So… listen to this… Who is the greatest ever player that never won the Ballon D’Or? Well… you could say Pelé and Maradona, but they weren’t even eligible, so that’s kinda cheating and to be fair, France football eventually said they would have won if they could… so you know, at the end of the day, they kinda still got it… Regardless, you could also go for Buffon or Kahn, but they’re goalkeepers, and those never win, so it doesn’t feel as unfair… Maybe the second best contender would be Ferenc Puskas, but not only was that 60 years ago, but again if Pelé had been eligible he would have taken that one as well…. And so there’s one man left, who I think deserved it way more than a lot of the people who won it while he was at his prime…I’m talking about Thierry Henry… The man won the world cup, the euros, the confederations cup, the intertoto cup, the champions league, the club world cup and the european supercup, you get it… he won everything, he also broke seemingly every premier league record ever, won the european golden boot twice, made the whole world fall in love with his playstyle… even Ronaldinho said he was his favorite player to watch and still, on the four occasions in which he made it to the podium of the ballon d’or or fifa world player of the year… someone else won… enraging million of football fans… but honestly, I think I can justify every single one of Henry’s missed opportunities… Let's get into the story.
So, right from the start Henry got recruited off the street and didn’t even really wanna go to training, if it wasn’t for his father pretty much forcing him to… as he would put it himself: “To say that my dad pushed me is an understatement, when I was a kid, I didn’t even like football”. . .
But well, when you’re really good at something it’s hard not to fall in love with it and so… very very soon, Henry was getting scouted by Monaco, who suggested that he went on trial at Clairefontaine, the greatest academy in the country… 800 kids arrived that day… Henry was one of the 24 who made it… alongside him were Anelka and Gallas…. Two years later, he was closing the season with over 90 goals scored… as the under 18 national team coach would say “Henry was diabolical inside the box”. .
. and once the Monaco scouts came back to check on him, his team won the match 6 nil… Henry had scored all 6… Normally Monaco has a strict policy where they only sign kids who have good grades, and well… Henry wasn’t the brightest student… but at that point… they just didn’t care anymore… And so after two years in their academy, a man would come to watch the under 17’s practice… he was the first team’s coach, the man who would change Henry’s life forever… His name was Arséne Wenger… and the moment he saw him, he knew an academy was no place for that kind of talent… In under 300 minutes in his first season, he scored 3 goals… by the end of his second, he joined the french under 18 national team for the euros and led them to glory scoring the only goal in the final… By the end of that year, he was named the most promising talent in France… In his third season, he would finally become a regular starter and be instrumental as Monaco won the league and suddenly he signing a contract with Real Madrid… I know, I know, sounds weird… but it really happened… In fact the only reason he did not move there was that Real Madrid had actually approached him before they even talked to Monaco, leading to a huge lawsuit that eventually allowed the french club to keep the player, who was also very close to getting suspended by FIFA as he had also been using an unlicensed agent… Regardless, staying proved to be a good choice… The next year, Henry pulled off a stunning 7 goals in a single champions league campaign, the second most by any french player in history at the time, as well as 3 assists, pairing up with a young Trezeguet, to shock the world by bringing Monaco all the way to the semi finals… And of course, after a performance like this, there was no denying them, the two were called up to the 1998 world cup and though Henry would have to sit out the final after playing in every match, his 3 goals would be enough to make him the national team’s top scorer, as France became World Champions for the first time in their history… Regardless, even before the tournament Henry had already begun looking for a way out of Monaco as his relationship with new coach Jean Tigana began to sour… His first instinct was to go after Wenger and in fact, he did almost bring him to Arsenal right then and there, but after that performance at the world cup, Monaco doubled their asking price and Wenger, feeling extorted decided to back out of the deal, allowing Juventus, who were still impressed by his performance against them in the champions league semi final, to put down 16. 5 million euros for the player….
making him the most expensive french player of all time… he was just 21… Now playing alongside Zidane at Juventus and with Lippi’s full trust behind him, there was no way this could go wrong… or at least that was the case until Lippi was sacked 2 weeks later, being replaced by Ancelotti… Look, I love Ancelotti but that time, he messed up… At one point, he had Henry playing as a full back, after half a season he allowed Luciano Moggi, the godfather of the calciopoli scandal to propose to Henry a loan to Udinese and suddenly, he was not even getting called up to the french national team anymore… Henry was completely lost, but thankfully a friendly face came to the rescue, Henry asked one of the french players at Arsenal to tell Wenger that he would do anything to move there and sooner than he could have hoped for, Wenger was arriving in town with a check for 16 million euros, a club record signing at the time, to rescue a guy who by then, was the world’s most disappointing wonderkid… By the way, to make things worse, Trezeguet would be the one to replace him and would end up becoming a club legend at Juve but that’s a story for another video… For now let’s focus on the fact that once at Arsenal, Wenger pulled off one plot twist that not even Henry was expecting… You see, Henry was joining to play alongside his former academy teammate, Nicolas Anelka, but then he pulled off a tantrum and was gone from the club in a flash, leaving for Real Madrid 24 hours before Henry even set foot in England… And so, being left with no primary goal scorer, Wenger recalled Henry’s academy days and decided to put him upfront once again… Suddenly Henry had gone from a tricky winger and risky wonderkid signing to the team’s primary goalscorer tasked with filling the shoes of the recently departed Ian Wright, the club’s all time top scorer… all while, not even he himself believed he had what it took to be a goalscorer, saying “I had no instinct in front of goal, I had to teach myself the art of striking”. . .
This was quite simply the scariest moment in Henry’s career… And 3 months and 20 appearances later… the doubters had been proven right… Henry had only scored 2 goals… but then, out of nowhere, he showed everyone why you should never ever rule out a new player after a few dozen matches… because on the very next match he scored twice, 1 month later he was already on 8 goals and before you knew it he had gone on a goal scoring streak spanning across 10 whole matches… more shockingly scoring in all 6 matches that led up to the uefa cup final… where unfortunately the game would end nil nil, with Galatasaray taking the win on penalties… without Henry even getting a chance to take one… the uefa cup would end up becoming the one international trophy he never won… Regardless with his rise in notoriety, just 11 days later he had joined France in their quest for the Euros, where once again he’d be essential, scoring in the first match and being the best player on the pitch against the Czech Republic scoring the opener and assisting the winning goal… Eventually even scoring the opener in the semi final against Portugal and going on to win the whole thing, once again as the team’s top scorer, despite having little to no involvement in the final… watching as Trezeguet scored the golden goal… if you haven’t noticed yet, this was one of the problems with Henry, I don’t think there is a single all time great with a worse record in finals than Henry, he quite simply disappeared most of the time… Regardless, even if in his second season at Arsenal his numbers would drop, and he would go trophyless, even losing out on the FA Cup final… it didn’t matter because by the end of the year, he had not only been nominated for the Ballon D’Or, but he had caused enough of an impression to finish in fourth place… According to France Football, only Figo, Zidane and Shevchenko were better than this 22 year old… which only makes it more insane to think that he would never win the award, despite only getting better and better… The following season, even though he would take his numbers to a whole new level with 32 goals and 9 assists, finally edging Van Nistelrooy to the title of Premier League top scorer, while taking the league and cup double, he would still disappoint in the cup final, as well as in the champions league, scoring 6 goals in the group stage, only to then go missing in the knockouts, which was another common theme in his career… However, next year, that wouldn’t be a problem, because you see… not only did Henry win the FA Cup with a man of the match performance in the final but he also hit his prime… I’m talking 60 goal contributions in a season, 32 goals and 28 assists, becoming the first player in history to pull off 20 goals and 20 assists in a league season, with only Messi ever managing to match that feat… Add to all of this a PFA player of the year award, a confederations cup trophy over summer, with Henry being the top scorer and player of the tournament, and an absurdly good start to the following season… and well… it seemed like Henry had a ridiculously good shot at winning the Ballon D’Or… but well, when the voting took place, not only was Nedved voted for first place nearly 4 times more than Henry, and despite finishing second he didn’t even lead the pack when it came to second place votes, that was Maldini… Most people seemed to think that Henry should’ve placed third… and even in the Fifa Player Of The Year, he once again got outvoted, with Zidane taking the first place while he settled for second… but how could this be? Henry’s season sounds so perfect… Well, it wasn’t… You see, first of all, he wasn’t even the premier league’s top scorer, Van Nistelrooy was… the same Van Nistelrooy who took Man United to the Premier League, while Henry settled for second place… In the Champions League, Henry scored 7 goals and got 3 assists, once again, sounds great… but he didn’t even make it to the knockout stage… Meaning that when the entire world was watching, Maldini was lifting the title, Nedved was tearing everything apart, even being seen as a martyr, missing the final and watching as his team collapsed in the shootout one inch away from glory… So no matter how many goals he scored, could you really give the Ballon D’Or to a player who not only disappointed at the biggest stage, but didn’t even win the league? For anyone outside of England, Henry simply wasn’t part of any of the most memorable moments of the year, so how could he be the best player in the world?
I’m not saying that I think Nedved deserved it, but I can see how it happened… But look, none of this matters, because the following season, Henry took it all even further… Leading Arsenal to become the first team in premier league history to finish the league season without a defeat, becoming forever known as the invincibles… At one point even scoring a hat trick against Liverpool to save them from tainting their perfect record and eventually finishing the season with 30 league goals, also breaking the league’s all time goal scoring record and taking the PFA player of the year once again, as well as the European golden boot… But as many claimed this season had been even better than the one before it… Once again the Ballon D’Or rankings arrived and Henry was only fourth, behind Shevchenko, Deco and Ronaldinho… who also beat him to the FIFA World Player Of The Year… so once again… how? and why?
