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The TimesMarch 09, 2005
Henry explains his sulky skills
By Nick Szczepanik
The Arsenal forward explains that his brooding body language is all part of a relentless pursuit of perfection
IF ARSENAL get the result they need against Bayern Munich this evening, Highbury will be a sea of ecstatic faces. The exception may be that of Thierry Henry. Even if he scores a hat-trick, the France forward may be mulling over one he missed and yesterday he admitted that his quest for perfection has given us the wrong idea about the happy man behind the somewhat sulky mask.
“It seems like I’m upset when I’m on the pitch, but it’s the way I am,” he said. “If you ask the guys in the dressing-room, I’m always taking the — I won’t say the word — but it’s true that on the pitch, you don’t often see my teeth. I’m not there to have any laughs.
“It started when I was young. I was 11 or 12 and I used to score goals and my Dad would say, ‘You didn’t [create] any.’ I created some and he said, ‘You didn’t score.’ People who know me know that I’m never satisfied with myself. It is the way I was educated. I’m not crying about it, but I came from a hard area and the only way out of it was for my parents to be hard on me.”
Henry added that on the occasions when his body language can appear moody, it is usually out of frustration with himself, although he said: “It kills me when the game is not played as it should be. It does my head in, but when I go back in the dressing-room I apologise to the guys.”
His team-mates, though, are surely ready to forgive him, appreciating his reluctance to regard himself as the superstar that others paint him. “It’s not a one-man show,” he said. “The first goal I scored against Portsmouth [on Saturday], when Lauren gives you a ball like that, I stayed calm and went to say ‘thank you’ to him. I hate strikers and I really hate it when people give them a goal and they go to the other side to celebrate like they did something amazing.
“The only person I’ve seen winning games on his own is Diego Maradona. I don’t remember anyone else taking a team from beginning to end. Obviously you remember the World Cup in 1986. He played on his own. Apart from him, I’ve seen great and amazing players, but they were playing with great players around them. I always say the same: without my team, I’m nothing. When we beat Inter 5-1, everyone was amazing, not just me. I didn’t take the ball from my penalty area alone. I’m there to finish the job of my team.”
Not that he is ducking his responsibilities. “No, that’s my job,” he said. “But [Ruud] van Nistelrooy missed three goals at the weekend and he got hammered. He’s the most natural finisher in the world, but it can happen. We’re all human beings.
“I know that people expect me to score, but you have to be objective about how things are on the pitch. People know that from time to time I can change the situation of the game, but sometimes at Highbury that first goal can be very difficult because the pitch is really narrow.”
A 2-0 win would see Arsenal through and this evening Henry will be reunited with Dennis Bergkamp, whom he described as “the best player I’ve ever had as a partner”, but it will still be amazing, to borrow Henry’s favourite word, if they progress.
“The most important thing is to win [the competition],” he said. “I went to a semi-final with Monaco, but everyone has forgotten about it. They remember who was in the final. If you turn things round against Bayern Munich but don’t go through to the end, it doesn’t mean anything.”
