Football Sports

Surviving the Complete Striker
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With the qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in full force, I was checking out France’s game. After they beat The Netherlands, I was reading articles on how France’s team had a problem with their offence. The rich people kind of problem: they have five legit starters competing for two spots, maybe three, depending on the system decided by the manager.

Oliver Giroud (Arsenal), Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid), Alexandre Lacazette (Arsenal), Kylian Mbappé (PSG) and Kingsley Coman (Bayern Munich). Most of these guys are starters on their club teams, but country football being radically different, they all have their pros and cons when it comes to making an argument for either one of them to start. Like I said, rich people problem. The only player that is sure to start every game as of this moment is Antoine Griezmann.

Looking at the 4-0 score sheet when they beat the Dutch, I couldn’t help but think of the top scorer in French national team history, my favourite player ever Thierry Henry. I looked at his Wikipedia page and saw that he had just turned forty a little more than two weeks ago. “Damn! Henry is already forty! Time really doesn’t play around…” It feels like just yesterday that I saw him rip through Real Madrid’s defence, pushing Ronaldo, one of his idols, out of the way, to score the only goal of the double confrontation, a goal that qualified them for the next round, on their way to the final.

I’ve always liked strikers. Over time I have admired a lot of them, for different reasons, though in past years I’ve been having a lot more appreciation for defenders and the quiet work they put in. Of all the great strikers in the world, past and present, Thierry Henry to me was the perfect embodiment of the complete striker who had it all.

He had the height (6’2 -1.88m), the strength (83kg), the speed and the technique. Even though technique wise he wasn’t as magical as someone like Ronaldinho, he was a deadly efficient dribbler, it was still spectacular to watch, and he had absolutely nothing to be envious of. Plus he had the maximum five stars for technique on FIFA so…

Drogba has the size and strength, but not necessarily the technique, he’s much more into physical dominance. Zlatan Ibrahimovic has the height and the technique, but not the speed. Messi has everything but the height, and it can be argued that maybe he lacks the strength too. Pelé and Maradona didn’t have the height, neither does Neymar (nor the strength too I think), and Van Basten didn’t have the speed or the technique. These players that I’ve just listed didn’t or don’t need to have what they were / are lacking to be great, and on some things they had absolutely no control over, like how tall they grew. I’m just talking about a striker who was the complete package and Thierry Henry was it. Let me not forget that Ronaldo (Il Fenomeno), had it all too, but at 6’0 – 1.83m, he would have been perfect if he was just a little taller, not that that’s a complaint, look at what he accomplished. In that sense, Cristiano Ronaldo is the one who has it all today, through luck (height) and his maniacal work ethic (everything else).

Back to Henry: visiting his Wikipedia page made me go on YouTube and re-watch a documentary on his prime eight years at Arsenal. It’s a glorious piece that I recommend to any football fanatic who has somehow not seen it yet. My favourite segment of the feature starts at 1:04:55, where you get to see the combination of his size, speed, strength and technique in action. Notice how I’m just talking about his physical skills, I haven’t even mentioned his prolific goal-scoring, and I’m not going to, because if knew the player, then you about his knack for goal scoring…

Henry made me root for Arsenal, but I realized that I was more of a fan of Henry than I was of Arsenal, because when he wasn’t playing I wouldn’t watch Arsenal games. I’d usually come home from football on Saturday mornings and watch him play, then right after I’d watch Didier Drogba with Chelsea.

I really wanted him and Arsenal to win the champions league in 2006 when they lost to F.C. Barcelona in the final. I backed them, hard. In hindsight it was a good thing they didn’t win, because years later I would have a lot of arguments with rabid Arsenal fans, and the number one reason I gave them, to support my claim that their team wasn’t that good, was that they had never won a champions league…

I was such a fan of Henry that I dared to wear the uniform of the enemy: When he moved to Spain in 2007 to play for Barcelona, I got his jersey. Me the ultra Real Madrid fan…I wore it proudly too, and now I just hope nobody took a picture of me in it…when he moved to the US three years later, I came to my senses and gave the jersey away.

He was a great player, and the bottom line is that I’m curious to see who is going to step up to become the undisputed goal-scorer for the French national team, just like Henry was for years.

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