Arsene Wenger has finally opened up about the inability to do his coat up.
You can picture the scene, can’t you?
Arsene Wenger on the Emirates touchline sometime in December, in a coat as long as a giraffe’s neck, huffing and puffing in frustration.
He’s stuck with the zip again.
Once again he is left with his coat open as the wind howls around him and a team like Aston Villa are playing the Gunners off the park.
Once again he is tormented by the complex zip mechanism, slide up to close, down to open, meaning he cannot utilise his coat fully to protect his lean, frail body.
Once again he is tormented by Francis Coquelin, unable to protect his lean, frail defence.
But mostly it’s the zip.
The former Arsenal boss has now explained the psychological torture he was under in an interview with beIN Sports.
“Yes, in fact I improved in that,” Wenger said when asked by Richard Keys if he ever did manage to successfully do up his coat.
And the Frenchman, who left Arsenal at the end of last season after 22 years, was well aware of just how much pressure he was under during Zipgate.
“I was conscious of that! They [the coats] are too long and sometimes the zip didn’t work. I struggled a lot with that.”
“But, in the end, because people were showing it I was conscious that I was under scrutiny when doing it!”
So there you have it. Thanks to us, and our endless appetite for creating and consuming memes, poor Arsene felt the weight of the entire world every time he tried (and failed) to do his zip up.
Truly, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
But then again, it was, always, very, very funny.
Especially due to Steve Bould sitting or standing next to him, completely oblivious to the trouble Wenger was having, consistently failing to offer his mate a hand.
Arsene Wenger, please come back to football soon. We miss you.
