January 13 – Va-Va-Voom
BONJOUR! Today we’re hopping over the channel to look at a young hopeful who signed his first professional contract today in 1997. Unlike most young dreamers he wasn’t to be found in the pub twenty years later going all Terry Malloy on us and claiming ‘I coulda been a contender,’ as this young Frenchmen has made a rather good stab of it. The player, of course, is Thierry Henry who put pen to paper for Arsene Wenger’s Monaco side.
As a fresh-faced twenty-year old Henry was already a mainstay in the Ligue Un side, having made is debut two and a half years earlier, so as soon as he has was old enough, Wenger knew he had to get him on board. This was despite some shenanigans the month before, when Real Madrid had tried to poach the young striker and thought that they’d secured a deal to sign Henry. A pre-contract agreement was signed, but it turned out that the agent in the middle of the deal was not registered with FIFA, so both Henry and the Spanish giants were given a ticking off by being fined and the contract was annulled.
It wasn’t long until Henry did get his big move though, as Juventus came knocking with a £10.5 million bid in January 1999. There wasn’t too much va-va-vooming at the Delle Alpi though, as Henry didn’t like being put out to graze on the left wing, and soon got fed up. By July he was speaking out against the club in the press and urging national side team-mate Nicolas Anelka not to join the club, which to be fair was good advice – one sulking French forward is always more than enough.
In August 1999 he made the move to Arsenal and we don’t really need to tell you what happened next. But we will anyway. Henry proved to be one Wenger’s biggest masterstrokes as Thierry Henry got his stuttering career back on track as he took to the Premiership like a duck to water. He was the first genuine world-class player foreign player to come to maturity in the Premier League and one of the most exciting talents ever to play on these shores. In his eight-year spell with the Gooners he became their all-time leading scorer with 226 goals and helped them to two Premier League title and three FA Cups. He also found time to make a whole heap of adverts that lead to the word ‘va-va-voom’ being included in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is more than most footballers can boast.
He can now be found strutting his stuff at the Camp Nou – albeit more in the treatment room the pitch so far, as Wenger’s knack for knowing when to get rid of a player at the right time has been proved again. Check out some of his Gallic flair below and we’ll be back tomorrow to look at one of the games greats.
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