Soccer: How high can he go?
From virtually a standing position, the 26-year-old contender for world player of the year, propelled himself so high as to assume an ethereal pose. A picture painting a thousand words?
His manager Arsene Wenger, half-reluctantly accepts that Henry is poised to move to a new level, that any time he is on the pitch or near the action, he can create a goal. Such hostages to fortune are rare from Wenger, who is forever battling to protect his priceless asset while dispersing the plaudits throughout the side.
Take the night of the Inter fiesta. Wenger was using the imagery of a plane taking off to explain that, at 26, Henry is still on an upward developmental spiral. Quickly, he checked himself, with a tangential point about Ashley Cole.
“Everybody is talking about Thierry now,” he told a group of English journalists. “But there are other players who have done well. Ashley Cole, for example, had an outstanding game and doesn’t get the praise. The news we had was that (Nigerian danger man) Martins would not play.
"When we got in the dressing room and found out he was playing everyone was very concerned. Certainly one of the keys of the game was how Ashley kept Martins out of the game.”
However when it emerged that Henry was struggling with back and hamstring spasms by the time he broke past Javier Zanetti for Arsenal’s crucial third goal, the agenda for the remainder of the impromptu briefing was set.
Admitted Wenger: “Thierry had appealed to me to come off with his hamstring, and I got Jeremie Alliadiere ready.
"But just at that moment he got the ball and I was surprised how much of a burst he put into his run - maybe he knew this would be his last contribution to the game, and so he gave everything he had left to score that important goal.”
In casual clothing Henry’s physique appears unremarkable, but his perfectly-honed physique is an undeniable factor in his footballing development. In a world of perfect physical specimens, Henry beats players for pace and strength with ridiculous ease.
“When he is stripped, Thierry has an athlete’s physique - very shaped, very natural,” says his former Highbury team-mate, Lee Dixon. “I have never seen him in the gym doing weights, but he can propel himself across the ground very gracefully, almost with a lope.
“Of course, he is very quick, but it is his change of pace that destroys defenders. I cannot even imagine 100 metre sprinters changing pace like him. There is something almost elastic in the movement of his joints.”
Henry suffered with hamstring problem when he first came to Highbury, but with his physical development continuing with age, he has become “physically perfect” for a footballer, says Wenger.
Dixon offers a revealing insight into the French man’s fitness. “Pre-season, we would be making exhausting runs in the first few days, and we had to keep certain times. Arsene was quite strict about this. We had to make it to the corner posts on time, and on those runs, Thierry was always ahead of everyone else.
"He would be told to slow down because he was at the designated corner too quickly. We would arrive panting and sweating, and he would not have even broken sweat. While we were collapsing into our cars, Thierry would be asking the manager for more runs.”
Henry does not drink, and never coasts in training. While many of today’s extravagantly paid professionals enjoy an afternoon on the High Street after training, Henry goes home and sips tea while reading Paris Match in quiet Hampstead coffee shops.
“Henry never gives me the impression of being bothered - technically speaking - how he plays,” Dixon explains. “He’s a free spirit, off the cuff. Centre forwards do practice making runs, but when I was playing with him, he just seemed to go out and play. There was no set pattern.”
The former Jamaican international, turned tv analyst, Robbie Earle, believes that the most disturbing sight in world football - if defending is your trade - is Thierry Henry bearing down on goal from the left.
Do you show him inside onto his preferred right foot or down the line onto his alleged ‘weaker’ left - the one that destroyed Inter?
“My preference would be down the line,” reckons right back Dixon. “Keep him away from the danger zone, but remember he is equally adept at assisting goals. Really, you can’t set a fixed defensive pattern for Henry. It’s like he doesn’t know himself what he’s going to do.
“He wants the ball all the time, he wants to be the focus of attention. But he is also an intelligent footballer and ultimately a team player.
“If he is being marked tight, he will drag himself out of position for the team. The willingness to work in that way was not necessarily there in the beginning. In his early days at Arsenal, I looked at him and thought he was lazy. His work rate has definitely increased and he is twice the force.”
For Arsène Wenger, the development of his protégé, from frustrated reserve at Juventus to the “outstanding candidate” for next week’s FIFA World Player of the Year, is immensely gratifying.
Explains Jean Marc Guillou, an old friend of Wenger’s, who is now in charge of Arsenal’s Belgian feeder club Beveren: “It’s being able to have the nose for these things. There are coaches who judge potential better than others.
"And just as there is the knowledge of a player, there is also the knowledge of his situation. He saw that Vieira and Henry left France too young. Italy isn’t easy. He got in for Pires at the right moment too. He got him when he was at his lowest.”
“I am not surprised by this; I expected it for a long time,” Wenger smiles. “Thierry is a complete athlete and complete football player. Now his class has slowly spread out of England and into Europe. For me he is an outstanding candidate for world player of the year.
"He is a different player to Zidane. He is a provider and a striker. I saw something special in Thierry but I could never have predicted at 17 he’d be the player he is today. You never know that.
“Up to the age of 20 it is down to talent, from 20 to 30 it is down to motivation and intelligence. However, none of us are shocked about what he did in Milan. The good thing about him is that he stays focused on the game and improves from year to year. There is more in the tank from him.”
Injury, loss of form, and a well-publicised aversion to flying means that Henry has not always enjoyed the premier class service he thrives on from Dennis Bergkamp, but the sublimely talented pair should be in tandem this evening as Arsenal search for the win over Locomotiv Moscow that would ensure their place in the last eight of the Champions League.
“We are seeing a player at the very top of his profession,” is Bergkamp’s assessment of the French man. “At 26, he is at that age when everything comes together for a footballer and this is happening for him. It is a joy to watch.
“You hear stories about great players from all over the world and about how they don’t train as hard as they should, and they sometimes are less than professional with their attitude, but you can’t say this about Thierry.
"He is always giving 100% on the training pitch, and if you think that some of the tricks and moves that he does during games are special just imagine the kind of skills we are treated to while we are practising.”
Bergkamp pauses for a moment to ponder whether Henry’s lack of headed goals underlines a deficiency in that area of his game. “It is hard to find any weaknesses in Thierry’s game. I know that sometimes he is criticised for being over-elaborate or that he doesn’t score many goals with his head.
"However, I don’t see this as a problem. I do know is that Thierry is the kind of player who if he feels he can improve in any area of his game he will do just that.”
Bergkamp has enjoyed a ringside seat of Henry’s advancement under Wenger and shares his manager’s pleasure watching the world’s fastest footballer in full flight.
“You always feel that he can do something extra and if you can just give him the ball in the right way you feel like he can make a difference against any team - he’s got pace, he’s got skill, so there are lots of options of ways in which you can play with him - this is his big strength.
“Also when people talk about the famous ‘spirit’ we have at Arsenal, Thierry is one of those players that keeps that spirit alive. He is an Arsenal player through and through.”
Henry had been replaced by the time his young compatriot Jeremie Alliadiere scored Arsenal’s fifth goal in Milan, but he led the cheer-leading from the sideline as players, management and officials soaked up the importance of the result. They were not alone.
Though he was busy with Madrid in Marseille on the same night, Real’s Luis Figo - a former world player of the year himself - warned: “If I could choose one team to avoid in the Champions’ League, then it would have to be Arsenal.
"They are the team that are most dangerous. It’s the characteristics of their players. Their result in Milan was incredible. To score so many goals against an Italian team shows how good they are and it sent a powerful message. They have a chance to go a long way in the competition on the back of results like that.”
Henry remains cautious, and with good reason. After all, he has been party to a long Highbury tradition of false dawns in the Champions League.
WHILE it would be criminal to waste their fine work in Milan tonight, their record at home in Europe is dreadful. The late Ashley Cole winner against Kiev ended a sequence of six winless games at Highbury.
“After our victory in Rome last year I heard people say ‘But who is going to stop them?’ and we stopped. That’s why I don’t get carried away. We have won nothing. We have just got back on course for qualification with our destiny at our own feet.
“Everybody was waiting for a performance like Milan from us. We played as a team and if you want a result you need to do that. But now we have to make sure we qualify.”
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