time is to not look back too much. If you do, it can make you feel anxious and guilty.

You use the word anxiety to describe both tomorrow and yesterday…

AW: The only possible moment of happiness is the present. The past gives you regrets. And the future uncertainties. Man understood this very fast and created religion. It absolves you of what you’ve done wrong in the past and tells him not to worry about the future, because he’ll go to paradise. It means make the most of the present. Man “self psychoanalysed” himself very quickly through faith.

Your lucidity on the relationship between man and religion is very different from your outlook as a teenager. In those days, you read the missal to help your team win…

AW: Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as well today ! That’s a good thing though it means my team doesn’t necessarily need God to win.

In your relationship with the present, the game, does the manager feel like he’s entrusted with an almost mystical power? You are the creator of your team, its playing style, its strategy.

AW: Religiously, it is said that God created man. I am only a guide. I enable others to express what they have within them. I didn’t create anything. I am a facilitator of what is beautiful in man. I define myself as an optimist. My never ending struggle in this business is to release what is beautiful in man. I can be described as naïve in that sense. But it allows me to believe, and I am often proven right.

Not always…

AW: Sometimes, I can’t generate the best that man has in him. It gives me the opportunity to analyse where I’ve failed.

Earlier on, while you were getting dressed for the photo shoot, I was reminded of a quote by Mircea Lucescu, the Shakhtar Donetsk manager, about you: “Arsène is an aristocrat. He is not driven by the working class values of an Alex Ferguson or the aggressive nature of a José Mourinho. He tires to educate above all”. Do you recognise yourself in that description?

AW: I don’t deny that I’m first and foremost an educator. However, I don’t feel like an aristocrat at all. If you had lived with me, loading manure on carts, you would have understood. I try to be faithful to the values that I believe to be important in life and to pass them on to others. In thirty years as a manager, I’ve never had my players injected to make them better. I never gave them any product that would help enhance their performance. I’m proud of that. I’ve played against many teams that weren’t in that frame of mind.

Aristocracy can be a state of mind; it’s not necessarily inherited.

AW: I don’t deny what others feel, but feel like a kid from Duttlenheim who went running in the fields every day. Aristocrats had their heads cut off in France. I strive to pass on values. Not the right of blood. A civilisation that does not honour its dead or its values is doomed.

Precisely, you’re in England, and you didn’t keep your farmer’s outfit. You’re always impeccable on the bench on game day.

AW: Because I feel responsible for the....


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