This article is translated from The Telegraph and written by Jeremy Wilson, a veteran football journalist at the newspaper
Guy Wenger, 71, retired after 42 years in the household auto parts business. His younger brother, Arsena, 66, reached his 20-year goal of coaching Arsenal today, but it's easy to see from Guy that the spirit of competition in their brothers hasn't diminished over time.
"Arsena?" Guy smiled and said he led me to my home in Wenger's hometown, a small village called Dutelnheim. "It was I who taught him everything he knew!" Who are the better players? "Ask him yourself," he said, "and ask him how my technique is." Don't need me to say. I believe that the conclusion is already obvious, the brother is still the boss, and his love and pride for Arsena are overflowing, which cannot be easily pretended.
Wenger's eldest brother, Guy Wenger.
Guy pointed the way to the once family-run tavern la croix d'or and told me where Everything in Alsena started. "We'll play in the yard, just the two of us." "When we started playing together, Arsena was only 5-6 years old, he was playing goalkeeper, we were always together and if we played we would soon be immersed in it," he said. "Guy kept drawing his hands, hoping to make it clearer." "This is where Alsenna studied, street football, and now he has that in his philosophy." We would also play on the road next to the bar, when we could pass 10 cars a day, now 7,000 a day. ”
(Pictured) The La Croix d'or Tavern run by the Wenger family.
Guy was only 183, which was also a good look, but a little shorter than his famous brother. His face is a little rounder, but after wearing glasses, he still has some resemblance to Wenger' appearance. He has a clear mind and a lot of sports, he wears an Adidas tracksuit and slippers, but he also patted his slightly bulging abdomen to show that Arsena told him he should lose weight. Guy also spoke a variety of languages, but in his own company, they conversed in the old Alsatian dialect. "No one else understands what I'm saying," he says, "and we've all always loved sports and stayed outdoors." I played basketball and soccer in the village until I was 45, and at the age of 16, I was able to jump to 1.8 meters in high jumps. Every morning I would ride and when Alsenna came back, we would also run in the forest together. ”
(Pictured) Wenger's hometown village.
Because Arsena still had Arsenal work to do, the time to come back was short, but in May he returned and built a football stadium in the neighboring village of Dutelnheim, named after himself. Later he briefly returned to a family gathering. In the villages of Alsace and Dutelnheim, where Wenger's family is thriving, the party was attended by a total of 300 people, "we were dressed in clothes with names printed on them. Guy said he spoke to Wenger after almost every Arsenal game and made frequent visits to North London.
(Pictured) Arsene Wenger at the wedding when Guy gets married.
Wenger and Ferguson.
"People thought he and Ferguson hated each other," he said, "nonsense, I've seen them both before." I remember Ferguson leading Manchester United to Arsenal for the last time, and after the game the three of us drank two bottles of Bordeaux wine. ”
It was also the first time Guy had spoken to a British journalist about Arsene Wenger's 20 years at Arsenal. He said he had received many interview invitations before, but he had declined, and when we first called him and told him we wanted to learn more about the village and their childhood, he said he would discuss with Arsena and ask us to call again at four o'clock in the afternoon. We played back, and a day later we visited the place where Alsenna lived as a child, including the small courtyard of the croix d'or (now renamed la baita) tavern and where they played. Guy put all the family members in the restaurant, a huge family that looks very Alsatian, but from the outside alone, the most famous members of the family have a special temperament.
(Pictured) In the village team in 1963, Wenger's father was on the left, and the fifth boy on the left in the back row was Professor Wenger.
(Pictured) Wenger, who played for his hometown team Duternheim in the 1966-67 season, was him in the third from the right in the back row.
Wenger's hair is small, Joel Mueller.
It is worth mentioning that during World War II, the area was occupied by the Germans, and the father of the Wenger brothers, Alphonse, was forced into the German army along with another 100,000 local men. His family, on the other hand, was sent to a concentration camp in Hilmek. "His father escaped from the war, weighing only 40 kilograms at the time, and they felt they should never recover." The brothers' childhood friend, Joel Müller, said he later took Guy's class and became president of the village club Duthenheim, "and our parents didn't run out, and Arsena had a quality that was universal to the region, and even universal to the world." Honest, courteous and warm. He knew where he was coming from, and if anyone was his friend, it was a lifelong friend. ”
Guy said that when he was born after the war, there were still some Americans living in the barn next door, and that de Gaulle shook hands with Guy when he passed by their family tavern a few years later. The area was, and is, a football-loving area, with Wenger's family involved since the establishment of the local duternheim football club in 1923. Their father was president, and their three uncles played for the club, which was centred at the tavern croix d'or.
(Pictured) Wenger's family, in the middle is Wenger.
(Pictured) The front row is Wenger as a child.
Wenger in the school, fourth from the right in the first row.
"There were other clubs that looked up to me, but I didn't have the right to leave the club, I was very young, and our restaurant was the center of the club, and my father didn't want me to go." Guy said their mother, Louis, ran a tavern, while his father, Alphonse, owned an auto parts trading company called the Alsatians in Strasbourg, northeastern France, which Guy later took over and still exists today. Although the name has changed several times, the croix d'or tavern has not changed in appearance, surrounded by fences and stone walls, and the small room is covered with floors, it is easy to imagine the picture when people talk about football here: staggered, smoke-
Guy Wenger shows us a group photo of the village team.
When Alsenna was 13 years old, the family moved the home a little bit, and the brothers grew up like their children before them in a bar full of football atmosphere. "We all listen to people talking," Guy said, "and there's no changing room or shower here." The players would take a shower directly in the yard and then change clothes in the restaurant, and if you washed late, you would have to use dirty water. I remember when it was snowing, they were going to take a bath in the river. ”
Mueller also played with the two brothers in a bar. "Arsena was always listening, he was interested in people and the human psyche," he said, "I remember when he was 25 years old, a bunch of friends went to Cameroon, and when they came back, Arsena wouldn't ask, 'How was the holiday?' Instead, he asked: 'How do the people of Cameroon live?' That's what interests him. ”
They also engage in other sports activities, especially basketball, and sometimes cycle to surrounding villages, such as Obernai and the nearby Aschal River for swimming. The only television set in the village was at school, and every Saturday at six o'clock in the afternoon, Arsena would go to see the Bundesliga highlights. Gay recalled that their parents worked 12-15 hours a day, and Arsena said at the time that she would always be a farmer, riding a horse and working in the fields. Wenger was also very studious, and at the age of 16, his philosophy and mathematics were at the top of his class.
Wenger in high school.
But Did Guy think about one day, when these personalities come together, they will become a football manager? "No," he said, "I was very surprised and shocked when I thought about what he had done for Arsenal. "What keeps Wenger going for 20 years? Guy took a deep breath, "It's too long," he said, shaking his head, "but he's not going to stop either." "What will he do when he retires?" "I don't know," he said, "maybe I'll go to work for the Strasbourg club, I think we all have this club in mind." ”
(Pictured) Wenger on vacation with his family.
You'll feel like Guy has been thinking about these questions for years, but like Wenger himself, he's still fascinated by his career. He would watch every Arsenal game, the new locker room at The Duternheim club that Guy helped build, and every game for Arsenal.
Guy is having a conversation with a reporter from The Telegraph.
"I get nervous every time I watch it." Guy said. But when asked which player he likes best in arsenal today, his eyes lit up, "Ozil", who said, "Very, very powerful, he can see everything." ”
Guy has cherished all of Arsenal's glorious moments of the past 20 years, but what is his favorite? "The first double in 1998," he said, "was when all of our families were on the bus, and there were thousands of people on the street, and they all drank too much and climbed to the roof, and the bus was about to be overturned by them." We later went to The Town Hall in Highbury and then Highbury had breakfast which was simply fantastic at the time. ”
(Pictured) Wenger and the first Premier League trophy.
"The most disappointing moment was the Champions League final against Barcelona in 2006, when we hired a bus with all the family members in the car. Lehmann was sent off and Henry missed two chances to score. We should have won. "But when we meet Wenger's friends, a lot of people still see the Champions League as one of his dreams that he still wants to achieve, which makes us a little moved." We are very, very proud of him, but sometimes sad," Mueller said, "and we want them to win the Champions League." ”
Mueller later revealed that when friends visited Wenger in London, he always asked them to bring some home sausages. Guy said the local sausage was Wenger's favorite, which was Alsatian-inspired.
As we were leaving, Guy gave me an encyclopedia of Arsenal players signed by his brother, and we gave him a new edition of Arsena's Revolution to commemorate Arsena's 20th anniversary of coaching Arsenal, much to Guy's delight. Our last stop was a visit to the slaughterhouse owned by the Wenger family next to the village of Duppigheim, where the owner of the slaughterhouse, Valentina Hubsche, told us the story of the Alsatian-flavored sausages, who of course knew Wenger and his family. Later she gave me six sausages and was adamant about not wanting money and beautifully packaged them for us.
Later, after Arsenal beat Basel on Wednesday, we delivered the sausages to Alsenna's hands. He smiled brightly and said "thank you." Living in the Premier League, Wenger is like being in a parallel universe, and it is difficult to imagine that the quiet and beautiful village with only 3,000 inhabitants is his real hometown. Did he ever think he'd spend 20 years at Arsenal? "Never," he said, then how did he estimate it? 'Still alive after the next game, I'm in the same state as I am now.
On Friday night, he went to watch the everton and Crystal Palace games instead of celebrating the achievement that was unique among all active managers. "It's hard to measure your own influence," Wenger said, "I like history, but I don't like my own history, I pay more attention to what's in the present, and when you get older, what's in the present becomes more important." It is right or wrong, leave it to future generations to comment. ”
Wenger kept smiling as we relayed what Guy had said, but when he heard his eldest brother say he played better than Wenger, he was clearly unconvinced. "Really?" He raised his eyebrows as he spoke. Wenger brothers, it looks like you can have another contest in the yard.
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