Last August the Community Shield was exiled to Villa Park because Wembley had been taken over by the Olympics, which for two weeks had bathed us in a golden glow of sportsmanship and solidarity.
However, most of the Chelsea and Manchester City players had spent the time during the Olympics on money-making tours of Asia and the USA. They were oblivious to the feel-good spirit across the land.
The match was a festival of mean-spirited ugliness. Eight players were booked, Branislav Ivanovic was sent off, City supporters taunted John Terry over his racism trial and the Chelsea fans serenaded the referee off the pitch with a sustained chant of “W**ker! W**ker! W**ker!”
Condemnation followed. Yet there was also something magnificent about football’s snarling defiance of Olympic values. The game seemed to be saying: yes, the Olympics were lovely, a shining affirmation of the best of what humanity can be. Now welcome back to the real world.
Aston Villa’s 3-1 win at Arsenal was likewise an exhibition of what fans love about the Premier League, and what its detractors despise. Central to this drama was the stiffly elegant figure of Arsene Wenger. And behind him a jowly bald man with a sign which stated: “Spend Spend Spend”.
An aficionado of the purer disciplines of athletics or the ascetic virtues of the Airtricity League could see here an exemplar of what is repulsive about the Premier League. The dumb entitlement and brazen disrespect of this supporter, the money-focused crassness of his protest: a perfect standard-bearer for a sport that has forgotten it is a sport.
Yet here too was the human drama that means those who moan about the mass appeal of the Premier League might as well be complaining that good-looking guys get all the girls.
In the 85th minute Antonio Luna raced into Arsenal’s empty half. A great wail of horror went up from the crowd as Luna looked around, clocked the position of the goalkeeper, and passed the ball into the net.
As a feat of athleticism, a goal like Luna’s cannot compare to Mo Farah’s 5,000m in Moscow, but as a dramatic spectacle there is nothing better in sport. To see such a goal is to ascend to a privileged plane of heightened emotion, be it horror, outrage, ecstasy, or hilarity.
The dominant emotion in the stadium was of course outrage, as the crowd furiously chanted “Spend some f**king money!”
'Idiots'
Wenger struggles to control his emotions during matches so you hesitate to imagine his feelings at such moments. Frustration, embarrassment, deflation for sure – but also, perhaps, a powerful urge to turn to the crowd and scream: "Idiots! Don't you realise I built this club with my own hands? Half of you wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me!"
By the time he met the press he had, as always, composed himself. And the turmoil within was betrayed only by the snippy sarcasm that slips out when he’s under pressure: “You (journalists) got what you wanted, so you should be happy.”
Wenger can face down hostile questions with a disarming, almost hypnotic reasonableness. This time his even tone could not hide the fact that he was talking nonsense.
“People say, ‘buy players, buy players . . . ’ But who? We analyse every player in the world and work 24 hours a day for that. We are serious about it. Until we buy players we have to win football games.”
The question “but who?” may be a difficult one, but Wenger is paid €9 million a year to figure out the answer. The world is full of players who could improve Arsenal’s squad. If the manager can’t decide which ones to sign, he should make room for someone who can.
Inept
It's normal nowadays for football coaches to have academic qualifications and maybe Wenger has sat for too long on the laurels of that economics degree. Perhaps he should upskill with a course in political science because his handling of the politics of his job looks increasingly inept.
On Friday, he had bridled at the suggestion that his reluctance to buy players made him look miserly. “You know, I am rather generous . . . I fought my whole life to pay the players well.”
No doubt the players appreciate his generosity. Who wouldn’t love a boss like that? But is this internal generosity in Arsenal’s best interests? Does it comfort Arsenal fans who pay the league’s highest ticket prices to know that their players are richer than ever?
Wenger’s Politics 101 class would include a seminar on Machiavelli, who says that a wise prince is a stingy one. The problem with generosity is that once you get a reputation for it, you have to keep it up, or people will resent you turning off the tap.
Generosity is expensive, wrote Machiavelli, “so that a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property, and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects . . . Nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor and despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated.”
Right now Arsenal’s players are overpaid, their supporters are overtaxed, and Wenger’s reputation teeters dangerously close to ruin.
