Who should replace Arsène Wenger? Part 3 — Luis Enrique
On April 20th 2018, Arsène Wenger announced that this would be his last season as Arsenal manager, after 22 years at the club. It was a pretty emotional day and football fans and players emerged to give respect and gratitude to the manager.
Make sure you’ve read part one and two. I’m going to go straight into looking at another potential coach, Luis Enrique.
Luis Enrique
Luis Enrique is 47 and won major trophies with Barcelona. Winning a Champions League, two league titles and three domestic cups, including the treble in 2014/15.
In his career he’s coached Roma, Celta and both Barcelona and its second division side. Barcelona was a big jump for him but it’s difficult to do badly with a side that good.
Looking at the ELO of the clubs he’s managed there hasn’t been much improvement. Roma never actually improved from the level when he joined and declined by 50 ELO over his managerial spell.
Celta Vigo improved by a decent bit before he moved to Barcelona. It’s difficult to improve an already great Barcelona. But, when he first joined there was a decent increase, but it eventually regressed and he left the job. He kept Barcelona at that top level, but didn’t have much chance to improve them and joined at a higher level than Arsenal.
Therefore, I’m sceptical either way. So, I will consider him through the other benchmarks. Firstly, using youth in the first team. Here Enrique interests me a lot. He spent three years at Barcelona B. Looking at the squad he used that season is full of youth. Only 9 players in his squad were aged over 21 in 2010/11.
This is a big thing for me as it shows that he had to put faith in youth in a competitive league. He had a strong team of future talents, but he was still able to improve the squad and utilise the youth. A lot of the squad have gone onto bigger things; Nolito, Thiago, Bartra, Romeu, Sergi Roberto, etc.
Looking at his stint at Roma, he clearly had faith in the youth in that side. This included talents such as Pjanic, Lamela and Bojan. The summer he joined they invested heavily in youth and Enrique had faith in them, while also using some experience throughout the season.
This is a big positive for the prospect of the Arsenal job, as outlined in part one and talked about by Mohamed.
The last benchmark to pass is style. Again, Enrique passes. Michele Tossani talked about his style of play when he was linked with Inter Milan. Enrique’s preferred strategy is to control the ball and have an attacking brand of football. Similar to that of Arsenal over the last two decades. Arsenal have been known for high possession play and controlling the midfield will technical passers. Obviously, this is similar to Barcelona, so Enrique is experienced in this and could continue attractive football with Arsenal.
Overall, Luis Enrique passes three tests and probably scrapes the fourth. Therefore, I’d be keen to see him at Arsenal this summer. Although, I still have a lot more managers to look at.
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