The Time Is Right for Arsenal's Arsene Wenger to Become England Manager

In December 2011, I interviewed Gareth Southgate at his office inside Wembley Stadium overlooking the north London skyline.

At the time, after having spent three years in charge of Middlesbrough, he was now the Football Association's head of elite development, and so I naturally asked if he had any ambitions to become the England manager in the future.

“That is a job for someone with a massive amount of experience,” he told me. “And so to do that you would have to go away and manage at club level for a long time, and get European experience, too. That would be a long, long way off.”

Five years later Southgate is now the England manager, albeit on an interim basis for the next four games, but he has added none of the experience he suggested he or any other candidate would need.

In the intervening period Southgate has not managed a club and instead remained inside the FA's bubble by taking charge of the England under-21 side for the last three years. 

Southgate is a good man, and he may still develop in to a good manager, but he has done nothing to deserve becoming England manager, other than already being on the FA’s payroll.

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He was also honest enough to admit to me that his three years in club management at the Riverside Stadium had been a “failure” because, ultimately, it had finished with Middlesbrough being relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2008-09 season.

But Southgate is also an astute man, and what he said a manager would need to guide England remains true: a vast amount of experience at both club and European level.

This is not Southgate himself, and nor was it Sam Allardyce, who had experience at club level, but almost nothing in Europe, and he had never managed in the Champions League.

There is, however, a manager in the English game who can boast of having all of this experience, and is by far the best candidate to become England manager: Arsene Wenger.

For most of the 20 years Wenger has managed in English football he has been an obvious candidate for the national team, but the timing has never been right; he was too young, and he had too much he still wanted to accomplish in club football.

But as he celebrates two decades at Arsenal, there is now a glimmer of hope he could swap the Emirates Stadium for Wembley.

At his press conference on Friday afternoon, as reported by the Daily Mail, he answered a question about becoming England manager by coyly saying, “If I am free one day, why not?”

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Of course he was flirting with the idea; it must be nice to be wanted again after all the recent unrest and protests at the Emirates.

Wenger has always been the ultimate prize for the FA, and it would be negligent of the organisation not to now fully explore and test his willingness to take the position.

Southgate could serve as an interim manager until the end of the season when Wenger could finally leave Arsenal and assume control for the final push towards qualifying for the 2018 World Cup.

I have written recently that this should be Wenger’s final season at Arsenal however it ends.

Should he win the title or any trophy, he would get his happy ending and bow out as a winner, but if the season ends with nothing again it must surely be the right time for him to walk away from Arsenal.

And with England waiting for him, he would walk straight into a new challenge and get the chance to test himself in international football for the first time.

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Wenger’s credentials are obvious; the titles, the trophies, the thrilling football and, though there have been problems in the last 12 years, Arsenal have never suffered a serious slump and always finished in the top four.

Since winning three titles in his first eight seasons, Wenger’s main problem has been his Arsenal sides have been unable to sustain their form over long enough periods.

They have had periods of good form; they are enjoying one at the moment after winning their last five Premier League games, but they have never been for long enough to win their first title since 2004.

This would no longer be a problem for Wenger on the international stage where there are large gaps between qualifying games over a two-year period, and then to triumph at a tournament he would need to play at most seven games, and win around five of them.

International football has long been the domain of older managers, and since 2000, seven of the last eight managers to win either the World Cup or the European Championship have been older than 53 and worked in management for more than 19 years. 

Wenger comfortably fits the mould: He is 66, has worked in management for 32 years and would bring an unprecedented wealth of experience and knowledge to the England job.

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Of course, the last 20 years have been in English football, and so he has had a front-row seat to witness the mistakes of the last seven England managers. He wouldn’t have to play catch up. He knows it already.

Since the ultimately unsuccessful reigns of Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, the FA has been committed to showing faith in English coaches, which has produced the possibly ill-judged appointments of Roy Hodgson and Allardyce.

Appointing English coaches to the England job might feel right and appeal to the governing body’s sense of patriotism, but in this instance, it could never be right to overlook Wenger, and instead plough on with the inexperienced Southgate or even the new kid on the block, Eddie Howe.

If the FA can establish that Wenger genuinely wants the position, then the Frenchman should be appointed at the end of this season.

The last seven days have been embarrassing ones for the FA, but if it ultimately ends with Wenger finally being delivered to them, it will have been worth it.