He credits France’s “successful immigration policy” with its remarkable treasure-trove of talent. He regards an era of satellite clubs — as practiced by Manchester City and the Red Bull network — as an inevitability. “You cannot have a situation where the country that educated the boys has to pay megamoney to use them, as has happened with Paul Pogba and Jadon Sancho,” he said. “That system cannot last.”

He suspects that the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate soccer’s journey to one of two futures: either a European Super League, something he has been warning about for some time, or to a world in which “the Premier League eats everything else.” He just hopes that the sight of empty stadiums teaches the game that “without fans, we are not the same sport.”

And he wonders if soccer has, perhaps, become too narrow in its definition of success. “We live in a society where only the winner gets credit, and everyone else feels useless,” he said. “But real life is not like that.”

Wenger, perhaps, is a prime example of that. There were plenty of those, a few years ago, who pointed at him — in a stadium he helped design, working at a club whose modern reputation he forged, in a league he had helped to define — and told him that he had failed, all because he had not won a championship for a decade or so.

It is hard to believe Wenger misses all of that: the pressure, the criticism, the heat. But for all that he has given to soccer, all that it has taken from him, he does not seem to have wearied of it at all. He has a chance, now, to do whatever he wants. This is what he wants to do: to think about some of the big questions, and to try to find answers. And, at last, he feels as though he has time to do so.

Purpose Amid the Pointlessness

Source: New York Times

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