Kabir
Thanks for the forward as you know i am an Arsenal Fan.

God bless you and your family

Matarr


>From: Amadu Kabir Njie <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Fw: Thierry's all gold
>Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 03:52:27 -0500
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
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>Poster:       Amadu Kabir Njie <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Fw: Thierry's all gold
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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 =A323 million): 'He was so hopeless...
>My brother said we'd spent =A310m 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 =A36m 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 caf=E9s: 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 =A350m 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 =A36m house
>
>Clubs: Player with Arsenal since 1999. Formerly with Monaco and Juventus
>
>Best friends: Nicolas Anelka (Manchester City), David Trezeguet (Juventus)
>
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