Thierry Henry “cried almost every day” early in the COVID pandemic, the World Cup winner has said, as he opened up on depression.
The 46-year-old ex-footballer, who became Arsenal’s all-time top goalscorer and won virtually every major honour he could across a stellar career, linked his struggles to his past search for approval.
Growing up with a father who was critical of his performances, he told the Diary of a CEO podcast he feels he cried for “everything he didn’t get” as a boy.
“Throughout my career, and since I was born, I must have been in depression,” said Henry, who was manager of Montreal Impact when he had to isolate in the Canadian city in 2020, away from his family.
“Did I know it? No. Did I do something about it? No. But I adapted to a certain way. That doesn’t mean I’m walking straight, but I’m walking.
“You’ve got to put one foot [forward] and another one, and walk. That’s what I’ve been told since I’m young.
“I never stopped walking, then maybe I would have realised. [But during] COVID, I stopped walking. I couldn’t. Then you start to realise.”
The Frenchman said he had a “cape” for when he “felt a struggle coming” during his playing career and after retiring in 2014 he was “trying to find a way to wear that cape”.
Not being able to see his children – who were in London – for a year was “tough”, he said, and he was “crying almost every day for no reason”.
“Tears were coming alone. Why I don’t know, but maybe they were there for a very long time,” he said.
“Technically, it wasn’t me, it was the young me. [Crying for] everything he didn’t get, approval.”
Read more:
Football team travels 8,000 miles to lose 12-0
Actress dashes 150 miles to save performance of Evita
Henry, who won the World Cup in 1998 and the Champions League in 2009 with Barcelona, said his father was “very particular at times on how I was as a player”, adding: “As a little boy it was always, ‘you didn’t do that well’.”
Henry stepped down from his role in Montreal after returning home to visit his family in 2021 – and he reflected on the moment that made him stay in London just as he was about to head back to Canada.
Thierry Henry left his role in Montreal. Pic: The Canadian Press via AP
“I put my bags down to say bye and everybody starts to cry, from the nanny to my girlfriend to the kids,” he said.
“For the first time… I am like, ‘oh, they see me’ – not the football player, not the accolades, and I felt human.
“I put my bags down and I stopped coaching in Montreal. I said, ‘what am I doing?’
“Going to go again into a situation just because of your pursuit of pleasing people? They love Thierry, not Thierry Henry.
“I stayed. For the first time, I felt human… and it felt nice.”
