Arsène Charles Ernest Wenger (born 22 October 1949) is a French former football manager and player who is currently serving as FIFA's Chief of Global Football Development. He was the manager of Arsenal from 1996 to 2018, where he was the longest-serving and most successful in the club's history. His contribution to English football through changes to scouting, players' training and diet regimens revitalised Arsenal and aided the globalisation of the sport in the 21st century.

Born in Strasbourg and raised in Duttlenheim, Wenger was introduced to football by his father, the manager of the local village team. After a modest playing career, in which he made appearances for several amateur clubs, Wenger obtained a manager's diploma in 1981. Following an unsuccessful period at Nancy in 1987, Wenger joined Monaco; the club won the league championship in 1988 and won the Coupe de France in 1991. In 1995, he became coach of J.League side Nagoya Grampus Eight and won the Emperor's Cup and Japanese Super Cup in his first and only year.

Wenger was named manager of Arsenal in 1996; his appointment was greeted with little enthusiasm from the English media and his players alike but he became the first foreign manager to win a Premier League and FA Cup double in 1998. Wenger guided Arsenal to another league and cup double in 2002 and won his third league title unbeaten in 2004 – this was the first time an English club, after Preston North End 115 years previously, went unbeaten. Arsenal later set the record for most league matches unbeaten (49) before losing in October 2004. Under him, the club made its first appearance in a Champions League final in 2006 and relocated to the Emirates Stadium; this move caused Wenger to prioritise the club's finances to meet costs, which coincided with a nine-year spell without winning a trophy. Wenger guided Arsenal to further FA Cup successes in the 2010s; he holds the record for most wins in the competition with seven. He departed as manager in 2018 and retired.

The nickname "Le Professeur" is used by fans and the English press to reflect Wenger's studious demeanour. He is one of the most celebrated managers of his generation, having changed perceptions of the sport and profession in England and abroad. He has been praised for his entertaining, attacking approach to the game but his Arsenal teams were criticised for their indiscipline and naivety; his players received 100 red cards between September 1996 and February 2014, though the team also won awards for sporting fair play. Wenger also earned a reputation for spotting young talent and developing a youth system throughout his career.

Arsène Charles Ernest Wenger was born on 22 October 1949 in Strasbourg, Alsace, the youngest of three children born to Alphonse and Louise Wenger. He lived in Duppigheim during the 1950s, but spent most of his time in the neighbouring village of Duttlenheim, 16 km (10 miles) south-west of Strasbourg. Arsène's father, Alphonse, like many Alsatians, was conscripted into the German Army by force following Germany's earlier annexation of the French region of Alsace-Lorraine. He was sent to fight on the Eastern Front in October 1944, at the age of 24.

The Wenger family owned an automobile spare parts business and a bistro named La Croix d'Or. In his book, My Life in Red and White, Wenger says the "alcohol, brawling and violence" of the bistro's patrons sparked his early interest in human psychology. His parents had difficulty looking after their children, but Duttlenheim was a village where everyone took care of the young; Wenger compared it in later years to a kibbutz. Before Wenger started school, he expressed himself in the local Alsatian dialect of Low Alemannic German. The primary school which Wenger attended was run by the Catholic Church, and as one of its brightest students, he later was accepted into a secondary school in Obernai.

According to his father, who also managed the village team, Wenger was introduced to football "at about the age of six". He was taken to games in Germany, where he held an affection for Borussia Mönchengladbach. Alsace was an area steeped in religion; Wenger and the village boys often needed to seek permission from the Catholic priest to miss vespers in order to play football.

Because the population of Duttlenheim was short in numbers, it proved difficult to field a team of 11 players of equal ages; Wenger did not play for FC Duttlenheim until the age of 12. Claude Wenger, a teammate of Arsène's, noted his lack of pace as a player, which he made up for with his "ability to guard the ball, [seeming] to have a complete vision of the pitch and having an influence among his team-mates", according to Marcel Brandner, the president of FC Duttlenheim. As a young teenager, he was called Petit; the nickname ceased when he had a growth spurt and broke into FC Duttlenheim's first team, aged 16. The team did not have a coach to prepare the players tactically, rather a person who supervised training sessions. Wenger took it upon himself to manage the side, with Claude stating "Arsène wasn't the captain and yet he was. It was 'You do this, you do that, you do this, you do that.' He was the leader".