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Arsene Wenger Likens Addiction to Management a 'Drug' After Breaking Premier League Record

Arsene Wenger is 68 and has managed 811 games in the Premier League, and he doesn't appear to have any desire to step away anytime soon.
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Arsene Wenger has talked about the 'drug' of football management, admitting that he can't do without the day-to-day pressure and experience of the game. 

The Frenchman is the third oldest manager currently working in the top four divisions of English football, managing a record 811 games in the Premier League, and conceded that - with one year left on his Arsenal contract at the end of the season - he has no plans to step away from the game soon. 

Speaking to SFR Sport, he said: "It's a drug that gives you highs and - naturally - brings you back down again, but you want to come back into it all the same,"

"Even if the pressure weighs heavily on you sometimes... the worst pressure is not to have any at all. Life can seem very empty. I have a load of friends who say, 'I'm stopping, I'm stopping, I'm stopping,' but they all come back.

"Even those who said, 'Believe me, I won't come back' like Capello and Lippi, they have all gone off to China to coach again despite having been comfortable on their yachts by the sea. It's a real addiction, a real drug, you can't do without it.

The 68-year-old insisted that the challenges and hard times involved in the job were worth the effort, adding: "There's something magic in our job, which is to bring together energies for a common cause.

"It's a sharing of emotions, and takes you to places that practically nothing else in life can, even if at times it can also seem extremely discouraging, that sometimes you feel you're climbing Mont Blanc and that you'll never get to the top it's that difficult. But there are those magical moments that bring you back."