The Making of the new Mr Arsenal
Chas Newkey-Burden

As most observers agreed, Liverpool’s visit to Highbury on Monday 21 August was not a particularly violent game. Graham Poll, the referee that night, seemed to disagree. Three players were dismissed, and while the red cards shown to Gary McAllister and Dietmar Hamann might have been surprising, given that neither player is known for his hard tackling, the dismissal of Patrick Vieira seemed less shocking. Until you looked at the TV replays. Vieira and Hamann both slid in for a 50-50 ball, which Vieira reached a couple of feet ahead of his opponent. Yet Poll must have seen something completely different – because he didn’t hesitate to charge up to Vieira, who was walking off before Poll had reached for his pocket.

As Vieira stalked off the pitch, obviously livid, he ripped his shirt off and flung it to the ground in disgust, leaving his friend Thierry Henry to pick it up and return it. The dismissal – just 53 hours after he had been sent off in Arsenal’s first game of the season, for elbowing Sunderland’s Darren Williams (a dismissal that prompted ill-feeling that has rumbled into October, with Arsène Wenger’s fine and touchline ban from the FA) – prompted widespread speculation that the midfielder would up sticks and quit Arsenal, following his France team-mate Emmanuel Petit back to the continent. After all, the shirt is such a cherished item in football that Vieira’s willingness to discard it was seen as the ultimate dismissal of his club.

The papers wasted no time in reporting that Vieira had told his friends he was sick of English football and ready to quit. This supported the view of many pundits who’d questioned how Vieira would cope without Petit around, and those observers found it telling that he was dismissed in the first two games he played without his former midfield partner and friend. The eventual response of both Vieira and the Arsenal administration suggested the reporters were far wide of the mark (it is surely indicative of Vieira’s long-term importance to the club that Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein felt the need to involve himself in the counselling process). In fact, the saga called to mind nothing so much as George Graham’s support for Tony Adams when the club captain was imprisoned for drink-driving.

‘The day after the Liverpool game I spoke to the manager and to Mr Dein,’ recalled Vieira. ‘What we talked about was enough for me to keep going and to want to stay at Arsenal. ‘I said things straight after the game and that is the time when you are emotional. You can’t make an important decision when you are feeling like that. But I want to make one thing clear – I will never leave Arsenal. ‘I hear stuff after the game. I know that some players in the other team are told their job during the game is to wind me up. I feel sorry for managers who feel they have to do that. ‘But I will never change because, basically, I don’t want to change. I really enjoy English football and the life in England. I am happy here. I am not going to leave a place where I am happy because of that. The ban has finished now and I am so pleased about that. ‘All that happened, that is behind me. I will not forget what happened but all I want to do now is look forward with Arsenal because I feel we can have a fantastic season.’

Vieira, more than any other player at the new Highbury, embodies both the body and spirit of Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal. He has only to pass a glance at Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry to find two soulmates. His combination of agility and athleticism is a Wenger trademark seen also in Silvinho, Sylvain Wiltord and Henry, while his lanky build almost matches that of Nwankwo Kanu. He also possesses the snarling competitiveness of Martin Keown, though it can all too easily spill over into the indiscipline of Gilles Grimandi. Not since Bryan Robson’s days at Manchester United has anyone personified a team more comprehensively. And as a domestic Double winner with Arsenal, not to mention World and European champion with France, Vieira’s stature is surely unmatched in English football right now.

The sight of his telescopic limbs pacing through Highbury’s central pastures, winning challenge after challenge, quietly setting up attacks is awe-inspiring. Each week, it’s met with ever louder renditions of the ‘He comes from Senegal, he plays for Arsenal’ chants from the admiring Arsenal public. Highbury’s love for him is clearly requited. Indeed, listen very carefully in the marble halls nowadays and you’ll hear people whispering quietly that perhaps the time is coming for Tony Adams, the Mr Arsenal of old, to hand over the captain’s armband to the Senegalese born midfield giant. The only obstacle seems to be Vieira’s disciplinary problem. Oh yes, that.

French footballers have had a history of producing moments of particularly spectacular indiscipline at Highbury in the last decade – although not all of them have been wearing red and white at the time. In 1994, Manchester United’s Eric Cantona saw red during a 2-2 draw with Arsenal for stamping on Ian Selley. Then, in 1996, a long running feud between then Newcastle winger David Ginola and Lee Dixon boiled over and saw Ginola sent for an early bath (but not before he stamped around the players’ tunnel screaming, ‘They won’t let me play my football,’ which provoked some comical handbags rowing between then Gunners boss Bruce Rioch and Newcastle assistant manager Terry McDermott). You could have forgiven the Arsenal fans if they’d thanked their lucky stars the club had no Frenchmen on their books at the time.

So when Arsene Wenger’s French revolution began in earnest in September 1996, perhaps there weren’t too many raised eyebrows at Highbury when Wenger’s team occasionally played as if they on a red card bonus. Before long, Dennis Bergkamp was sent off for elbowing Steve Lomas, Emmanuel Petit saw red for shoving referee Paul Durkin and Gilles Grimandi was dismissed for headbutting Alan Smith. Those were just the hors d’oeuvres; the main course came in the form of Patrick Vieira. The recipient of six red cards during his Arsenal career, he has also received a six-match ban for spitting at Neil Ruddock, has been fined £20,000 by the FA for making a V-sign to opposing fans and been caught on camera producing other moments of petulance and indiscipline.

Patrick Vieira red cards come in varied forms: the hilarious, the grotesque and the farcical. The hilarious came against Coventry in January 1998, when he was booked for the most obvious penalty box handball ever seen. So voluntary and blatant was his offence that had Nick Hornby been refereeing, even he would have booked the Frenchman. Not satisfied with seeing yellow and conceding a penalty, Vieira swore and argued with the referee who did his best to back away from and warn the player. With the red mist well and truly descending, Vieira continued his tirade until the inevitable red card was branded.

The grotesque came at West Ham in October 1999 when, after a frustrating afternoon, he was dismissed for a bad tackle on Paolo di Canio. During the melee that followed, Vieira spat at Hammers defender Neil Ruddock and sparked the sort of controversy that had not been seen since Eric Cantona’s infamous Selhurst Park kung fu kick. While Vieira’s behaviour was utterly unjustified (and later punished with a suspension and £45,000 fine) it followed alleged xenophobic baiting from Ruddock, who later compounded this by saying, ‘He’s scum…I could smell the garlic on his spit.’

The farcical and most spectacular Vieira dismissal was that one by Graham Poll. The Sunderland dismissal two days earlier had left him feeling unfairly treated. He – and a large part of the viewing audience – saw his raised arm as a despairing reaction to an afternoon of disgraceful wind-ups. The second dismissal seemed to scale new heights of injustice. But, surprisingly for one so gifted, Vieira has faced plenty of struggles in his career.

Born in Senegal, raised in France and groomed in Italy, Patrick Vieira had already put in some air miles before he blossomed at Highbury. It was actually as a young fledgling playing for the Cannes youth team, an academy that also lists Johan Micoud and Zinedine Zidane among its graduates, that he was first spotted in an end-of-season-friendly against Monaco, then coached by Wenger. The scholarly Frenchman, once assistant manager at Cannes, was quickly taken by the tentacular tackler and made a mental note to keep a watch on Vieira’s career. He would have been immediately impressed as Vieira became the French league’s youngest ever skipper at the age of just 18 (shades of Tony Adams, who was Arsenal’s youngest ever skipper when he assumed the armband at 17).

In 1995, after some impressive performances for the French youth team, Vieira was transferred to Milan. His last game for Cannes was in a 3-0 defeat by Strasbourg that saw Cannes drop to the bottom of the French First Division. Vieira has his mind on other things. ‘Obviously, I would like it to have ended differently,’ he said. ‘Leaving with a big defeat and Cannes bottom of the League hurts. But I have to start a new life. I am going to Milan to make my way and I want to learn, learn and learn more.’ He never got the chance: he made just two Serie A appearances for the Italian giants, owing to injuries and a lack of confidence. Milan have since made a cheeky bid to bring him back to the club and after Arsenal’s 2-0 victory over Lazio in the Champions’ League, he was highlighted in the Italian press as exactly the sort of player who should be playing in Serie A.

But at the time, things were more bleak. ‘It was a big step and my world changed,’ he remembered later. ‘Maybe that’s why I wasn’t prepared inside myself to go there so quickly. The move came too early for me. The worst time in my career to date was the three months I spent on the bench or in the stands waiting for my chance. I was 20. The problem was that the World Cup was coming up and I wanted to be in the French squad but I wasn’t getting to play to prove myself.’ Re-enter Wenger. As soon as he was appointed Arsenal manager, though he wasn’t to arrive officially at Highbury for some months, Wenger asked the club to have a pair of unknown French players waiting for him when he arrived.

It proved an inspired move. While Remi Garde’s influence on the pitch was minimal, his role in the dressing room was key. A hugely diplomatic and ambassadorial character, Garde was able to break down the English players’ suspicions of the new arrivals and prevent factions growing in the squad. Patrick Vieira was the ambassador on the pitch who warmed the Highbury faithful to Wenger before the new manager even arrived. On 16 September 1996, before the match against Sheffield Wednesday, Highbury’s jumbotron screens broadcast a message from Arsène Wenger, still in Japan but now officially Arsenal’s next manager. Thanks to a combination of a poor PA system and Wenger’s broad French accent, much of what he said was incomprehensible. His conclusion was audible, if uninspired: ‘First, let’s win tonight.’ It’s safe to say the Arsenal crowd wasn’t enormously impressed at that stage.

Trailing to a 25th minute Andy Booth goal, Arsenal were forced to send Vieira on for the injured Ray Parlour three minutes later. The Highbury faithful, starved of a decent midfielder after years of being force-fed the unpalatable likes of John Jensen and David Hillier, immediately warmed to this authoritative, skilled individual and were singing his name within minutes of his introduction. Arsenal went on to win 4-1 that night and there was little doubt who turned the game in the minds of the home fans. Suddenly, the impending arrival of Wenger couldn’t happen quickly enough.

If Vieira helped win over the doubters in the stands during Wenger’s first season, the midfield axis he formed with Emmanuel Petit led to the manager’s elevation to sainthood in the second. Wenger has admitted he took a gamble with the partnership (Petit was a little known left-back and Vieira still lacked experience) but said he instinctively sensed the pair would compliment each other perfectly. ‘I knew they’d be a forceful pair. Vieira is a good ball winner, a quick passer and a penetrating player. Petit on the other hand is left-footed, a long passing player and a good reader and intercepter of the game. They provided a great balance.’

Despite the manager’s faith, the French midfield pair did not win the immediate respect of the old guard of Englishmen in the Highbury dressing room. In his autobiography, Addicted, captain Tony Adams reveals he had some serious doubts about both players, but especially Vieira. ‘Patrick and Emmanuel were not shielding us properly. Patrick, I felt, was young and arrogant and was going around kicking people,’ he says. ‘He needed to be calmed down a bit but wasn’t getting proper guidance… Some of the older players were complaining about him not training as hard as he should be. I left it a day or two and then said that we had worked very hard when we were his age to learn the game, won six trophies, and had earned the right now to pace ourselves with so many games to play, but that he had not yet. I think he took my point.’

Vieira and Petit knuckled down and comprehensively bossed the Highbury midfield week-in, week-out during that awesome run-in to Arsenal’s 1998 Double victory. Although there had already been signs of his disciplinary problems at this stage, it wasn’t until the following season that his problems really emerged. Before long, Vieira was as known for his red and yellow cards and clashes with authority as he previously was for his midfield magnificence. We return to the earlier point: can such a volatile player really assume the captain’s armband? There’s certainly no shortage of support among the Arsenal fans who have long championed him as a future skipper and it would be a popular move in the dressing room too, it seems.

‘He’s a good person for the group, for the team unit,’ gushes team-mate Dennis Bergkamp who has named Vieira in his Fantasy XI of all-time on his official website. ‘Everyone but everyone gets along with Patrick at Highbury and he just has that posture, attitude and stature that you want in a captain. Everyone looks up to him. So why shouldn’t he be captain? His English is good so he could cover the communication side perfectly well, the fans love him and I’m sure they’d be delighted to see him take the armband when the time is right. ”By the time the captaincy is up for grabs he would have had a bit more experience, which would help on the disciplinary side and so yeah, the more you think of it the more it makes sense really. I think it’s very difficult for Patrick at the moment because he isn’t being allowed to play his own game. For me, I think this is unfair because he doesn’t play over the edge and yet he’s still punished. He’s an honest player.’

Alex Fynn, who co-wrote The Great Divide – The Inside Story of the 1999-2000 season at Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, goes even further, supporting the view that Vieira epitomises Wenger’s Arsenal better than any. ‘During the 1990s, Tony Adams symbolised what George Graham asks of his players, so he was a natural captain. Now, Patrick Vieira symbolises what Arsene Wenger asks but not wants from his team,’ he explains. ‘I make the distinction between “asks” and “wants” because while Wenger doesn’t actually want the petulance Vieira displays, he does encourage it by not being tough enough with his players.

‘You’d have to give Wenger nine out of ten as a manager. He doesn’t get a perfect ten because he doesn’t rebuke his players when they get sent off. He’s actually almost too humane at times. His generosity and warmth as a human being, the way he treats his players like men and as equals leads to the petulance and indiscipline we see on the field.

‘So could Vieira be an Arsenal captain? I think it would be a positive move. It would be great to have a black, continental captain in the Premiership. Whether it can happen is down to whether he learns from his past mistakes and whether Wenger is willing to forego some of his misguided generosity and occasionally act out of character to teach his players to behave on the field.’

The perception that French players moan incessantly and unjustifiably about English football has always been misguided. For a start, the likes of Fabien Barthez, Gilles Grimandi and Thierry Henry have scarcely put a verbal foot out of place. More importantly, though, as the England national team’s reputation is ruined by a succession of distressingly poor performances, we’d perhaps do well to listen to a bit of critical advice from the World and European champions.

Vieira has had some words of complaint to make about the English game, but also has plenty of good to say about the league and the country too. ‘I adore English football. I adore the atmosphere in the stadia. Since I’ve been at Arsenal good things have happened to me: I’m in the French squad and I played in the World Cup. I’m someone who when I’m content wants to stay [in London]. I want to take advantage of everything I have in England.’ It’s only when you’ve read the above passage that the following one can be read in context: as an interesting and largely accurate observation rather than a petulant whine. ‘Viewed from another country, yes the English practice fair play. It’s always the image of fair play that emerges, yet when you live in the country itself you know it is further away. It’s hypocrisy.’

More recently, he’s questioned whether it’s racism or xenophobia at work in some of the harsh treatment he receives. ‘Am I a target because I’m a world champion? Is it because I’m a foreigner in England? Or simply because I’m black? I spoke a lot with my relatives to understand and it’s hard to know why some people are focused on me like that. I don’t want to be naïve. I know racism will still be present even after the year 2000.’ The suspicion must be that all of those different possibilities must be at work in the case of Patrick Vieira.

It would also be helpful for him to heed the words of his club and country team-mate Thierry Henry. ‘I know that if want to upset Patrick I just have to kick him, and if I know that, then I’m sure the players who play against him know it too. But you have to put your foot in if you play in the Premiership. If you don’t, you’re finished.’

But for all the difficulties Premiership football has posed Vieira, it has also been his making as a player. Think back to the time he joined Arsenal. He was learning nothing in the Milan reserves; his lack of appearances meant he was not going to be a target for another Serie A club; and a move home to France would only have taken him back to what he knew. By going to Arsenal, Vieira was able to play first-team football alongside some top-notch players – Dennis Bergkamp, Ian Wright, Tony Adams – and in a style that suited his particular gifts. Even if he had made it into the Milan first team, would his swashbuckling, physical style have matured and developed, or would he have been changed into a different player? The very reason players such as Vieira and Roy Keane are so attractive to big Italian clubs is that they seem to have an inability to nurture that sort of combative talent. Vieira knows that, which is why he has pledged not to alter his style, regardless of the provocation.

‘Red cards and suspensions won’t make me change,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been rough on purpose, it was always bad reactions from me. Of course, I was wrong and I’m ready to take responsibility for what I did, but it’s difficult not to react when someone is tough on you. ‘I’ve never been rough on purpose, it was always bad reactions from me. Of course, I was wrong and I’m ready to take responsibility for what I did, but it’s difficult not to react when someone is tough on you. ‘I can’t play without reacting, this is the way I am. I’m not going to change and I don’t want to change, I’m a strong-willed player and it’s what helped me get where I am now.’

Patrick Vieira is far from finished in English football and when Tony Adams eventually retires from club football, there can surely only be one player with the stature to step out of his shadow and assume the captain’s armband. Some undoubtedly feel he has some lessons to learn first, but appropriately enough for an Arsène Wenger player, Patrick Vieira enjoys a bit of education. ‘I’m a person who likes to learn by speaking to everyone,’ he has said. ‘You can turn things in your favour by learning things. There are so many players here I can learn from, and I’m enjoying that so much. It’s good for me for the future.

‘My mother told me, “You must make your own decisions in life and do what you want to do – but always remember you must take the consequences for your actions. That’s something I’ll never forget. I’m young now. Maybe I’ll be calmer when I grow older. Maybe I’ll always be the same. If you are a little bit clever, what you see in life you learn from.’ When a star-struck Patrick Vieira recently emerged from a meeting with Nelson Mandela, he revealed that the former South African President had told him, ‘Whatever you do, don’t stop growling.’ There seems little danger of that.