You could have been Casanova’s football re-incarnate. Making unemotional love to a thousand clubs. But even Casanova probably had one true love. The one whose passion took him to dizzying heights. But meet Thierry Henry. Meet the love of Arsenal F.C.
Like the script of Love in the Time of Cholera, Henry had to come back. To the club that really makes his heart beat. You could see that in his goal celebrations, the repeated thumping of his left upper chest, to show where it really belongs. Even though Rhonda Byrne’s Law of Attraction never worked in my life, there was this silent prayer by many a football fan, to see the script written in the way it exactly ensued. Monsieur Henry might have put on weight, grown a little bit older, become a little bit slower, but there can be only one player that pops up in the left of the box with that sublime touch, and finish it in such a clinical way, to put the game away.
When the ball was ballooned into Henry’s direction and when the defender cut it out to fall into Ramsey’s path, Henry slipped quickly back from an offside position to an onside waiting for a through ball. Not every player, even the young ones bursting with exuberance would have made that move. Ramsey didn’t give it. But we saw it. The legend’s still got it in him.
I know he might have played as an attacking midfielder in the NY Red Bulls. But when you see him pop up in the left in the Arsenal colors and scores what could be a quintessential Henrysque winning goal, you know he has come home. Even, if it’s for a few weeks.
