Saturday 13 March 2021, 06:22

Wenger: We want to make the game more spectacular

  • Arsene Wenger spoke this week to ‘Living Football’

  • The celebrated Frenchman discussed offside, VAR and much more

  • Also featured in FIFA’s new football magazine was Pierluigi Collina

Legendary former Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger joined us for the latest episode of ‘Living Football’, FIFA’s football magazine show.

Wenger joined FIFA as Chief of Global Football Development in 2019, and he is also a member of the Football and Technical Advisory Panels involved in The IFAB’s potential changes to the Laws of the Game.

As always, 'Le Professeur brought some fascinating insights. “We want to help make the game more spectacular, quicker and more enjoyable to watch, and to play as well,” he said. “It is the most popular sport in the world at the moment … but to stand still would be bad.”

Wenger also weighed in on the much-discussed topics of offside and VAR. “I have many ideas and of course we have to check them and to experiment (with) them and then to come to conclusions,” he said. “One of them is to change a little bit the offside rule.

“In case of uncertainty the referee (traditionally) gives the benefit of the doubt to the striker. With VAR the benefit of the doubt disappears because the precision of the VAR which always goes a little bit against the striker. We’ve seen many frustrating situations because of that.”

To hear Arsene Wenger’s interesting views on how to improve the modern game, history-making time at Arsenal and much more, watch ‘Living Football’ above.