Vieira talar ut

Arsenal midfielder Patrick Vieira says that all his ambitions can be fulfilled at Highbury.
Eric Cantona strode majestically off the giant sandpit at Hyde Park and held court. The leader of a revolution that has seen France come to conquer the English game, Manchester United’s departed king was back to promote beach football. But the shifting sands beneath the feet of Patrick Vieira inevitably penetrated and then dominated the discussion.

“He is a wonderful player. He can defend, he is skilful, he scores goals, he has everything," said Cantona, whose success at Old Trafford, Vieira acknowledges, contributed to his own ascendancy at Arsenal. “He is one of the best midfielders France has ever had and one of the best in the world. I don’t know Patrick very well but if he feels he needs a new challenge, he is right to leave Arsenal.

“It is good if a player wants that. Patrick is someone who wants to win, and if he is not happy when he is not winning, then he is totally right. Great players are not happy unless they win, even to the last day of their life."

A year-and-a-half on, the landscape has been transformed. Vieira’s raison d’être is still to win. But instead of joining the kings of Europe, Real Madrid, he believes he can realise his dream by beating them with Arsenal, the club that Fabio Capello, the Roma coach, calls the strongest in Europe. Sitting alongside him on a sofa at the club’s training facility in London Colney, you get more than a sense of Vieira the man.

You know why men would choose to follow him, why France Under-21 coach Raymond Domenech would regard him as a son, why former France international Jean-Pierre Papin would refer to him as chouchou (sweetheart), why Arsène Wenger describes him as “the umbilical cord, someone who symbolises the link between the team and the fans". The Arsenal captain is cosmopolitan, but his roots in Senegal, where he grew up in a house shared by aunts and uncles and grandparents, still shape his views. He smiles easily. He laughs a lot. Happiness, he says, has no price, and he is happy with the “perfect" life he shares with his girlfriend, Cheryl, in Hampstead.

Then he talks about winning and what winning with Arsenal means to him. He demonstrates. He sits up straight, spreads his arms out and takes a deep breath. “Do you know what I mean?" he asks. Perhaps it is the air he has exhaled towards you, but you know exactly what he means. Playing for Arsenal and winning with Arsenal, the club where he has forged his reputation, is as basic to his wellbeing as drawing breath. When the Gunners were knocked out of the Champions League quarter-finals by Valencia in April 2001, a night Wenger admits was his most depressing in football, Vieira challenged his club’s ambition and questioned whether it matched his own. “Losing Manu (Petit) and Marc Overmars (to Barcelona the previous summer) was a mistake," he said. “Of course it was good business, but it was a big disappointment for me. If you want to win the Premiership and Champions League, you have to keep your best players."

Valencia return on Tuesday to Highbury, where a demonstration of the new order that Capello proclaimed is Vieira’s mission, and Arsenal’s. “Yes, my ambition can be fulfilled at Arsenal," Vieira declared on Friday. “I never wanted to leave. I talked to Mr Dein (David, Arsenal’s vice-chairman), and the boss and I feel the club has improved every year. The pitches we have here at the training ground are unbelievable, perfect. The facilities we have to do our job are fantastic. The players we have are fantastic. We now have everything we could want to be good. So it’s up to us, the players, to do it.

“I’m sure some people don’t understand why I didn’t go to Madrid, but the reason is very personal. To win the Champions League with Arsenal will mean a lot more than to do it with Madrid. Real have won it three, four times recently. What’s the difference one more time? For me to win it with the club where I really started, where I wrote my name, would be fantastic.

“And the other thing is my life. Happiness doesn’t have a price. I don’t want to gamble my life here because everything is fantastic. If I want to go to the movies with my girlfriend or to the park, I go to the movies or I go to the park. It’s not like France or Italy, where somebody can come up and give you so much nonsense. I can live my life here. It’s perfect, and that doesn’t have a price.

“Happiness away from the pitch helps you on the pitch. What Capello said about the Arsenal team is a fantastic compliment. But compliments are one thing. Achievement is another. You are remembered by what you win. There is a long way to go, because it is only the second stage of the Champions League and we have to take it step by step. But from the start we’ve known we have the team to do it, because we know we are capable of beating any team and now we have just to show it on the pitch."

Vieira’s confidence is completely unforced, exactly how he plays the game. His worst excesses have been eliminated, his single sending-off this season a dubious dismissal against Chelsea. The reason is twofold. Petit was his midfield soulmate. Before every game they went through a ritual that culminated in a high five and a hug, and then they went to work on the opposition with mutual comprehension of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Vieira’s alliance with Gilberto Silva has the hallmarks of his partnership with Petit.

“Gilberto is quiet but he does a lot on the pitch, works hard for the team, never puts himself first and he’s a really intelligent player. We have cut each other’s job in half," Vieira said. “I like these kind of people."

He likes the responsibility of captaincy too. The symbolic handover of the armband from Tony Adams came with the presentation of the FA Cup in May. Adams insisted on Vieira collecting the trophy with him, and the passing of power was complete. “I’ve not seen it at all as a challenge," Vieira said. “Tony Adams will never be replaced. He played all his career for this club and this is his team. You’ll never take his place, because he goes with Arsenal. He’s a legend here.

“Of course, I want to be a legend at this club. I learnt from Tony, a good guy, a big human being. I love the person, but I’m different from him. He’s the kind of guy who will drive the team by talking. I drive the team by the way I perform. Shouting is not my style. The captaincy has made me grow. I have calmed down. I will never change the way I am, because to go for a tackle, to go to win the ball, that is who I am, and I will die with that. I’m just more careful about the way I act and react. But my determination remains the same."

It has been that way since he sat in the stands in Milan’s San Siro stadium, a 20-year-old signing from Cannes who believed he should be in a team that boasted players in central midfield of the calibre of Marcel Desailly, Demetrio Albertini and Zvonimir Boban.

“Because I had the chance in my hand, I didn’t want it taken away. I wanted to make it, and I wanted to make it straight away. So I worked hard, and Capello, who was then the Milan coach, was good to me, explaining what I needed to do, letting me train with the team, and I learnt a lot from them, telling me to be patient, my time would come. I was hungry to succeed.

“I want to be the best in the position I play. I want to win every single ball. I want to give the best for my team. It’s something I have inside me that drives me to be a winner."

Domenech gives an insight into the depth of Vieira’s will to succeed. Domenech is a central figure in the success of Clairefontaine, the French academy that bred a generation of World Cup winners. From the start, he recognised that Vieira stood out, his long, lean frame and ready smile endearing him to a man who became a father figure in his life, a man who identified the one problem that might have jeopardised Vieira’s career, his knees.

“He was too big. He had no muscles and he had a weak point with the knee," Domenech said. “He had to have an operation and he had to work on building up the strength in the knee. You see what he has achieved today and you know how hard he worked. He is doing a great job for Arsène, who has done a great job for him."

It is Wenger’s vision that created the vehicle for Vieira to fulfil his potential. The Arsenal manager believes his side’s coronation as Premiership champions at Old Trafford last season is proof of a shift in the balance of power, away from Manchester United, in the English game. Vieira sees a need for sustained success before this is confirmed, but his faith in Wenger and in his team’s desire is unequivocal.

“I think the boss knows me better than I know myself. That’s his quality," said Vieira. “His mind is open, his door is always open. I can talk to him about anything. My relationship with him is very clear and he has that relationship, I think, with every player. That’s one of the reasons behind our success. The first thing is the quality in the team. In every position, we have big, big quality. We have a really good squad, a really strong team. But the balance, the relationship between the players is fantastic. I have never seen any player have trouble with another player since I joined the club.

“To go all the way, you need a strong team and players who believe in each other, and we know that everyone will give 100% for the team. Nobody puts himself first. We want to achieve something together and that’s why we have the quality on the pitch. The quality is there off the pitch. The relationship between us is fantastic.

“I don’t think we have reached Manchester United yet. We will reach them if we win the championship again. We’ve closed the gap, but when you win three, four times in three, four years, that means something. There is a danger in that, too. It can make your life too easy, and maybe that has happened to United. But the way we must look at it is that if we have done it once we can do it again."

There is no danger of Vieira being carried away by the successes he craves. His upbringing in Dakar, where he was raised with his brother, Nico, by his mother, Emilienne, will always provide a mooring. He has long pledged to himself to give something back that will be lasting. With two friends, former West Ham goalkeeper Bernard Lama and former Lens midfielder Jimmy Adjoviboco, he has set to work establishing a football academy in his home town which should open next year.

“We will give the kids an opportunity to learn a job as well as develop their football," he said. “I want to be there when it opens. I want to give something to Senegal." The name of the academy is Diambars, a word which Vieira translated as “when you are stronger".

Valencia are likely to discover on Tuesday how much stronger Arsenal have become and the rest of Europe will know soon, too.