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Extra: Wenger on racism, England, advice

Arsène Wenger faced the media ahead of the Hull game. Here are some extra quotes from his press conference. For more headlines, visit our Digest page.

on whether players should drop to England U21s...
You know my thinking on that. Once a guy has moved up to the full national team and you put him down [again to the U21s] it is never good. Apart from that, on the selfish front for us when a guy has played 50 games it is better he has a good rest during the summer. But most of the time, when they move down, they are not completely at their quality.
 
on coming up to 65 and still working hard…
I have to accept my fate. Maybe I have been very lazy in a former life and have to come back and work for the laziness I have shown before! I accept it and enjoy it and am ready to fight as long as I can. When you come from where I come, where I started and look back a little bit at my career, you know that one quality you need is to fight. My father was not in football, I had no red carpet to get where I am and I had to fight and work hard every day and that is what I did every day. As long as I am capable of doing it, I will do it.

on what advice he’d give a young Wenger…
We are all gifted at something in life. The only advice I would give is to really try to identify something you really love and give it all.

on whether Anderlecht could be dangerous as the ‘easiest’ team…
Yes, it’s a big danger. In the Champions League there are no easy games, that is for sure. We have lost at Dortmund and it becomes a vital game, like Hull is a vital game for us.

on whether Arsenal’s European away record puzzles him…
Yes. When you look at the history of Napoli and Dortmund, they do not lose many home games. Real Madrid lost by four goals at Dortmund and I was more concerned about quality of our performance. You can accept that you can go to Dortmund and, if they have a good day, you can lose the game but our performance was not good enough.

on whether there is racism in football…
I agree that the only thing that should play a big part is the competence of people. There should be no discrimination at all, for anybody, and that everybody should have access to our job. If I told you where I come from I think I was lucky that people trusted me in life and you would want that to be the case for everybody.

on whether there is discrimination…
I don’t know if it’s a real discrimination - there’s no legal discrimination and I would like to think there’s none. Personally, I am not aware enough of examples where people have not been chosen because they are not the person that people wanted. The only thing that counts is whether you believe that somebody can do the job or not and that’s vital. Sport is a bit ahead of that, at least for the players. As for managing and coaching, I don’t know. I don’t have enough knowledge about that situation.

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