LONDON -- Arsene Wenger has hailed the raw enthusiasm of summer signing Alexis Sanchez and suggested European players could learn from the competitive attitude of their South American teammates.
Wenger believes players like Uruguay striker Luis Suarez and Chile forward Sanchez come into the game with a different mindset compared to European players, as he suggested their upbringing helped them to develop a winning attitude.
"Sanchez and Suarez, they played street football, park football," Wenger told reporters. "If you go 30, 40 years back in England, life was tougher. Society has changed. We are much more protected than we were 30 years ago. We have all changed. We have all become a bit softer."
Wenger went on to suggest that "street" football is gone and that the way kids played growing up in the past taught them to be shrewd, to fight hard and to win "impossible" balls.
"When [the game] is all a bit more formulated then it is developing your individual skill less, your fighting attitude. We have lost that a little bit.
"I said many times, when you see where Sanchez comes from, where he was born, and you think he finishes at Barcelona and Arsenal, you need something special, or it does not work.
"There are similarities between Sanchez and Suarez. Sometimes Suarez will give the ball to the opponent but he gets it back straight away. Sanchez is the same."
Wenger went on to reflect that the European football academy system is failing to produce top quality strikers, as he said South America is now the most prolific breeding ground for fleet-footed forward goal scoring talents.
"If you look across Europe, South America is the only continent that develops strikers. Across Europe, at least 80 percent of strikers come from South America," he added. "We have to question ourselves [as to] what can we add to our academies to develop strikers again.
"If you look at the 1960s, 1970s in England, even when I arrived in 1996, in every club you had strikers. And I mean strikers. Guys who that could head the ball. They were on every cross. We have less now."
Wenger looks set to hand Theo Waloctt a first team return for Arsenal on Saturday, with the winger potentially making his first appearance for the Gunners senior side since injuring his knee in an FA Cup tie against Tottenham last January.