HENRY FACES LOYALTY TEST
France icon is Belgium’s secret weapon
THIERRY HENRY has never been slow coming forward — on or off the field — but the strange thing is that he has only ever given one interview in his role as what the Belgian FA call ‘ the second assistant’ to manager Roberto Martinez.
So not only do we not know what he thinks about today’s World Cup semifinal clash against his native France, we don’t really know what he thinks about his role at all.
Somebody close to him said a couple of weeks ago that Henry was ‘enjoying it’. Whether that remains true throughout what will be a strange evening for him tonight remains to be seen.
This was always likely to happen. France have long been a superpower of world football, albeit with a share of ups and downs, while Belgium have been a coming force for a while. It was only a matter of time before Henry’s two worlds collided in public view.
‘When you go to a club abroad and play one from your own country, you are part of the enemy team,’ said France coach Didier Deschamps yesterday.
‘This time it is much higher. He is on the bench and facing his home nation. But he did know that from the time he became an assistant to Martinez.
‘That can happen. I am pleased for him to have the job as he is somebody I appreciate. But this is a difficult situation, it is not easy for him.’
At Belgium’s neat, understated training centre 50 minutes outside Moscow there have been plenty of questions about Henry over the last three weeks but little interest in answering them. If the former Arsenal centre forward is Martinez’s secret weapon then the description is apt in every sense.
not particularly noticeable during games, Henry is rarely seen next to Martinez or his no 2 Graham Jones in the technical area. At training though, the 40-year- old is more prominent, setting up coaching drills and taking time to talk through situations with young striker Michy Batshuayi and the more experienced Romelu Lukaku.
In his one interview with the Belgian national broadcaster, Henry said: ‘It’s not the Thierry Henry show, I’m here to help the manager and the squad. The manager is the one who will do the talking, I will try to make the team better. As a coach you don’t have to mention what you have done as a player in the past. And as a coach I haven’t proven anything.’
Strangely, Henry was not Martinez’s appointment. It was another candidate for the Belgian job, the German Ralf Rangnick, who said he would like to bring Henry with him if he was appointed. Rangnick was ultimately overlooked but his endorsement of Henry had stuck in the right people’s minds and soon enough he was part of the supporting cast.
Martinez, once of Everton and Wigan, is phlegmatic enough and shrewd enough to welcome the appointment. Anyway, it is the Spaniard and longterm ally Jones who run the show, with Henry on the fringes on a relatively modest salary of around £100,000 a year that he is said to donate to charity.
‘He is our missing piece,’ said Martinez yesterday. ‘He has brought us something we didn’t have. I have worked with my staff for 12 years but we did not have an experience of how to win the World Cup.
‘In Belgium we can’t follow the path of a previous generation that’s won the World Cup. Thierry brings that.’
Martinez signed a new two-year deal before the World Cup, while Henry has not yet accepted an offer to continue.
In France they feel a little bemused by it all. Deschamps, captain of the national team that won their own World Cup with Henry in it 20 years ago, has previously called his former teammate’s decision ‘ bizarre’. Chelsea striker Olivier Giroud said this week that he would like to show ‘Titi that he chose the wrong team’.
Yesterday, Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne was asked cheekily if he thought Henry might sing the French national anthem tonight. ‘He has not told me what he is going to do,’ shrugged the Manchester City player. ‘But yes, maybe he is going to sing La Marseillaise. That would be normal. For him this game could be difficult but he is working for us now and he wants us to win.
‘That’s his job. That’s football.’