A peculiar method to madness that works

In life, there is never a hard and fast rule to success. There is no nailed-on formula to  achievement. No guaranteed route to accomplishment. What works for one, is not certain to work for others. What is good for the goose, may turn out to be very bad for the gander.

Which is why it has come as a surprise to all watchers and followers of the beautiful game over the weekend that Arsene Wenger was voted the Best Coach of the Decade by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS). For the uninitiated, this body is made up of retired footballers and football egg-heads who busy themselves with endless reams of information, data and numbers that help explain why football matches are won, lost or drawn everyday and everywhere around the world. In other words, they are like a repository of information for world football.

It still comes as a surprise that Arsene Wenger is the best in the world in what he does, in the past ten years; beating the likes of Sir Alec Ferguson and the “Special One’, Jose Mourinho.

The marked difference between Wenger and the others being that he has won trophies on English football only, while the other two have succeeded not once, but severally on the European continent. Ferguson has not only almost ‘annexed’ the English premiership many times over, he has also won the ‘Holy Grail’, the Champions League twice. Mourinho has not only won the English premiership twice as well, he has won leagues in Portugal and Italy, as well as the ‘Holy Grail’ twice as well. Wenger’s two premierships and three FA Cups look like pauper’s rags beside those two men.

But the people who voted Wenger as the best, were attracted to the fact that he has perfected a specific concept of football which is pleasing to the eye and is often seen as the best pattern of the game in the world. He has remained faithful to this free-flowing style of his, while developing young, technically-adept players along the way with clockwork regularity. In layman’s language, Mourinho for instance makes use of stars to accumulate trophies, while Wenger makes stars. An almost-endless assembly line of star players around the world owe their careers to Wenger. The list stretches from Jurgen Klinsmann, Youri Djorkaeff, Victor Ikpeba, George Weah, Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit, Luis Boa Morte, Thierry Henry onto the present crop of Robin van Persie, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Jack Wilshire, Johann Djourou, Alex Song.

Ferguson has also fared well in that department as he must get credit for the careers of the likes of Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs, the Neville brothers, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes. As for Mourinho, it’s hard to find a player that he plucked out of obscurity and moulded into a gem.

That interestingly, seemed to be what has put Wenger head and shoulders above his peers. Indeed, the avuncular Alsatian has done well for Arsenal football club, which he has turned from a run-of-the-mill club into a formidable cash cow on the same pedestal with the Manchester Uniteds, Real Madrids and Barcelonas of the world. He has also done well for football as an industry with his style and philosophy attracting appreciation and followers for the game, the world over.

In that wise, Wenger deserves to take a bow for this well-deserved honour.

However, it brings up the valid question of who is a coach and who is a manager? Is Wenger necessarily a genius as a coach or a manager? The job and image of a coach has surely exploded beyond the bloke in track suits standing by the touchline yelling at players and tearing his hair out if things don’t go his way. For the modern coach, the job is now a 24 hour occupation involving scouting, match tactics, training, diet monitoring, fitness training, data analysis and all manner of things that makes a coach look more and more like a computer geek. Which is why many coaches employ a sleuth of coaches to help them condition players and win matches.

It is no longer a job within the abilities of just one man. In this wise as well, Wenger showed the way, long before most managers thought of the intimate details that go into making a complete player and forging a successful team. His methods may not have won him trophies at Arsenal year in, year out but they have kept the club at the top of European football for a well over a decade and kept them competitive very year in the tough English premiership.

Players bring success to coaches and make them winners. Coaches as well make players who they are and utilize them to bring success to clubs. Few coaches however have devoted so much time and effort in modern football to unearthing rough stones and turning them into diamonds like Wenger. Fewer still have achieved a soaring success rate with such risky endeavour at a club the size of Arsenal, where winning trophies are seen almost as a divine right, every year.

For combining all these qualities, despite a weight of constant expectation and pressure, the Alsatian deserves this honour. As much as he has been serenaded and praised, he has equally been called mad, deluded, stubborn, ego-driven and even senile. What he may not have been able to win on the pitch, he has surely won in the hearts of all those who appreciate quality. There is, in all fairness, a method to this man’s unique madness.

Well done Mr Wenger for your different route to success. What better way to celebrate this honour than lifting a long-awaited trophy. That goal starts tommorow night against Ipswich Town as we hone in on the Carling Cup.