Henry: "I find peace in Guadeloupe"

Barcelona player Thiery Henry gave an interview to Catalan sports paper Sport.





Your family originally comes from Martinique and Guadeloupe. You're in touch with those roots?
A person looks for himself and when I was trying to build my personality I didn't forget that's were my parents came from, despite being born and raised in Les Ulis. I knew the music, the culture, the food, they spoke Creole to me. One always looks for his roots and when I travel there, that's where I find peace.

You feel at home there?
When I go there, I feel naked. Nobody watches me. When France won the World Cup, I went on holiday to Guadeloupe, more specifically to La Désirade, a small island. There were celebrations but the look of the people is different. Everything is more normal. The day I arrived, there was a dinner at the house, they played bongo, everybody came to my house to sing... But the next day, everything was over! I'm just walking around in shorts, I drive around on my Vespa, wearing no shoes.

You're describing paradise.
It is. To me, those are incredible moments, life to the fullest. Sometimes people think I'm dull, but that's not the case. What happens is that I don't understand euphoria. I've been playing football for fourteen years but I still have a hard time understading that. I'm always very calm. I would like to be the Thierry Henry from La Desirade, the son of Antoine and Maryse. I like to go unnoticed and that's why I also like to go to the United States.

Do you like the anonymity?
I find it hard to understand that people think that football players are different. We are not. Yes, I'm a football player but I have good days, bad days, problems like everyone, feeling happy, feeling sad...

You have been described as a loner.
I like to be alone, sometimes. It reminds me of my youth. It's a way of living. I also like to be with my friends but my life has always been like that. At Arsenal, at Monaco, I always liked to stay at home alone.

Do you feel fortunate?
I make a life of my passion, which is football, but it's not easy to get there. I feel privileged because there are people who have a job for which they wake up at five o'clock in the morning and on their way they're thinking about how they don't like what they're doing.

You feel like you didn't yet show the real Thierry Henry here?
It was the same in England. Or I didn't talk, or I talked very little. For me, the important thing is to be sincere and to talk when you feel the need to do it. In the world of football there are people who do things without feeling them, in an artificial way and that's not my style because I'm honest and you get what you see. In England, they asked me why I didn't celebrate my goals. I will explain you something.

Tell me, tell me...
I was around ten years old. I had played a match during which I had scored six goals. I sat in the car with my father and he looked very serious. I asked him what was going on and he asked me if I was happy. I replied that I was but he blamed me for missing a centre in the tenth minute and a goal in the fourteenth miunute and a control... Every game, it was like that! Since then, when I score a goal, I thought more about the chance I have failed before than about celebrating. My father didn't talk about the good things and I grew up thinking about how to improve my mistakes.

Does it worry you that people might have a wrong image of you?
Look. When the season began, a month after having played at Numancia, I still was questioning my performance in that match. I have blood in my veins. What happens is that when I'm angry, you can notice it a lot.

Which is normal...
It's my sport, my life but you cannot only judge a person by his work. When I'm playing, I cannot smile. I had a though upbringing and I always keep my parents in mind. When an actor plays a sympathetic role, that doesn't mean he's a nice guy for 24 hours.


This was the second part of this interview. You will be able to read the other parts in the coming days with Henry talking -among other things- about his relationships and his music taste.

Read the first part of the interview here:
"I'm a bit of a loner beause of my youth"