For club and country

WHEN it comes to the increasingly vexed question of club versus country, Arsene Wenger continues to play the philosophical equivalent of a game of two halves: spot on half the time, way off the mark the rest.

In a fascinating interview in the current edition of FourFourTwo, the Arsenal boss revisits a favourite theme: what he believes to be the creeping mediocrity of the international game.

“I’m not a big fan of international football because they destroyed it,” he opines. “Take Russia, once it was one country, now it’s 21. Yugoslavia was one and now it’s six. As a result, the level has dropped. Then you add countries like Andorra, Faroe Islands and San Marino and suddenly three games out of four are of no interest. When you think of international football you think that it’s a level up but 99% of the time it’s a level down. That’s why I prefer club football.”