LONDON â He was alone, two hours before showtime, the night Manchester City and Real Madrid clashed in the Champions League semifinal. He sat there, anxious â without the shield of the working manâs crimson or the blazing No. 14 kit that made us compare him to the Almighty. But, Thierry Henry wasnât suiting up tonight. Not to play, anyway. Perhaps thatâs why he couldnât stop pacing the halls of the glossy studios in Stockley Park. Thierry needed to be game-ready, to look at tactics and clear his mind before the lights pop and cameras zoom in on him. Only, for someone billed as the top man around town, it looked like he was suffocating.
Thierry retreated to his green room. He paced around the box. He tugged on his collar, furiously pulling on a delicate almond tie. Before long, he jumped from the chair, turned to me and declared that it was time to get out of his suit.
He asked if I, or the press agent to the right of me, minded. And, before either of us could make sense of what he meant, poof! Thierry sped behind one door of a chifferobe, and in the blink of an eye, he was nearly nude. Both of his arms were fully tattooed, sleeves stretching into his armpits. On his back was Londonâs skyline, to match the silhouette of New York (his favorite city) on his left arm. The face of one of his children was on his right forearm, the circumference of an office clock. âVulnerabilityâ was written on one leg, 0:00 on his wrist (to remind him to always reset, even in his darkest moments). It wasnât just that the 45-year-old looked like he could play again now if he had to, he was showing off. I would say he looked like heâd been lifting.
Not nearly as quickly, he selected his loungewear, settling, eventually, on a tracksuit and skin-tight black shirt. He dropped back into a chair and waited for someone to fetch him a cup of coffee. He was clearly jittery. In the decade since he left the game, after nearly 600 combined appearances for Monaco, Juventus, Arsenal, Barcelona and the New York Red Bulls, you can forgive him if his mind can go anywhere but back to the grass.
A lot of his days have looked like this, being pulled in whichever direction the telly needs him. One night heâs shuffled around the cerulean CBS set as the shining star of its Champions League coverage next to Jamie Carragher, Micah Richards and Kate Abdo. The next heâs calling a game in France or flying to Italy to hug the pitch lines with old foes as he studies the game.
In 30 years of English football in the Premier League, Thierry was the best player in the associationâs history. He was a hall of famer who carried a glittering 20-year career full of no-look passes and prized poses; Champions League titles and continent-rearranging runs. Thierry was so popular, companies craved for him to be in Coke and Calvin Klein ads. Once, when he visited Victoria Island in Lagos to watch a game with fans, Nigerians were so moved in his presence they nicknamed him the âIgweâ of goal scoring and honored him with an Isiagu and Igbo crown, a title and clothing typically reserved for special occasions. French stations placed him on the sidelines during the 2001 NBA Finals, armed with a microphone, because they felt like he was the only European alive whom Allen Iverson would recognize. He was as fly as a Frenchman could be, faster than any man in the world who dared to share the pitch with him; perhaps more marvelous than any Black man with the ball I have ever seen.
âTo me, the American equivalent was Kobe Bryant,â Abdo told me. âIn terms of the cult of popularity and being a pop-culture icon. Thierry has that. You can be a really famous footballer, and never cross over in that way to the culture. And, I think he does. Itâs certainly refreshing.â
For so many people, here in Europe and across the pond, Thierry was the epitome of football excellency, a transcendent star who could dance or delight on the pitch, in a way that seemed to entertain even the gods.
âNot a lot of people know that, but I was an Arsenal fan growing up,â Richards said. âIt was the team I could relate to the most. Patrick Viera and Thierry Henry were heroes of mine. When I met [Thierry], it was my debut for Manchester City. I was only 17. And it was against Arsenal, a team I loved so much ⌠I just see Thierry, in all of his stature, his aura and demeanor. I was in awe, starstruck. Everything about him was so cooooool. After the game, he signed me a shirt saying, âto Micah, keep up the good work.â
âIâve still got that shirt framed to this day.â
Abdo mentioned that Thierry had a weird effect on people when he played, that it was hard to hate him no matter what he did to your team. âAs a defender,â Carragher told me, âyouâd be fearful playing amongst him. [Arsenal] was the best team I played against in England.â
But what made a man, a captain of a rough generation at Liverpool, so fearful of the man known as Titi?
âHe was so fast! Thatâs what it was,â he said. âIt wasnât just that, but he had the ability to go with it. Ability with the ball, he was powerful and just the blistering pace. I mean, I donât think I ever played against anyone that quick before, really. Thereâs a lot of quick players in football, but Thierry Henry felt like another level. He was like an Olympic sprinter. Thatâs what it felt like you were goinâ up against. It was like, errmmm. âLike playinâ against Usain Bolt, but Usain Bolt was [actually] good at football.â
As I sat across from Thierry, he seemed so far removed from the glory the game gave him. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted back in.
Hell, he needed back in.
After retirement, Thierry tried his hand as a manager. First, with Arsenalâs youth teams before graduating to an assistant job â twice â under Roberto MartĂnez for Belgiumâs international side. Players across Europeâs top leagues started to tell the press that Thierry had talent, so much that his advice was helping them turn more chances into goals.
He got his chance at Monaco and in Montreal, but flamed out both times for different reasons. In Monaco, he got the boot after 20 games. âI can only be thankful for what Monaco did for me,â he said. âThere were a lot of reasons why it didnât work, including me [as manager].â
Monaco had 17 injured players during Henryâs tenure. Most of his starters were teenagers, and they were competing against Champions League sides whenever they werenât fighting in the basement of Franceâs Ligue 1. Monaco got rid of Thierry before his first crack at the winter transfer market and brought back the manager it sacked before him.
âThat was very difficult,â he said, noting his replacement benefited from his work. He added, other coaches were treated differently. When Carlo Ancelotti couldnât make Everton go as a manager, he didnât find it hard to get another job. When Arteta finished eighth on the table his first year, Arsenal didnât get rid of him. Steven Gerrard pushed Aston Villa three places lower on the table in his first year and kept his gig. Thierry wondered why he wasnât afforded the same grace.
âWas I also young and had to learn? Obviously I had to learn,â Henry said. âBut, how do you learn without learning?â
In Montreal, after leading the club to its first playoff appearance in four seasons, he stepped down to be closer to his kids and moved to London. âNot seeing my kids was impossible,â he said. âI left. I love football, I love competing beyond anything! But, no. No. I didnât see my family for a year, man. I had to go back. Simple as that. Iâm not ashamed about it, nothing. Iâm proud, actually. It was the first time I felt like I actually did something for myself.â
Since then, there have been whispers all around the game about what he would do next, all while he appeared on television, showing every week how prepared he was to take a job. Thierry says he turned down a chance to coach the French womenâs national team, telling me he felt like he wasnât qualified for the role. âCan I learn in [the role,] yes,â he said. âBut, it wouldnât have been fair to anybody.â
CBS hasnât been shy about its advocacy for Thierry, either.
Three months before I met Thierry in London, Abdo surprised him on set (at the prodding of producers), asking Thierry if heâd âput his name in the hatâ to coach the United States menâs national team. And Carragher recently pressed Thierry on set, in Milan, about his U.S. candidacy. There was months of buzz linking him to an open job, but nothing set in stone.
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Thierry maintained that he hasnât been cagey about what he wants to do next. He says he wants to be a manager again. To prove that he was fit for it â to himself, and the rest of the world that might be doubting him. He wasnât looking for a handout, he said, just trying to earn his way back in. The only problem was his phone hasnât been ringing. He didnât want to be pessimistic, but it was hard to keep the stray thoughts out of his mind. The idea that he would coach again was slipping away from him. âIf I donât invite you to my party,â he says, matter of factly, âthen, you canât come.â He started to grimace. âI canât put it better than that.
âIâve only heard stuff. And I know how people can see it. They donât try to know what happened,â he said of his past. âPeople donât care.â
Laced with years of rejection already staring him in the face, he took a job as an assistant with Belgium for the second time, winning a bronze medal in the World Cup.
âRoberto MartĂnez, I will always have mad respect for him,â Thierry said. âHe gave me a hand when he didnât have to. I had no affiliation with him. Nothing. Yet, he was the only one who gave me an opportunity to coach.â
The time away made him adamant that he had a place in the worldâs best leagues, coaching their brightest players. But, he wouldnât accept less than he felt he was worth. âIf you do your due diligence,â he said, âyou will see that I am not a diva. I know what I can do if given time. ⌠I donât have any explanation, basically [why Iâm not coaching]. âApart from the obvious one. And I hope itâs not that.â
It wasnât a ridiculous thought. Out of 44 jobs at the top two levels of the English football pyramid, only four jobs were held by Black men (Vincent Kompany at Burnley; Darren Moore at Sheffield Wednesday, Liam Rosenior at Hull City and Valerien Ismael at Watford). Thierry wasnât afraid to question what he thought was wrong. His mindset, that staunch ethos that taught him to never back down, can be traced to the way his parents raised him in a small apartment in the Parisian suburbs four decades ago.
âIf I ask you a question now, when you look at the football field â the field, on the field, the two teams â what do you see? You see diversity. You see people coming from any background, any religion. But,â he said, his voice spiking, âwhen you turn the camera around, what do you see? When!!â he slaps his hands together. âWhen you turn the camera around to the bench or behind the ball, what do you see?! You donât see diversity, however you want to call it. You do not see di-versity. I would advise you to count how many coaches you see from different ethnicities coaching in the big leagues.â
His coffee finally arrived, it was time for him to go back on set.
He promptly sat back up and tried to be more discreet about his nudity the second time while stepping back into his suit.
Before opening the door, he made sure I caught exactly what he said.
âAm I stating facts or am I making up stories?â he asked. âI always say, to be able to win or lose the race, you have to be in it. So, can I be in? Can I be looked at? Can I be part of the discussion? Can we be part of the discussion? ⌠The rotation is always the same. I donât mind you having a lap on me or two or three or four or five or six or 10! You didnât grow up the same way I did ⌠but can I be in the race? Can I lose the race? Even if you have a head start, Iâm not hating on you. I just want to know, can I run forward?
âCan I even win? Can I fail again?â he whispered, his face slowly changing from optimism to pessimism. He left the room, his words heavy, staying in the air behind him long gone.
I just couldnât tell if he was speaking to me, or himself.
Thierry was born in Les Ulis, a suburb outside of Paris, to Antoine and Maryse, in les quartiers difficiles. He described it as a rough, Creole upbringing. He joked that he was friends with the roaches. âI knew their name, they knew my name,â he said, laughing. âSwear down.â Maryse was born in Martinique and Antoine in Guadeloupe. Both left their homelands to become migrants in France. Maryse was a cleaner for years before becoming a concierge in a university town. Antoine bounced between gigs, once he was a greeter at a grocery store, another time he worked security. They were poor, working-class Black folks. âI always say to people, I didnât know,â Thierry said of economic standing. âI was happy. I didnât need a lot to be happy, because I couldnât compare it to anything else. So,â he sighed, âthey were the best days of my life.â But, soon, he found out how different he was.
He believed his life was golden, even if Antoine was pushing him, every day, to follow in the footsteps of his hero Marco van Basten and punish his opposition on the pitch.
Antoine was stifling, forcing 7-year-old Thierry to practice tackling drills on Antoine at full speed in the cracked lots around Les Ulis to prepare his baby body for the future. When Thierry finally relented, it was clear he had talent for the sport, even if Antoine was hanging on his shoulder.
Maybe his father wouldnât stop because he saw how talented Thierryâs brother, Willy, was. Willy was forced to play on a segregated club team limited only to Black and Arab children. There was an emphasis on not being noticed, on taking off their hoodies, on speaking Creole or Verlan. If he didnât fit in, heâd bring problems to his family.
âYou know, Caribbean dads,â he said. âIt was about, âDonât shame the family.â No one could ever know what was happening at home. Instead of walking with your chest out, you donât want to be noticed. It wasnât always easy to spread my wings.â
For anyoneâs estimation, football was their ticket out, as long as Thierry could buy into a sport he was never naturally drawn to. Antoine and Maryse eventually divorced, so football became an easy way for Thierry to spend time with his father. And his fatherâs criticism became fuel for him to rise into a champion. Anything that got Antoine to show him some affection.
By the time Thierry was 11 years old, Antoine was so determined to see his son excel, he was fired from his security job for missing the start of his shift by two hours. Where was he? Driving his boy to a game.
âI was just trying to make my dad happy,â Thierry said. âItâs a cliche, but your dad is your first hero. You want to get that approval, that little wink that you did well, son. The hardest thing Iâve ever had to do in my life was put a smile on my dadâs face. I was never trying to build an identity, I was trying to make him happy.â
It took Thierry years, past the teams of wonder for France and Arsenal and long after his playing career was over to fix that part of himself, to reconnect his present to the broken child he left behind long ago. The man he became was a legend, loved from London to Les Ulis and back. But, he says, it corroded a part of him he never got back.
âI have played the game [professionally] since I was 17,â he said. âI never paused. It was just game, game, game.â
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Some sides of ourselves are easier to accept than others. He was whipped into football supremacy, and it was keeping him paid well past his prime, but that same blessing was a curse for Thierry. The vault of striking secrets that his co-workers herald also was a prison. All of the games he watched reminded him how he could never go back. And his job as an analyst, no matter how beloved heâs become since taking over for Roberto MartĂnez on the CBS set, wasnât feeding his insatiability. His obsessiveness with greatness. His unending hunt for perfection.
âMake my dad happy, make my teammates happy, make the fans happy,â he said. âAlong the way you forget yourself. You do. You forget yourself. What about your own happiness? That is why a lot of times athletes when they stop, they struggle. ⌠You are programmed all the time to please people, but what about you? What about yourself?
âAt one point, whether I was aware of it or not, I tried to give people what I didnât have,â he said. âMy happiness and my sadness was always through people. Always. And the game only enhanced that.â At one point, he said, he started to believe crying was a weakness, that being vulnerable was a sin. âItâs tough when you want to open yourself and thereâs no empathy,â he said. âWhat happens then? You close yourself off forever.â
The one thing Thierry said he learned during these years of self-examination was that failure was the first step toward perfection. He used to be a title-hungry athlete, who learned to love the sport and focused only on winning. But, now, he felt resigned, unable to understand how the losses were racking up. âI kind of thought for a very long time that I understood empathy and vulnerability after my career. I thought titles were the most important thing, but I soon realized it was actually how you transcend people ⌠I didnât understand the journey until later.â
In some ways, time away from the game helped. It started in Montreal, where he was locked behind doors in Quebec without his family, learning how to deal with himself.
He was stuck. He just wanted to figure out who he was now, at this age, without anyone to help him. There was a moment when he thought, maybe, he needed help. âHelp was like, something is wrong with me. It must be,â he said. âBeing vulnerable was a weakness, as a youngster and in football. So many times people asked me, âDid I go through depression?â Hmmm,â he thought. âI donât know. I donât know the signals. I must have. But my life was just games, games, games and going through [the motions.]â He said he didnât realize sometimes when he was hit on the pitch, he didnât even feel it.
There were years he realized he didnât really know how to show or receive love, that he didnât even know how to say âI love you.â He couldnât even give someone a proper hug. His arms receded on impact. He sweated at the thought. âI didnât have that in my programming,â he said. âIâm not ashamed to say it. I just didnât have it. I just pretended. It was a lot of pretending.â He was still trying to make his father proud, puff his chest out, never showing any weakness.
When he lost games, heâd snap at his teammates, furious they couldnât see â as he did â that they were going to lose. He kept finding himself annoyed, week after week. Whether he was willing to say it then, he was afraid of losing everything he worked so hard to build. âI wasnât the right guy to be around,â he said. âI was demanding so much of everything, of everyone, at any time and every moment.â And even worse, some days in the dressing room, âI wasnât even a satisfied guy when we won.â
It was a hard reality for him to reconcile, because football, he says, made him who he was. But, if he was ever going to move forward, something had to change. If he ever wanted to manage a team again, players needed to know they werenât letting him down by not meeting his lofty standards. So, itâs no coincidence that his new favorite word recently has been âempathy.â He thinks itâs vital, these days, to leading the next generation. âIf you asked me six years ago, what [qualities] a leader needs to have, I would have said, âHe has to be a killer,ââ Thierry said. âNow, I would tell you that he needs to show that he is vulnerable.â
He said he found that he wasnât able to relate to younger players. His strict training methods werenât making him any friends in the dressing room. When he failed, he went back to his structure, to his fatherâs education that turned him into a phenom in the Premier League. But what was set in stone for him, has cracked and broken. Right or wrong, he could no longer be the coach caught in viral clips from training sessions yelling at players. âYou canât bring that,â he said of the generational differences. âIt doesnât exist anymore.
â... That was OK then. Itâs not OK now,â he admitted. âIf you donât speak to them, well, you lose the dressing room. And, at the end of the day, who is going to go? The coach. Theyâre not going to fire the whole team.â
At that moment, someone knocked on the door.
It was showtime.
Thierry pulled up his tie and headed toward the door, ready to dazzle the world, just as he did any weeknight the camera was on. He was the same man on the CBS cameras as he was on the field, to us watching at home: endearing, ebullient and esoteric â perpetually drawing on the world-class expertise that made many fans fall in love with the feisty Frenchman. And how couldnât you? He was Titi, after all. The man-made exception to every football rule that binded Black kids around the world, an unyielding representative of The Beautiful Game beloved from Birmingham to Battersea. In fact, eventually, his success became ours, too. We bragged about the bad man in boardrooms and barbershops. He provided the purest dose of freedom, self-made, as mighty as a planet with a magnetism that made us all gravitate toward his orbit. âA lot of men want to maintain a hardcore appearance,â Abdo told me. Instead, though, Thierry is âwilling to be vulnerable. Heâs willing to show emotion. In male professional sports? Thatâs a rarity.â
âTo me, the American equivalent was Kobe Bryant. In terms of the cult of popularity and being a pop-culture icon. Thierry has that. You can be a really famous footballer, and never cross over in that way to the culture. And, I think he does. Itâs certainly refreshing.â
— CBS Sports host Kate Abdo
When Thierry was a child, Antoine said his grandmother never read a lot of books, but she would come up with a hell of a saying. The moment he finds himself now, on the cusp of a future in managing, or staring at a future in the broadcast booth, reminded him of something she told him years ago.
âTime often brings what the moment refuses,â he told me.
I asked him, how could he show the rest of the world that he wasnât the man of the past, that he was finally prepared to lead a team to glory. He refused to give an answer, to bind himself to one reality or the other, to predetermine what his successful path could be instead of living presently.
âLook I cannot compare myself to nobody,â he said. âIâm nobody right now as a coach, like I was a nobody when I started playing football. But, you need another chance and you need another chance and you need another chance.â
