5 things Arsene Wenger needs to change while he’s in his new role at FIFA

Wenger is back. Sort of.

We all got our hopes up that we’d be seeing the avuncular Frenchman pacing the touchline again, maybe as Bayern Munich boss or in a sensational return to Arsenal, but instead, he has moved upstairs, in fact as upstairs as it gets.

Wenger has taken on the impressive, and frankly made-up sounding title of FIFA Chief of Global Football Development, and is presumably therefore in charge of all football anywhere in the world.

The weight of the job is immense with Wenger received a text notification of every single training session, summer camp and five-a-side booking whether it’s at Raynes Park Goals or in North Korea, but if anyone has the dedication for the commitment it’s Arsene.

So, aside from having a constantly vibrating phone, what changes should we expect Wenger to achieve in his reign as Chief of Global Football Development?

Getting 11 for the weekend

We’ve all experienced the pure anguish of trying and failing to get a full team together for an unappealing away match on a wet winter afternoon.

You start off looking for 16 keen, fit players and end up accepting nine plus one of the team ‘probably bringing along a couple of mates who are up for it.’

When you’re at your darkest hour flicking through the phone contacts for someone you haven’t spoken to since school who you are pretty sure is now in Dubai, you should be able to dial in the FIFA Chief of Global Football Development to save the day.

Wenger will hook you up with a 16-year-old Spanish talent who will run rings around the hungover opposition, dodging career-ending tackles to win you the game.

Excuse boot camp

Young players around the world are developing with a pitifully limited supply of world-class excuses.

It’s fine when the world is at your feet and you’re netting wonder goals, but what do you do when you squander a two-yard tap-in or get sent off in a title decider?

As a man who perfected the excuse throughout his career, Wenger will be putting greater emphasis on training up kids to rattle off some audacious explanations for their failures.

We don’t want a generation of players only able to blame the referee and with Wenger overlooking player development, we can be sure they will be citing everything from the weather to the pitch to a plummet in the Nicaraguan economy to explain away their losses.

Passing it in

Arsene Wenger’s style of football may have become outdated in his latter days on the Arsenal bench, but who doesn’t look back with fondness to the glory days when his teams were so stylish you felt you had to wear a designer suit to watch it?

Now that Wenger is in charge of all football, it’s time he rolled back the years and insisted that all football at all levels is played entirely in sweeping, 50-pass moves.

So, the next time a Sunday League player steps up to hoof the ball long, you can expect a stern-faced Wenger to appear on the sideline and shake his head until he instead tries to perform a deft stopover and trips over the ball.

Handle VAR

When announcing Wenger’s appointment, FIFA issued a fantastically vague statement that explained that the ex-Arsenal man would be charged with ‘technical aspects of the sport’.

We can only imagine therefore that Wenger is the saviour who will rid us of VAR mayhem once and for all.

Obviously, Wenger will be a busy man, but it makes sense for all VAR calls to be made directly to his mobile, so he can make the final call.

Of all the people on the planet, except for maybe Marcelo Bielsa, you’d have to back Wenger to make the time to review 100 contentious decisions per evening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qqd6T_A9LY

Remix the Champions League tune

We know this is more of a UEFA issue, but at every single Champions League match it is the elephant in the stadium – how horribly terrible is the Champions League anthem?

It has the feel of a tune that was hastily put together the night before the first game of the tournament and places somewhere between song when you get on a plane and montage music when England go out of a major tournament.

Wenger should definitely be prioritising commissioning a less toe-curling replacement to reassure a generation of kids that if they do make it to the peak of the world game, they won’t have to stand there awkwardly trying not to laugh while the anthem blasts over the PA.