Thierry Henry often made football look easy.
He scored goals with great flair and originality and, at times, appeared almost unstoppable.
But his climb to football’s summit wasn’t
without its difficulties; this is the story of the rise of Thierry Henry.
Henry was born and raised in Les Ulis, in housing projects south of Paris.
It was a tough, working class and multicultural environment and, as it turned out, a hothouse
for footballing talent.
Henry is Les Ulis’ most famous son, but Patrice Evra and Anthony Martial were both
also raised within its brutalist concrete buildings.
Henry was also an early graduate at Clairefontaine,
the French Football Federation’s boarding school-like National Football Centre, and
by 17 had joined AS Monaco, who were then under the management of Arsene Wenger.
Henry’s progress at Monaco was startling.
Within two years he had progressed from the club’s youth team to playing for their senior
side in Ligue1.
Henry would never be prolific for Monaco.
He’d grown up idolising Marco van Basten, even wearing his famous no.12 shirt for France,
but he wouldn’t become a full-time forward until later in his career.
Nevertheless, in the 28 goals he did score for Monaco between 1994 and 1999, it’s possible
to see the traits that he would eventually make famous.
The gliding acceleration, the languid technique, the open-body, side-footed finish that would
become his trademark; his identity as a goal-scorer was in early evidence, even then.
It was still a strange period.
At a glance, Henry’s progress at Monaco seems serene.
As it did with the national team.
He was France’s top-scorer at the 1998 World Cup and the French media had been gilding
his reputation for years previously, enraptured as they were by his skill and speed.
But he was not always a starter for Monaco
during that period, and a bizarre episode in 1996 Madrid might have derailed him entirely.
He would sign a pre-contract agreement with Real Madrid which would ultimately be annulled.
FIFA’s eventual judgement would find the Spanish club guilty of an illegal approach
to a contracted player and of utilizing the services of an unlicensed agent.
The episode even ensnared Henry’s own father and while the player might have suffered a
ban as a result, FIFA only fined him £40,000.
Similarly, while Henry’s part in the 1998
World Cup win might have guaranteed him a place in his national side for the foreseeable
future, he would actually suffer the ignominy of a demotion back to the u21 side in the
months after the tournament and wouldn’t make a single senior appearance in 1999.
Juventus was also a curious interlude.
The deal that took him from France to Italy in January of 1999 was unusual and done without
the knowledge of his then-representatives.
Upon arriving, Henry encountered a formation for which he didn’t really have the attributes.
He was most regularly used not as a winger,
but as a wide midfielder on the left of a 3-5-2.
It was a role with a defensive element to which he wasn’t suited and a disappointing
first half-season turned sour when Luciano Moggi, then Juventus managing director, attempted
to loan Henry to Udinese.
Henry refused the move, creating the conditions
for his transfer to Arsenal – and that was a transfer he’d wanted for some time.
Arsene Wenger had been at Highbury since 1997 and – of course – had given Henry his
debut at Monaco shortly before being sacked.
In Philippe Auclair’s essential biography, he describes Henry’s eagerness to join Arsenal
years before he actually did.
He records Henry badgering Gilles Grimandi, a former Monaco teammate who moved to North
London in 1997, to tell Arsene Wenger that he was keen on a transfer, and actually phoned
Wenger shortly before his Juventus deal was completed in 1999, hoping to move to England
instead.
Just six months later, he finally became an
Arsenal player.
Wenger was really the first coach to properly state his intention to turn Henry into a centre-forward
and would praise his finishing ability during his unveiling.
Famously, not even Henry himself had that much faith in himself, insisting throughout
his career that he had never been a natural goal-scorer.
But Arsenal would become the apex of Henry’s
career.
But, again, what looks like an easy transition on paper, with Henry scoring 17 Premier League
goals in his first season, was initially uncomfortable.
Henry was replacing a young Nicolas Anelka,
whose departure to Real Madrid was formalised 24 hours after his arrival.
He was also playing in the shadow of Ian Wright, the club’s record goal-scorer and former
talisman.
Henry laboured.
He was profligate and occasionally looked out of his depth.
He actually went eight games without scoring at the beginning of his Arsenal career and
while he wasn’t mocked in the same way that Dennis Bergkamp had been on arriving in England,
he was still a £11.5m player who wasn’t scoring and who seemed to be wilting amid
the frenzy of the English game.
Like Bergkamp before him, though, he would
also announce himself with a brilliant goal against Southampton, in the middle of September
1999.
Receiving a pass from Tony Adams and with his back to goal, twenty-five yards out, Henry
pinned his defender, turned away and in-field, and whipped a finish into the top corner on
the turn.
Henry had arrived and following that day at
The Dell, it was remarkable not only how regularly he began to score, but how quickly he became
the player he’s remembered for being today.
In that first season, he scored fabulous goals against Middlesbrough at the Riverside Stadium,
(what would become) a trademark stylish double against Sunderland at Highbury, and a sensational
slaloming run and finish against Watford at Vicarage Road.
In fact, it’s a measure of just how quickly
Henry adjusted that one of his most famous goals for Arsenal – the impudent flick and
over-the-shoulder volley against Manchester United – was actually just his 31st for
the club and was scored barely 14 months after arriving in England.
It was arguably the quintessential Henry moment, and yet he had only just turned 23.
It was just the first of a whole gallery of
astonishing goals and an array of wonderful achievements.
The Premier League and FA Cup double of 2002, a further FA Cup in 2003, and the Invincible
season that ended with an unbeaten Premier League title in 2004.
Between 2001 and 2006, he would score 30 goals
or more across all competitions for five straight years.
In October 2005, in a Champions League tie against Sparta Prague, he would surpass Ian
Wright to become the club’s all-time top-scorer.
Even in his final, injury-disrupted season,
when Arsenal had fallen from their Invincibles peak and Henry was in athletic decline, he
still managed to light up the league with goals at Ewood Park against Blackburn, Liverpool
at Anfield, and, in a fitting touch, with a last-minute header to beat Manchester United
during their first visit to the new Emirates Stadium.
He would move to Barcelona in 2007.
Given that he would be part of the Pep Guardiola team that won a LaLiga-Copa del Rey-Champions
League treble in 2009, it seems strange to present that part of his career as almost
an afterthought.
It wasn’t, because Henry was still a very fine player, but he was somewhat lost in the
glare of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi, and really more of a component rather
than the main attraction.
He'd retire in 2014 after five years in MLS
with the New York Red Bulls and a short stop back at the Emirates on loan in 2012.
In a career that had spanned three decades, he’d won a World Cup, a European Championship
and a Champions League, as well as domestic league titles and cups in France, England
and Spain.
George Best called him a “showman” and
“an entertainer”.
Michel Platini said that there had “never been another French player like him”.
And Ronaldinho admitted that he ”adored” watching him, calling Henry a “beautiful
player”.
It was worthy testimony about an extraordinary
player.