Hi!

If you are a die-hard Gunners' fan like I am, this is right up your alley!

Regards,

Kabir.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Observer Profile: Thierry Henry

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thierry's all gold

Just how good is Arsenal's 100 goal-scoring resident genius? Even our Poet
Laureate can't put his magic into words, but few can now dispute that the
Frenchman is pitch perfect

Tim Adams
Sunday February 15, 2004
The Observer

There have only been a couple of occasions in modern times when you could
credibly claim that the most gifted footballer in the world was earning
his living in England. George Best, for a while in the late Sixties, and
Thierry Henry, now. That Henry did not win 2003's World Footballer of the
Year award (it went to his compatriot Zinedine Zidane) was considered by
many, and not just in north London, a minor scandal. That he is already
well on the way to winning the 2004 award should be taken as given.
For a year or so Premiership defenders have been anxious to explain that
Henry has become impossible to defend against. Battle-hardened managers
routinely pause to marvel at the way the Arsenal player has casually
dismantled their best-laid plans. According to Blackburn's Graeme Souness,
for example, 'the only way to stop him is with an AK47'.

If Henry's reputation has been enhanced week by week in the Premiership
(in which he has just completed a century of goals, and in which Arsenal
remain unbeaten this season), it was sealed across the Continent by his
performance in Milan in November when he personally undid the most
uncompromising of defences to keep his team in the Champions League.

Henry scored two and made two goals that night against Inter in the
world's style capital. The following morning, responding to the home
team's 5-1 defeat, one Italian newspaper carried the headline 'Kneel down
before the King' to describe Henry's play. Another simply ran a large
picture of Edvard Munch's The Scream to explain the emotions of Milan
supporters.

For a long while now no match report from Highbury has been complete
without the words 'sublime' and 'poetry' attaching themselves to Henry,
often in the same sentence, but Arsenal's small army of literary followers
still struggle for superlatives to define their hero.

Nick Hornby suggests simply that with the Frenchman playing 'it's a
privilege to have a season ticket, because he does something extraordinary
every single game - a run, a trick, a burst of speed, and usually a goal.
If he were a junior player, you'd conclude that he needed to move up a
level, but there isn't anywhere for him to go.'

Melvyn Bragg, another Highbury regular, concurs: 'I like it best of all
when he stops or appears to come to a halt in front of two or even three
defenders,' he says. 'They freeze; he thinks. Then he lopes off in a
different direction and they, as it were, stand and scratch their heads at
the invisible man. He's so good he makes you laugh at how good he is.'

Sir Frank Kermode, Emeritus Professor of English at Cambridge and a Gooner
of 60 years standing, offers only that he is 'clearly indispensable to a
wonderful team', while when I ask the poet laureate, Andrew Motion, if
Henry has ever moved him to verse he confesses that the 'the sublime TH'
defies iambics. 'So far all I've come up with is a lot of appreciative
ooohs and aaahs...'

Perhaps the nearest anyone has come to putting the Henry magic into words
is the 'va-va-voom' of the Renault advertisements. The phrase had been
used in a previous advert for Renault, but when two of the creative team
behind the ad, Gerry Moira and Ira Joseph, both Arsenal fans, watched
Henry they felt they saw the slogan made flesh. 'It was just this
contemporary Frenchness, this effortless style and pace and a kind of
detached self-confidence,' Joseph says.

The first advert, in which Henry himself tries to define the quality that
animates him, was scripted only loosely. 'It was odd,' Joseph
says. 'Football fans like to think footballers are as inspired and
intelligent off the field as they are on it. Rarely is that the case. But
it did seem so with Henry. You go to most clients and say we've got a
footballer we'd like to use to sell your crown jewels and they might be
hesitant, but as soon as the people at Renault met Thierry they could see
he was perfect.

'From my own point of view,' adds Joseph, 'as a black Briton, that felt
like a real achievement. The two weeks we spent working with him were the
most satisfying, creatively, of my life.'

Many of Henry's team-mates are at pains to agree with this assessment.
Henry exploded out of the great French side that won the World Cup in
Paris in 1998 eclipsing Brazil in the final. The intelligence of that team
came from Zidane, but the rush of power and pace was provided by Henry and
his best friend, David Trezeguet, both just 20.

Like several of his team-mates, Henry grew up in a rough suburb of Paris,
before being groomed at the French football academy at Clairefontain. His
family were from Guadeloupe, and he attributes half of his success to the
values instilled in him by his father: of never settling for what you
have, of refusing to let his talent be muscled out of games.

The rest goes to his 'spiritual father', Arsene Wenger, his manager at
Arsenal. It was Wenger who gave him his league debut for Monaco at 17.
And, crucially, it was Wenger who rescued Henry from the Italian team
Juventus, who had snapped him up after the World Cup and destroyed his
instincts by trying to make a wide midfield player of him. Wenger brought
Henry back in from the wing to the focus of the attack.

For Arsenal followers this is one more example of the manager's inspired
leadership. As Nick Hornby points out, there was general despair when
Henry arrived to replace the petulant brilliance of Nicolas Anelka (who
had taken his ego off to Madrid for £23 million): 'He was so hopeless...
My brother said we'd spent £10m on the French Perry Groves [a prosaic
Arsenal reserve]. His speed actually made things worse for him, because it
constantly got him into positions where his ineptitude was revealed for
all to see.'

One effect of the transformation that followed, Hornby suggests, is that
it stopped Arsenal fans 'from judging any Wenger purchase, because it's
not possible to see what he sees, however long you've been watching
football'.

The singular fascination of the Premiership over the last few years has
been to compare the management philosophies of Wenger and Sir Alex
Ferguson, the yin and yang of motivation. One pertinent point of
difference is the manner in which they have treated their most charismatic
players.

David Beckham, at least toward the end of his career at Manchester United,
saw his efforts rewarded with routine bullying by Ferguson. At the heart
of their disputes was Beckham's ambition to play in the centre of the
midfield rather than out on the margins where he found it harder to
influence games. Ferguson refused to build the team around him, however,
preferring less flamboyant - and, perhaps, threatening - skills of Roy
Keane and Paul Scholes. Beckham is now filling his preferred role to great
effect in Madrid.

Wenger adopted a very different approach to Henry, moving him from the
periphery of the side to its heart, allowing him to feel that the play was
organised around him. He responded by making himself the consummate team
player, in the manner of the great Dutch centre forwards Cruyff and van
Basten, making as many goals as he scores.

'I respect Arsene a lot,' Henry says of this maturing process. 'He lets
you lead your life.' That life, in Henry's case, is a long way from the
Premiership caricature of Footballers' Wives. Henry married his English
model girlfriend Nicole Merry - with whom he starred in the Renault ad -
last year. Rather than migrate out to the soccer suburbs of Hertfordshire
they live in Hampstead in a contemporary £6m minimalist house on the edge
of the Heath. His team-mates for Arsenal and France, Patrick Vieira and
Robert Pires, are near neighbours. (Historians of London might find it
appropriate that this trio plot their European campaigns from London's
most civilised cafés: General de Gaulle once directed the Free French in a
very different kind of resistance from his home round the corner.)

The persistent little enclave of gallic inspiration also proves that even
in football sometimes loyalty still reigns over more mercenary
temptations.

With the arrival of Roman Abramovich and his roubles at Chelsea it looked
as if the balance of footballing power in the capital might be shifting
westwards. Henry was recently the subject of a £50m bid from Chelsea, this
afternoon's opponents in the FA Cup. He and Arsenal laughed it away.

For all the riches on offer in Abramovich's team there is no doubt who
most neutrals will be tuning in to watch this lunchtime: the player that
his money cannot buy.

Theirry Henry

DoB: 17 August 1977 (Ulis, France)

Nicknames: Titi, Hooray, Tel

Family: Married to model Nicole Merry

Home: Lives in Hampstead, London, in a £6m house

Clubs: Player with Arsenal since 1999. Formerly with Monaco and Juventus

Best friends: Nicolas Anelka (Manchester City), David Trezeguet (Juventus)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~