Arsenal Manager Arsene Wenger said on Saturday that the life history of Liberia’s President George Weah will make a marvelous film after describing him as a “miracle”.
Weah, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest African players of all time, was elected President of Liberia in the 2017 election and he was sworn in on 22 January 2018.
Wenger coached the 1995 FIFA World Player of the Year at French Ligue 1 giants AS Monaco between 1988 and 1992. The French tactician guided Monaco to the Coupe de France triumph in 1991.
“Basically his whole life story is, for me, a miracle,” Wenger told Arsenal Player.
“This story started when a friend of mine came to visit me in Monaco. He was coaching in Cameroon and I asked him if he could find one player in Africa who could be a sub for us, and told him to just look for a striker.
“We were only allowed two foreign players and we already had Mark Hateley, but he had groin injuries. My friend said, ‘There’s a guy and he’s not that bad’, so I called him every Monday and asked him how our player was doing.
“He said to me, ‘He’s done well again’, so I sent someone from our club to watch him play because at the time you had no media,” he continued.
“He said he wasn’t bad so I said, ‘Bring him back with you’. “I bought him and at the start he was absolutely disastrous. Even the players laughed, but he was ready for work. I saw things in him that were amazing, like his physical power and despite his size, he was agile.
“He was heavy, so I made him lose weight and he worked very hard with me, sometimes in one v one situations. We went on runs together and he became the player everybody knew afterwards. The transformation was absolutely unbelievable, it’s one of the most spectacular I’ve seen,” he added.
“Many people said he was a Conference player, with no disrespect to the Conference league, but it’s what people said. He became the best player in the world.”
Weah, who formed the Congress for Democratic Change, ran unsuccessfully for President in the 2005 election, but he lost to the first elected female head of state in Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the second round of voting.
“He was also a shy person at the time, very apprehensive of Europe, but also a generous person who cared about people,” he continued.
“I discovered him slowly because at the time there was war in Liberia and some night I’d see him on the phone caring about his country. He was a generous person, I must say. He’s an exceptional human being because his story will make a marvellous film.
“When you think that I saw this guy coming from Cameroon to Monaco with nothing and today he’s president of his country, it tells you that nothing is impossible in life.”