In a classic essay, Politics and the English Language, writer George Orwell railed against bad English, imprecise diction and “general abuse of language”.
“Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble,” Orwell wrote.
One cannot say the same about the Frenchman Arsene Wenger’s use of the English language. The fact that he’s from Alsace — a region that has, over the centuries, moved borders between France and Germany — must surely help.
Wenger, Arsenal’s manager, has conjured up new words, phrases, sayings — Arsenisms — that didn’t exist until he set foot in England. This was in a game afflicted with clichés and dull expressions.
Football has everything that Orwell railed against. Talk about dying and worn out metaphors, the game boasts plenty.
Some common football stock phrases such as “ring the changes” and “swan song” were even used as examples by Orwell in his famous essay.
How many times have we heard of a “coach ringing the changes”? Or, before a match between a big club and a smaller one, a player saying, “there are no easy games”? Or the game being a “game of two halves”.
A lot of that has to do with the subjects. Footballers or managers, for that matter, normally have nothing interesting to say. The result is anodyne stories told in monotonous ways.
Not so for Wenger. After an uncharacteristically dull 1-1 draw with Middlesborough in November 1998, which Arsenal fans booed, Wenger quipped: “If you eat caviar every day, it’s difficult to return to sausages.”
Then there’s the memorable rejoinder, “everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home”, after Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said his was the best team despite Arsenal winning the premier league title in 2002. It’s not just one-liner wisecracks, there are the fresh metaphors.
Asked for his opinion about international football, Wenger said: “Gerard Houllier’s [ex-Liverpool manager] thoughts on the matter echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for 10 days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again and, for good measure, you’re expected to be nice about it.”
In a globalising world, when the concept of the nation state is under challenge everywhere, this gem is notable for the new word Wenger threw into football lexicon. How often have you thought, what’s the point of a game between, say, San Marino and Liechtenstein? “I do not think about the national team too much because footballistically it is not of too much interest.” Footballistically? Is that an adverb? Or is it an adjective?
And then the famous handbrake analogy. Talking about a 2009 game in which Arsenal eventually beat Tottenham Hotspur 3-1 after a slow start, Wenger said: “I believe the fluency lacked a little bit in the first half an hour. We played a little bit with the handbrake and couldn’t find our usual fluency.”
Wenger’s London rival for years was former Chelsea coach José Mourinho, who isn’t far behind with his wild and expressive use of language. In a column in a Portuguese publication (you can be sure it wasn’t ghost-written), Mourinho, contrasted himself with a ridiculed rival coach, Jesualdo Ferreira: “One is a coach with a 30-year career, the other with a three-year one. The one with 30 years has never won anything; the one with three years has won a lot. The one who has coached for 30 years has an enormous career; the one with three years has a small career.
“The one with a 30-year career will be forgotten when he ends it; the one with three could end it right now and he could never be erased from history. This could be the story of a donkey who worked for 30 years but never became a horse.”
And who will forget Mourinho’s memorable words on arrival in England: “I think I’m a special one.”
Mourinho’s use of language was removed from its use in politics, about which Orwell said: “Political language — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Standard football language is meant to dull what is interesting and lull the reader into a clichéd haze — so thanks to people like Wenger and Mourinho who keep the game interesting.