here’s one thing that Arsene tells
me all the time. ‘Enjoy the ride
and all the best,’ he says, ‘because
it’s not easy...’ And, yes, he’s right.
It’s not.”
Thierry Henry briefly bursts into
laughter as he repeats the words of
Arsene Wenger, but he’s never been
so serious about anything in his life.
He’s recounting the most regular
piece of advice he’s received from
his former Arsenal boss since embarking on
his own management career.
That career may have been short so far,
but Henry has already been through enough
stresses to understand the subtle humour
Wenger intends – akin to the advice he might
offer someone heading off for their first day
as a lion tamer, or a daredevil about to hurl
themselves over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Good luck, son: you’re going to need it. If you
don’t come back, it was nice knowing you.
Football management is almost as perilous.
Admittedly there is a reduced risk of being
horribly savaged by a big cat, but some of the
sport’s most iconic names have seen their
reputations torn to shreds after an ill-fated
venture into battle.
France’s greatest ever goalscorer and
Arsenal’s greatest ever player, Henry could
have sat at home for the rest of his life and
watched Premier League Years on a loop. But
he didn’t want to do that. He had a burning
desire to become a manager – and at the
beginning of 2021, that desire remains as
strong as ever. His three-month spell with
Monaco from October 2018 was as brief as
it was difficult, then came a challenging year
in charge of MLS outfit Montreal before he
resigned for personal reasons to be closer to
his family. So what now?
Over the course of a lengthy conversation
with FourFourTwo, Henry’s determination to
make it is to become abundantly clear. This
is not a man who’s content to manage solely
by virtue of his status, with little knowledge
of football below the very elite. He’s poured
his heart and soul into it, caring as deeply
about succeeding in Ligue 1 or MLS as he did
during any title race with the Gunners, and
working just as hard to make it happen.
Sat in front of us is a man clearly keen to
outline his philosophy. And if you ever need
to know anything about Newport County or
Bala Town, he can tell you about them too...“WHEn THE WAR IS OVER,
THE SOLDIER CAn CRY”Nothing has been stress-free about Henry’s
managerial career. After thrusting himself
into a relegation battle at Monaco – only to
be swiftly thrust back out of it again – his
first season at Montreal became dominated
by COVID-19 chaos. The Canadian side were
affected more than most.
Appointed three months before the 2020
campaign got underway, Henry took four
points from his first two MLS games in charge
when coronavirus put a stop to everything.
Montreal didn’t kick a ball until July’s ‘MLS Is
Back’ mini-tournament in Florida. They thenbriefly returned to league action in Canada,
before quickly having to switch their home
matches to New Jersey due to restrictions
over cross-border travel.
“When you’re a new coach with new ideas,
it’s very difficult to put something in motion
when you have to stop every two months,”
explains Henry. “You need to understand
something with me – I like to state facts and
sometimes if you state facts, people think
you’re complaining. I’m not, but it’s tough to
stop and go all the time with a new culture,
a new way of playing.
“We went to MLS Is Back as one of two or
three teams a month behind everybody in
terms of training, then if you don’t perform,
you get hammered. You play in Orlando – hot,
humid – then you return to Montreal, go into
quarantine for 14 days and can’t train, then
you come out of quarantine and have to play
straight away.
“Then we had to play all our games away
from home. We made the play-offs, but last
year was very challenging.”This had all added further complications, in
a profession that’s highly complex at the best
of times. “It’s time consuming – you have to
think for everybody,” says Henry.
The Frenchman had known for a long time
that he wanted to take on the challenge of
management. Following retirement, he soon
established himself as a pundit on Sky Sports- his most notable moment perhaps grabbing
Jamie Carragher’s leg in meme-tastic shock,
after Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool dismissal
was announced live on air in October 2015.
Henry could have remained at Sky for years,
watching managers come and go from afar,
without making the move into the pressure
cooker himself. So why didn’t he?
“Maybe because I’m crazy,” he chuckles.
“I knew I was always going to stay in the
game. As a player, I’d always been interested
in tactics and challenging my coach. I was
a real pain in the neck. If they didn’t put the
cones exactly where they were supposed to
put them, I was like, ‘It’s too short’. I was
always challenging, ‘Why are we not playing
“I WAS A PAIn In THE nECK AS A PLAYER. IF COACHES
DIDn’T PUT ALL THE COnES OUT EXACTLY WHERE THEY
WERE SUPPOSED TO BE, I WAS LIKE, ‘IT’S TOO SHORT’”
Below Putting his
players to work
as Montreal boss
Right A punditry
career beckoned,
but Thierry was
then bitten by the
managerial bug“T
144 The Managers FourFourTwo.comTHIERRY
HEn RY