Gus Poyet bowed out of the Bordeaux job in dramatic fashion this weekend. His melt-down at the club’s hierarchy brought about by the unauthorised selling of forward Gaëtan Laborde prompting his unmitigated outrage
His subsequent suspension from the club has now thrust potential suitors to the manager role at the Ligue 1 club into the spotlight.
In an exclusive interview with French newspaper Corse Matin, former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger has thrown in his two cents about the speculation linking one of his former players to the vacant position at the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux.
Asked to comment on reports linking Thierry Henry becoming first-team coach at Bordeaux, Wenger was unguarded in his response;
‘Yes, he wants to do it, he is intelligent and he has the qualities. The existential question that we always ask ourselves is whether we are ready to sacrifice our life for the coaching profession.’
Henry, Arsenal’s all-time record goalscorer and the fifth-highest in Premier League history, played under Arsene Wenger in North London for eight years, between 1999 and 2007.
Wenger brought the then-21 year-old from Juventus in an £11million move and transformed him from a winger into one of the deadliest strikers the English league has seen.
The two appear to retain a good relationship to this day, with Henry returning to the Emirates briefly in 2012 after a period at Barcelona and during his time at New York Red Bulls.
Since retiring from playing football and following a short spell in punditry, Henry has taken a position in the Belgium national team set-up and seems intent on making strikes in the world of management with speculation earlier this summer about the Frenchman taking the role at Aston Villa.
With the Bordeaux position likely to become available with Poyet’s speculation, it seems like Henry has a good cheerleader in Wenger to support his credentials of becoming the next manager of Les Girondins, who will likely mark a decade of having not won the Ligue 1 title at the end of the 2018/19 season.
