July 14 – Arsène Wenger’s latest comments about the FIFA Club World Cup heat fiasco perfectly encapsulate everything wrong with his transformation from one of the most intelligent men in football to a corporate shill – after all, this is the man who once championed player welfare but who now is making flimsy excuses for putting footballers in genuine danger.
Chelsea’s Enzo Fernández didn’t mince words about the playing conditions during his club’s semi-final: “Honestly, the heat is incredible. The other day I got a bit dizzy during a play. I had to lie down on the ground because I was really dizzy. Playing in this temperature is very dangerous, it’s very dangerous.”
When players are collapsing from heat exhaustion, when global players’ union FIFPRO presents data showing three games should have been postponed due to temperatures exceeding 28 degrees Celsius on the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature gauge, you’d expect to be jumping at the chance to protect players.
Instead, Wenger offered corporate spin: “The heat in some games was a problem. We tried to combat that with cooling breaks and watering the pitches during breaks. We learned a lot on that front.”
This is the same man who spent decades warning about fixture congestion and player welfare. The manager who repeatedly said “we are killing the players” is now literally putting them at risk of heat stroke and dismissing it as a learning experience.
Enzo’s description of Tuesday’s match against Fluminense – played in 96-degree heat at 3 pm. ET in New Jersey – should shame anyone involved in scheduling decisions. “The game, the speed of the game is not the same, everything becomes very slow,” he said, highlighting how the spectacle itself suffers when players can barely function.
But Wenger’s response? A casual acknowledgment that “temperatures above 35C (95F) affect high-speed running and sprints” as if this is some groundbreaking research rather than basic common sense that any competent administrator should have considered before creating this bloated tournament.
Enzo’s plea for next year’s World Cup is particularly damning: “Let’s hope that next year they change the schedule. At least so that it remains a beautiful and attractive football spectacle, right?”
Wenger’s proposed solution? “Certainly, next year, there will be more roofed stadiums as we have to follow the TV schedule.” Notice how TV schedules take precedence over player safety – the same TV-driven fixture expansion that the manager Wenger once railed against.
The man who once understood that players aren’t machines has become the chief enabler of treating them exactly that way.
When Enzo Fernández is collapsing from dizziness on the pitch, when FIFPRO is presenting data about dangerous conditions, when the quality of football visibly deteriorates due to heat, Wenger’s response shouldn’t be corporate damage control.
Instead, we get excuses, spin, and promises to “learn” from putting players’ health at risk.
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