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“The King is gone, but he’s not forgotten” – so go the words as Jax Teller, the protagonist, as rides into the sunset in the poignant finale of the television drama “Sons of Anarchy”, which aired last week. As I bade farewell to the show with a heavy heart and took to Facebook to see what the others felt, the second hammer blow of the day hit me.
Hard, very hard. Thierry Henry can’t be calling it time. I mean, how can the player whom we thank for some of the best of our memories in the game, bid adieu so abruptly? It wasn’t fair.
Now that King Henry’s swansong is done, dusted and been consigned to yesterday’s news, it is time to celebrate an absolutely stellar career. A career which saw its heydays in the shores just across the channel from his homeland. For it was in the Old Blighty that the winger who wore the shirt number 14 became the superstar forward who donned it in style. Few overseas players are as loved by their club as Henry is by millions of gratetful Gooners.
He was their dream merchant. Their best player ever, according to some.
Was Henry the best?
Such tributes indicate Henry is up there with the very best in the business, a sure name for the beautiful game’s Hall of Fame in a few years’ time. An elite group of players whose exalted company he shall share, with many among them having been his peers, while some of them might even have played with and against him in England.
Was Henry as good as them? Was he as good as Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba and Luis Suarez, during his time in the EPL? No. He was better than them.
The most aesthetically pleasing player in EPL History
A look at Arsene Wenger’s team and their pitifully stagnant and unambitious state right now is more than a marker of the impact that Henry’s departure had on Ashburton Grove. He was their talisman, go-to man, star man and target man. He started moves, finished them and in times of strife, as seen during those days against Internazionale and Liverpool, conjured them.
He had a rare gift – that of making every goal he scored look beautiful and effortless. It was a gift he shared with some of the legends of the game – including his illustrious Dutch teammate Dennis Bergkamp and a certain buck-toothed and long-haired Samba magician named Ronaldinho Gaucho.
A eulogy on Henry’s Arsenal career is incredibly difficult. Like any other forward, his contributions to the game are remembered by goals – great goals. The problem is, with him, we don’t know where to begin.
Nobody in that league, not Sutton, not Shearer, not Suarez, not Ronaldo, not Drogba and not even Gianfranco Zola, could score some of Henry’s famous solo goals. The ones where he humiliated Jamie Carragher and compatriot Fabian Barthez would be genuine Puskas Award contenders had they been scored today.
Unparallelled individual accolades
| Players(in EPL) | Apps | Goals | PFA Player’s Player of the Year | PFA Team of the Year |
| Thierry Henry | 369 | 226 | 2 (2002-03, 2003-04) | 6 (2000-01 to 2005-06) |
| Dennis Bergkamp | 423 | 120 | 1 (1997-98) | 1 (1997-98) |
| Eric Cantona | 220 | 69 | 1 (1993-94) | 1 (1993-94) |
| Gianfranco Zola | 309 | 80 | - | - |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | 292 | 118 | 2 (2006-07, 2007-08) | 4 (2005-06 to 2008-09) |
| Luis Suarez | 133 | 82 | 1 (2013-14) | 2 (2012-13, 2013-14) |
| Didier Drogba | 341 | 157 | - | 2 (2006-07, 2009-10) |
And Henry wasn’t just another outrageously talented player whose highlight reel moments hid wasted talent, like many of today’s players are. He had the statistics and numbers to back his tag of an “all-time great”. With an astonishing 226 goals in the red and white shirt, Henry is Arsenal’s leading scorer by a long margin of 40-odd goals. One of the very, very few players to have the European Golden Boot twice in succession, Henry held sway over the league during his heydays like nobody has in its new avatar.
He was the PFA Player of the Year twice, and led the line in their team of the year for an astonishing six consecutive years. He was the FWA Footballer of the year thrice, and Premier League Golden Boot winner for an unprecedented four times (that too, during the days of Nistelrooy, Owen and others). He was a member of UEFA’s team of the year for five successive years, a mind-boggling figure, before the twin phenomena of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo struck. He was also the Goal of the season winner in 2002-03.
To put it in a nutshell, Henry is the most individually decorated Premier League player of all time.
Has won almost every team honour too
Critics and naysayers would say that individual honours count for nothing, unless and until they reflect on the team’s silverware. It is here that the likes of Zola and Suarez lose out. Not Henry, though. He belonged to a different breed of Arsenal, an Arsenal conspicuous by its absence today.
In the first half of the 2000s, the years when he spent his best years at the club, Henry won the Premier League twice, the FA Cup thrice, the Community Shield twice and narrowly lost to Frank Rijkaard’s Barcelona in the Champions League final. He was also the symbol of the Gunners’ Invincible squad of 2003-04. Not many can stake claim to that achievement, can they?
With his trademark celebration having been immortalised by Arsenal in bronze, Henry is a footballer like no other. He is somebody who was good enough to see his sculpture in full glory before hanging up his boots; somebody who has won everything the game has to offer – the World Cup, the Euro, the Ligue 1, the Premier League, the La Liga, the Champions League, the Club World Cup. Literally everything.
Add to this his other achievements – of having won six titles in a single season and having gone unbeaten an entire season, and you have a career that is unlikely to be matched ever again.
Suarez couldn’t. Drogba couldn’t, in spite of all his Munich heroics. Even Ronaldo couldn’t, for his transition from being a great to being an alien took place in the white of Madrid. Along with the likes of Ryan Giggs, Steven Gerrard, Tony Adams, John Terry, Frank Lampard and the usual suspects I’ve mentioned throughout the article, Thierry Daniel Henry is one of the greatest players to have graced the English Premier League.
And when it comes to players from other shores who plied their trade in the league, the man is Numero Uno. Period. The King may be gone, but he shall never be forgotten.
