Spurs news: Arnesen - Bull and Baloney

By Andy van de Arse-Ache
June 7 2005

While Frank Arnesen strolls down to the local garden centre for a few tools to keep him from under the wife’s feet during (what must be) a negotiated break, it’s appropriate to reflect on what it is about the man that has caused first Spurs, and now Chelsea, to grasp his nettle.

As a Spurs season ticket holder, I’ve seen more comings and goings at the club than has the knocking shop above the bookies along Tottenham High Road, but the arrival of Frank Arnesen was a little different; this man came with a serious reputation, one that the London media quickly eulogised into something approaching mythology. Yet the facts never quite matched the reputation, never mind the media fuelled myth that the Chelsea Oilers have now bought.

Some facts: On average, PSV Eindhoven lost a First Team Coach less than every two years during Arnesen’s tenure, five in all. Further, under the last of those five, Guus Hiddink, PSV changed their structure so the office of ‘Technical Director, Advisor and Manager of Scouting and Transfers’ finished: Arnesen left PSV because there was no longer a job there for him.

During the ten-year Arnesen era, the club won the Dutch league four times and also lifted the Dutch Cup once, but PSV didn’t get close to a European trophy even though it was a club that knew how to win and attract winners; seven years before Arnesen arrived, they’d achieved the treble (League, Cup and European Cup).

Arnesen’s carefully cultivated reputation is primarily built on two things (1) the young players he “discovered”, and (2) what other people say about him. He certainly attracted talented kids: Zenden, Cocu, Stam, Kezman Van Nistelrooy and Arjen Robben. But here’s some Dutch talent he didn’t attract: Rafael van der Vaart, Wesley Sneijder, Patrick Kluivert, Clarence Seedorf, they all went north to Ajax – in other words, most talented Dutch boys choose either PSV or Ajax, so Frank Arnesen was always going to land Dutch talent by default of the position he held. Sure he attracted more to PSV than Ajax managed, but does that say more about Arnesen, or Ajax’s Director of Football and policy at that time ?

Another popular story surrounding Arnesen is that he “unearthed” Ronaldo. Yet Ronaldo had already been to the 1994 World Cup as a member of the Brazilian Squad by the time Arnesen convinced the 17-year old to follow the precedent set by fellow Brazilian and two-time World Player of the Year winner Romario (who had left PSV the previous summer after five successful years). PSV also paid almost £4 million for the privilege of ‘unearthing’ Ronaldo.

Arnesen’s reputation also owes much to a lazy London media reusing the same few comments. For example, we hear repeated references to the now near legendary “huge network of contacts”, even though the observation was made only once, by Henk van Weert a local reporter in Eindhoven, The fact that his recruitment record at PSV doesn’t suggest any such network seems not to have been considered.

We are also repeatedly reminded of Ronaldo’s valediction of Arnesen last June; a work of sound-bite art (intended to sell Arnesen to a still sceptical Spurs fan base) in which Ronaldo even intimating that he might consider moving to join Arnesen: "He is the one who discovered me and has been more like a father to me since.” – said Ronaldo, fuelling the myth, and momentarily forgetting that World Cup call up in 1994.

On this flimsy and much repeated reportage – together with his misconstrued and overblown recruiting history at PSV - the legend of Arnesen has grown: In truth, Tottenham’s suspended Director of Football, with a little help from his friends, knows how to build a myth around himself better than he knows how to build a football club. But as a Spurs fan, perhaps I would say that

One thing Spurs fans do recognise is that Arnesen worked his socks off for the club and achieved much in short time. On a limited budget, he brought in the right types of players in the right numbers. But the net result of Arnesen exploring every avenue open to him was that of the twenty two players acquired since he took up his appointment on 1st July, all but four were already internationals at some age-related level – so, even when finally given his opportunity to impress in a big league, there wasn’t much ‘unearthing’.

What we have learned at White Hart Lane is that perspective is important. We understand the difference between a very competent Director of Football going about his job conscientiously – as Arnesen did, and credit to him for that, and a growing media-driven myth that the subject himself has been in no rush to dispel.

We can be sure of one thing though, during his gardening leave Frank Arnesen won’t have any trouble at all shaping an attractive landscape for himself.

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