What happens when you redefine success so that it looks like a fourth place finish?
When you ignore cup competitions in pursuit of a goal at the end of which there are no trophies, just money?
What happens when commercial success and “status” becomes all?
Arsene Wenger is what happens.
First up, I feel sorry for this guy. He’s a product of an environment which has elevated those other accomplishments ahead of real ones. Clubs barely bothered with the League Cup before this Champions League fixation started; they don’t give a toss any longer.
The FA Cup, the oldest football competition in the world, what was once the showpiece of their entire season, is treated with what is now absolutely unconcealed disdain. Whereas it was once an end in itself, it’s now a consolation prize for teams who have “nothing to play for.”
Wenger is now under pressure from the media.
These people have some cheek; it’s those very groups who made it like this in England, where that “top four” spot has become all important. Managers have seen their careers cut short for failing to make that grade, almost as many as those who’ve been fired for entering the relegation zone.
All of this would be their own business, but these are the very people who have spent the last few weeks gurning on and on about how Brendan Rodgers “lacks ambition” because he has chosen to reject the concept of success as a fourth place finish in a league awash in money, and which has become the benchmark for avarice and stupidity.
Arsene Wenger is a symptom of that league’s insanity.
He has not won a league title in 14 years. As bad as that sounds, Liverpool haven’t won one in the Premier League era; their last title was in 1989. The closest they’ve come to it since was when Brendan came within two games of it. He was sacked the following year, when he looked like failing in that quest.
The craziness of this is manifest.
Their failure to comprehend Brendan’s decision is located in this weird fixation with defining football achievement as they do. There are top players down there who have never held silverware. People used to mourn that genuine greats had never had a league winner’s medal in their hands; there are players down there, who could play anywhere, and who will never have a medal of any description. Their trophy cabinets will contain player of the month awards.
Brendan, Scott Sinclair and Moussa have chosen something else, something better, something more.
To stand at Hampden with the Scottish Cup, as treble winners … a guy like Patrick Roberts, that might be the best thing that ever happens in his career.
Scott Sinclair is 28; it will, without dispute, be the highlight (so far) of his.
These guys are title winners now; the English media might decry that, but no player who ever held a winners medal would swap it for sitting in a dressing room at the end of a campaign and trying to pretend they get the same feeling from coming fourth.
Arsene Wenger says it’s a difficult thing to achieve; I don’t doubt that he’s right, but since when did football clubs define that as success?
The English media has largely invented this concept.
If it didn’t exist, Wenger might have departed years ago and other bosses might not have built entire reputations on what those of us who’ve seen success would define as failure. Arsenal and Liverpool and other clubs are filled with players whose perceptions about winning have changed.
Stated plainly, they have forgotten what success actually looks like, and feels like.
Brendan’s had a taste of it.
That is not something a man gives up easily.
I call that ambition.
When he reaches the end of his career he’ll have more than a stuffed bank account to remind him of the “glory days.”
