Arsenal boss Wenger reiterates Real Madrid snubMarch 12, 2010
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has said he would not be interested in becoming the next Real Madrid manager, claiming he will see out his current contract to 2011.
Arsene Wenger: Staying until 2011 at least.
Wenger has long been targeted by Madrid and is now being linked again in the wake of the Spanish side's exit from the Champions League at the hands of Lyon. Current coach Manuel Pellegrini is under pressure, but Wenger has revealed he has no plans to leave his position at the Emirates.
"I am always going to the end of my contract and I am going to 2011," he said. "There is no way."
Wenger joked that Real ought to "leave me alone" when the subject of him potentially being chased by the club was broached, and said that he preferred to focus on his next task when asked to give the details of Florentino Perez's approach to him last summer.
"For me it is the worst moment to come back on that," he said, with a smile. "At the moment I focus on Hull City. Maybe it's less glamorous than Real Madrid but they are much more important in my life at the moment."
Perez spent £240 million on new signings last summer, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka, largely to push the club to the Champions League final in May, which will be staged at the Bernabeu. But Wenger, once again, pointed out that a large transfer budget does not guarantee silverware.
"£240 million doesn't buy you the Champions League necessarily," he said. "If you can spend it every year, you will get there but it is the first year of Perez back and you have to give him time. He only has to invest again next year, so I think they will be a force again. But at the moment it's difficult to take for them.
"In the last five years we have been in the [Champions League] final, the semi-final, two times the quarter-final. It is the consistency that is the most difficult to achieve at the top level because you have so many teams that want to be in there. When you just turn up regularly, in England, we don't rate that any more because we are used to it. But it's not easy."
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