PanThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)Leaving [José ] Mourinho out of his life story is like Balzac leaving Vautrin out of Père Goriot: it removes one of the essential engines of the plot. It also deprives us of one of the story’s most interesting characters. Wenger has explained that he wanted the book to be \'positive\', which, from the reader’s point of view, is not the best motivation for writing a memoir ... Wenger’s decision to eliminate the negative leaves a book that disappoints as an account of football management, if we view the football manager as the most important person at any club ... My Life in Red and White is a disappointment to those of us who anticipated the sort of book at which Wenger once hinted. No score-settling, and very little explanation of some of the more puzzling moments in his career are on offer. There is also a reluctance to address football’s less edifying excrescences ... Instead, there is a surprisingly honest self-portrait of an obsessive, driven man, who decided that the game really could be beautiful, and was prepared to sacrifice himself to that belief.
