Thierry Henry insists he will have to prove himself all over again to fulfil his dream of one day managing and helping his beloved Arsenal.
Aged 37, Henry announced his retirement from playing football on Tuesday morning and signed a multimillion-pound deal to be the new face of Sky television.
The Sky contract allows Henry to start work on his coaching badges, which he hopes to do in conjunction with Arsenal and under the watchful eye of Arsène Wenger.
Rather than rely on one of the most impressive playing CVs of the modern era, Henry plans to take the same perfectionist approach towards management that resulted in him becoming an Arsenal legend.
Asked if his ultimate ambition would be to manage Arsenal, having hung up some of the most potent boots in football, Henry replied: “That would be a dream come true, but that’s not how it works.
“You have to prove yourself first, you have to learn first. You need to be able to understand what it is to be a manager.
“Can you teach, can you be patient? All these problems. People think they are all managers in their own way, but it’s not that easy.
“The plan is to start my badges and I guess Arsenal will help me. To pass your badges, you have to work closely with a club and I would like to think it is going to be Arsenal. You know I’m in London when you see me at Arsenal.
“First and foremost I don’t know how or when, but everybody knows I would love to go back to Arsenal in some capacity. But I need to be equipped to go back. I want to learn the process, so I have to get my badges and what not. We will see what is going to happen.
“It’s not a secret, everybody talks about me going back to Arsenal and me the same thing, but it doesn’t always work like that. First and foremost, I have to make sure that I have everything on board to be able to go back.
“Hard work is all I know. It comes from my dad and the guys I played with when I arrived in the national team. Zidane, Djorkaeff, Thuram, Desailly, Petit, Barthez, that’s how they were and that’s what they taught me. So I took it on board because you can only be the reflection of your education. That’s the way I was educated, so that’s what I’m going to try to pass on.”
There is no pause for thought when it is put to Henry that the decision to retire might have been easier than leaving Arsenal for Barcelona in 2007.
Henry celebrates scoring against Manchester United in the 2009 Champions League final (Getty Images)
“This was way easier, way easier,” he said. “I’m not going to hide, everybody knows that when I left Arsenal I cried because it was a difficult time, a difficult moment, I knew I was going to leave a club that I love and the fans I love.
“The decision to retire is logical, easier than when I left Arsenal. I am at peace.”
Analysing games and players in his new capacity as a Sky pundit and ambassador will no doubt help Henry’s transition from player to manager. As noted by Wenger during his brief second spell as a player at Arsenal, Henry has already matured into a more of a mentor over his later years. “As players, we have to learn quickly to be mature and understand but we are still young,” Henry said.
“How do you want me to react as a 24-year-old? The amount of pressure on you to perform, of course sometimes you are not going to be patient or political, that’s just the way it is like any 24, 25, 26‑year‑old guy.
“When you mature, you see things and understand things differently, and you know to be calmer and put your message out there. Having said that, I will still have that fire in me, but it becomes different.”
Henry will not be scared to ask for advice when he needs it and can tap into the brains and philosophies of Wenger and Pep Guardiola, who managed him at Barcelona and is now in charge at Bayern Munich.
“You need to be able to see different approaches to the game,” Henry said.
“I would like to think and hope I can go to all those places and learn. That’s the whole process.”
Henry was known to challenge criticism he felt was unfair as a player by personally telephoning journalists or even confronting them on aeroplanes.
The Frenchman insists that when analysing Arsenal games and Wenger’s decisions on Sky, he will be prepared to be tough without crossing an important line.
“I will be talking about the game good or bad,” Henry said.
“It isn’t personal. I knew when I was playing that when I didn’t play well I was going to get some and that’s the way it is. Now, sometimes, what’s not on is when the criticism becomes a personal thing – that’s when you have to talk about the game. You are talking about a situation, not judging a person.”
One aspect of his new Sky job that Henry is sure to enjoy is stopping and starting games to demonstrate his point.
“If I watch a game on Sky with my friends, I will pause it 20,000 times and by the time it starts again, the game is already over, we already know the result, but I’m still pausing it to make my friends understand why something happened or why it shouldn’t have happened,” Henry said. “I am bit annoying like this, so it will be good to pause the games as a job.”
Henry is Arsenal’s all-time record scorer with 228 goals and also holds the record for scoring the most goals for the French national team after netting 51 times for his country.
After joining Arsenal from Juventus for £11 million in 1999, Henry made a total of 376 appearances for the north London club and won two Premier League titles, spearheading the 2003-04 Invincibles team, and three FA Cups.
He moved to Barcelona for £19 million and won two La Liga titles, the Copa del Rey and the 2009 Champions League with the Spanish club.
With France, Henry lifted the 1998 World Cup and won the European Championship two years later.
Scoring for France against Denmark at Euro 2000 (AP)
So it is not altogether expected, when Henry recalls an FA Cup third‑round tie against Leeds United in 2012 as his perfect career moment.
Having returned to the club as a 34-year-old player on loan from New York Red Bulls, Henry stepped off the substitutes’ bench to score the 78th‑minute winner at the Emirates Stadium and celebrated by emotionally embracing Wenger.
“There is one goal, don’t get me wrong I enjoyed all of them, but the one when I came back to play for Arsenal that I scored against Leeds on my first game back,” Henry said.
“Look at the emotion, my emotion – you rarely saw me doing that. The celebration between myself and Arsène, that was genuine. You never saw me do that before.
“That moment sums up my relationship with Arsene, my relationship with Arsenal and my relationship with the fans.
“If I had the time to have hugged everybody that night, I would have done it. I could have gone around the stadium and hugged everybody, the referee included, everybody. I don’t even know where I was to be honest, I was somewhere else.”
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