London: Arsene Wenger has no intention of retiring from football and is even open to the idea of becoming a national team coach.
One job the 68-year-old has been strongly linked with in the past, however, is not expected to be open to him with Paris Saint-Germain set to appoint Thomas Tuchel as their new head coach.
The German has not been formally offered the post yet but with Unai Emery expected to leave at the end of this season, he is top of PSG’s list of replacements, which would also rule out Arsenal moving for Tuchel, of course.
In saying that, the German’s chance of going to Arsenal were remote anyway given the breakdown of his relationship with Sven Mislintat, the Premier League club’s head of recruitment, while the pair were at Borussia Dortmund.
An intriguing possibility, according to sources in France, is whether Wenger might make a return to Monaco should their head coach Leonardo Jardim leave. Given the Portuguese has been strongly linked to Arsenal, where he has his admirers, not least for promoting young players, it even opens up the chances of some kind of job-swap taking place.
In England, Wenger’s best chances of staying in the Premier League could be at Everton should Sam Allardyce leave. Everton’s major shareholder Farhad Moshiri, who was previously a shareholder in Arsenal through Alisher Usmanov’s Red & White Holdings, is an admirer.
It is understood that Wenger might be prepared to move away from day-to-day coaching and take up a sporting director’s role at a club, which would be ironic given how dismissive he has been in the past of the notion of working with a director of football. Also, despite his apparent preferred intention to maintain an involvement at a club, he would consider taking over a national team and was, in fact, intrigued by the opportunity to become England manager when Roy Hodgson quit after Euro 2016.
At that time Wenger decided to stay with Arsenal and while taking over England is not an option at present, other national federations might come calling and not least Japan, where he previously worked.
Finally, there is one last, romantic possibility with Wenger’s brother, Guy, having said in an interview in 2016 that maybe one day his younger sibling would go back to their hometown club, Strasbourg. But that may be for the job after the next job.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2018
