New York the Big Apple of this Frenchman's eye

INTERVIEW THIERRY HENRY:THIERRY HENRY found his initial love for New York exactly the way you would expect a young boy from the Paris suburbs might – through an abiding affection for the rap group N.W.A. and an emotional connection to a shiny coat.

Growing up in Les Ulis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Henry and many of his friends were enamoured with the gangsta rap group comprising Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Eazy-E, DJ Yella and MC Ren. Music videos of groups from the United States were popular internationally, and Henry was especially fascinated with the Los Angeles Raiders paraphernalia that the members of N.W.A. often wore. He distinctly recalls being intrigued by the logos on the snapback jackets, made by Starter, that fast became an urban trend.

When Henry was 13, his father came home one day with a jacket for him. Antoine Henry had seen his son salivating over MC Ren’s look but did not find a Raiders jacket; instead, he offered one that was blue, white and red. It was a New York Giants jacket.

“At first I was like, ‘What is this?’ and then I was like, ‘I wanted the black one like N.W.A. has’!” Henry said. “But then at school someone asked me about it, and of course I acted like I knew all about it. And then the Giants won the Super Bowl that year, and suddenly it was an amazing present.”

From that point on, Henry adopted the Giants as his American football team, and he followed them casually as his soccer career blossomed.

A curious soul, Henry travelled the world because of his ability to make magic with a ball at his feet, playing first for teams in Monaco, France and Turin, Italy, then for juggernauts in London and Barcelona. He scored more than 300 goals in Europe, won two Golden Boot awards as the Continent’s top scorer and earned a World Cup winner’s medal with France in 1998.

Always, though, he thought of New York. Henry first visited the city in 1996 and found himself continually coming back during off-seasons or breaks in his schedule. Each time, he would try to stay in a different part of Manhattan, experimenting with hotels on the Upper West or East sides for one trip, then going downtown the next time he returned. For a man with a professed love for “the smell of concrete”, the city was intoxicating. “I knew I would live here someday,” he said.

In July 2010, he made the leap. At 32, Henry left behind a European career that many believe would have continued to thrive, exchanging it for a place in Major League Soccer, a contract with the Red Bulls and, perhaps most of all, the ending he always craved.

Henry has lived in or near big cities his entire life, has walked Trafalgar Square and the Avinguda Diagonal. He speaks so many languages that sometimes, when he is trying to order his pasta al dente, he will lapse into Spanish instead of Italian. When asked, he usually finds it hard to rank one city ahead of another.

But with New York it is different. Now, two years settled in the city he long desired, Henry is, in his own words, “at peace”. London will always be special because that is where his daughter lives, but New York has been everything he wanted: a stage, a cave, an alley and a palace, all at once.

“It is home in a lot of ways,” he said. “But it is more than that. I have seen a lot of places, and for me it is the best city in the world.”

One weekend afternoon this spring, Henry left his SoHo apartment, headed west on his bicycle and rode uptown along the Hudson River. No one, besides his doorman, recognised him. No one ran up asking for an autograph. No one bothered him.

For Henry, it was the latest example of his personal bliss. He slips in and out of his place on Crosby Street, able to disappear into the chaos of the Village if he wants and to take his seven-year-old daughter to Sarabeth’s for cupcakes when she is in town without creating a major media incident.

One of his first nights in Barcelona after he joined the team in 2007, Henry went out to dinner with a friend. The next day, he picked up the newspaper, and his meal had been recounted, in excruciating detail, for all the world to see!

Henry’s overall New York existence is hardly run of the mill – after all, he’s got a car, a parking space and a reportedly $14.85 million triplex, each of which puts him in a relative Manhattan minority – but his day-to-day life is gloriously typical. He orders in. He people-watches. He sits in a coffee shop or a bar. He goes to as many shows as he can (two of his favourites: Chicago and The Lion King), and he lounges on the couch watching sports on television. The NBA is a passion, particularly the San Antonio Spurs, who’s guard Tony Parker, another Frenchman, is one of Henry’s close friends, and the two have occasionally played basketball together.

Henry, like many New Yorkers, is also passionate about food. His preferred cuisine is from the West Indies (his mother is from Martinique, his father from Guadeloupe), but he has struggled to find a consistently good representation of “mom’s food”, as he called it, in New York. “The closest thing might be Cuban food for us,” he said. Still, Henry has an expansive palate. Asked for his preferred plates, he ticked them off: Italian, dim sum, Caribbean, tapas, Spanish – before stopping suddenly. “Ohhh, Mexican,” he said. “How could I forget? The corn on the cob at La Esquina might be my favourite thing in the entire city. I don’t know what they put on it, but even if they told me it’s something bad, I will still eat it.”

To those less familiar with the global soccer landscape, the strangest part of Henry’s existence in New York may be the backlash he endured after deciding to come here. Unlike in baseball or banking or acting, New York is hardly the centre of the universe when it comes to the world’s most popular game. In truth, it is barely in the universe at all.

Henry played for Monaco, Juventus and Arsenal, and won six trophies with Barcelona in 2009. His speed and scoring touch were in good form at the end of the 2010 European season, and even if he left Barcelona, there was no reason to believe he would not continue to have success somewhere else in Europe.

But Henry did not want to stay in Europe. He even told his agent not to listen to any offers from European clubs, however lucrative they might be. Some observers speculated that Henry’s decision had to do with the heaping criticism he took after his memorable hand-ball-that-wasn’t-called in a critical French qualifier for the 2010 World Cup, while others guessed that Henry was fed up with the racism he and other black players sometimes encountered from European fans. There was also a theory that Henry was simply anticipating his own decline and attempting to fade away in a relatively quieter place.

When these theories were presented to him recently, Henry shrugged. “Why does it have to be so complicated?” he said. “I just wanted to carry on playing football, but I had enough of being in Europe. I wanted to finish my career and also have a life. Why is that difficult?”

This year, Henry returned to Arsenal on a two-month loan during the MLS off-season and scored two goals in seven appearances, dazzling British fans again. To many, the spell gave credence to Henry’s assertion that he was hardly finished as a European player; rather, he was just finished, by choice, as a player in Europe.

With the Red Bulls, Henry has done his best to be a leader. He is the team’s captain and, while clearly possessing a vastly different history, and financial position, than his team-mates, he does his best to fit in.

Henry generally welcomes banter and bonding. Barbs about his accent and reliance on British idioms are often fodder for team-mates – something like, “Do you fancy lunch?” – and Henry is unafraid to defend himself. “They’ll get on me, and I’ll say, ‘How do you want me to say it to you? It’s English – learn it,’” Henry said. “I lived in England, and the language is called English, yes? So don’t have a go at me because I am saying it right.”

Henry is similarly blunt when discussing his impact on soccer in the United States. Unlike other international players who have come here, Henry makes no grand statements about imminent transformations in the sport’s popularity. Yes, he would like to help grow the game. And yes, he would like desperately to lead the Red Bulls to their first league title. “Winning is always first with me,” he said. “Always.”

But he remains realistic. Overcoming the popularity of the National Football League or Major League Baseball is something that even a transplanted New Yorker like Henry knows is virtually impossible. After all, he plays in a market where one night this season the Red Bulls played a game on the same night that the Yankees, Mets, Knicks and Rangers all had games on television, too.

“There were five New York teams on television at the same time – what can you do about that?” Henry said. “How do you compete with 100 years of history in these other sports? In the other sports, people can say, ‘Do you remember that series from years ago? That big hit?’ What can they say about MLS? Do you remember yesterday?”

Still, he is pleased with the progress. Henry said that the quality of play in MLS was improving immensely and that the increase in soccer-specific stadiums was a critical development. Henry would not reveal how many more years he wanted to play, but he made it clear that he was very content that the final chapter of his career was taking place in New York.

At one point, he was asked if he ever worried that people would view his overall legacy negatively, focusing on the hand ball against the Republic of Ireland or the way he bolted Europe for the United States. Unruffled, Henry sounded like a New Yorker with his response. “Sure, they will remember those things,” he said. “But I think they’ll remember the 300 goals, too, don’t you?”

New York Times Service