Anger is Henry's fuel for success

Andrew Fifield talks to a fired-up Arsenal captain as he prepares for the pinnacle game of his club career

Thierry Henry is angry. The man with the Va-Va-Voom smile and twinkle in his eye might not look it, but inside there is the churning, spitting rage of a player with something to prove.

Boiling point is tomorrow night, when Henry leads his beloved Arsenal out of the Stade de France tunnel he knows so well and into the Champions League final against Barcelona. The flashbulbs will pop and the fireworks will illuminate the Parisian skyline, but the most combustible elements of all will be rooted deep inside Henry's soul.

Arsenal versus Barcelona. For Henry, it is the pinnacle of a club career which has already yielded two Premiership winner's medals and two FA Cups, but even if Arsenal's captain ends the night by hoisting Europe's most famous hunk of silverware, the anger will not dissipate. There will be a smile for the cameras, but after that, nothing. Fury, not fun, is Henry's fuel.

"I think people are scared of anger," he said, with a trademark insouciant shrug. "Sometimes people give me aggro about the grumpy look I have on the pitch, but I am not scared of it. You should use it to drive you on in a positive way; I know that without anger, I would not be the player I have become.

"Look at other people. With Wayne Rooney, when you look into his eyes, you see anger. I love basketball and I grew up watching Michael Jordan, but I very rarely saw him smile on the court. Everyone talks about how much Ronaldinho smiles but I can tell you, inside he is not smiling.

"On the pitch, everything makes me angry. I am not having a go at the guy who has made a mistake, or even myself when I do something wrong, but I love the game and as soon as anyone doesn't respect the game, it upsets me."

That is an understatement. Henry is adored and respected in equal measure by his team-mates, but he also scares them. Just two months into his Arsenal career, Emmanuel Adebayor felt the full force of Henry's ire when he dithered over a simple square pass to his unmarked strike partner. Henry responded by pummelling the turf with his fists and giving Adebayor the sort of ear-bashing which would make Roy Keane cower.

The Togoese looked bewildered - Arsenal were two goals up against Charlton and cruising at the time - but it was a lesson learned. Henry expects, demands, that his colleagues share his exalted standards and even his family are not spared.

"If you see me playing with my family on the beach in the summer, it is the same," he said. "If my dad nutmegs me, I will kick him. If I lose a two-on-two with him and my brothers, I won't talk to them for an hour - I just can't take it.

"It is disrespect for the game which annoys me. I have done it myself in the past when I was younger, but I try not to now. Nobody is perfect: everyone in the game will miss a chance or do something wrong, but you have to keep trying to reach perfection. It is anger which will help you get there."

Henry's career path, from Monaco, to Juventus' reserves and finally to Arsenal, could never be described as conventional, but there is a pleasing circularity in the fact that the biggest club game of his life has brought him back to the city where it all began.

The streets of Les Ulis, an edgy, rough-hewn suburb of southern Paris, is a long way from the bright lights and soaring stands of Saint Denis, but it was on their cracked concrete that Henry fostered both his exemplary ball skills and his hard-bitten attitude.

"There is no better school than the streets and there is a lot of aggro there, so you get tough," he added. "That is where the anger comes from. I think I share some things with Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole in that sense because they grew up in east London and they learnt how to play football on the street as well.

"Rooney is from the streets; Ronaldinho also. They are tough but that is where desire and my commitment come from. I am looking forward to going back: it is a nice story."

But great tales are only made so by engrossing endings. European success has proved constantly elusive for Henry but victory tomorrow evening will erase the memory of all those early exits and flattened dreams. It might also give Henry, whose new Arsenal contract remains suspiciously unsigned, a decisive push into leading the club into their new era at the Emirates stadium.

There is just one more question. The Uefa president Lennart Johansson has handed over the European cup and red and white confetti is falling all around.

Is Thierry Henry still angry? "Angry? No. But I would not be satisfied either.

"When you are satisfied, you relax and I don't want to do that: I want to carry on and on."