Arsene Wenger has hailed Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp has the most gifted players he has coached – but insists he couldn’t split the Arsenal legends.
Henry and Bergkamp spearheaded Arsenal’s Invincibles side in 2004 as the Gunners won the Premier League without tasting defeat.
Henry went on to become the club’s greatest ever scorer before leaving for Barcelona while Bergkamp will also be remembered as one of the most talented footballers of his generation.
And when asked who the best player he had coached was, Wenget told beIN Sports: “Well you had Bergkamp, Thierry Henry…erm, yeah, too many! I don’t know. You know, because it’s always different to choose one.”
And when prompted on who made Henry the player he was, Wenger added: “Thierry Henry would say Dennis Bergkamp.”
Wenger, who left Arsenal in 2018, was speaking a week before the restart of the current Premier League season following the coronavirus crisis.
“I would say it has made the weak clubs weaker and the strong clubs stronger,” he said. “And it has made us realise that what is taken for granted can be interrupted at any moment… and realise as well that we could live without it [football].
“It’s a very important part in our lives, but health came first and it gave us a good opportunity… to see the weak points of the structure of the game.
“We live in a world today that’s focused on grouping the elite. In England the leagues are dying; the Premier League will survive, I don’t worry for the Premier League.
“You worry more for the out of 92 clubs, you have 65 clubs who lose money and behind closed doors they open the stadium – they lose money to play the game.
“So it is where football has to re-think how to we help these clubs to survive… because we need an elite but we need as well a basis where young players have a chance to play and where we have to get these people to survive.”
