Former Blues striker and current Espoirs coach, Thierry Henry, claimed to have suffered from depression during his playing career, an illness he links to his childhood, which came to the surface when he was coaching in Canada during the pandemic of coronavirus. “I lied for a very long time because society wasn’t ready to hear what I had to say,” says the 1998 world champion, now 46, in an English interview with the podcast. the Diary of a CEO,” published Monday.
“Throughout my career, and since my birth, I must have been depressed”
The top scorer in Arsenal’s history says that this discomfort accompanied him during all these years when he shone with the ball, without being aware of it. “Throughout my career, and ever since I was born, I must have been depressed,” Henry said. “Did I know it? No. Did I do anything to fix it? No. But I adapted to a certain way of life,” he explains.
In life, “you have to put one foot (in front) and then another, and walk. That’s what I’ve been told since I was young,” he explains. “I never stopped walking”, except during Covid when “I couldn’t anymore. And then you start to realize”. Retired from the field since 2014, the former Arsenal glory found himself confined to Canada, away from his children who remained in Europe “for a year”, at the peak of the health crisis while he was managing Montreal Impact in the North American championship.
It then happened to him to “cry almost every day for no reason”, continues the current Espoirs coach. “The tears came on their own. Why? I don’t know, but maybe they had been there for a very long time.” And added: “Technically it wasn’t me, it was the younger me. (Crying) for everything he didn’t get, the approval.” Henry links his mental fragility to his childhood and the constant search for approval from his father, who was often critical of his performances.
“When I was little, people always told me ‘you didn’t do that well’. So obviously, when you hear that more often than anything else, that’s what will stick,” he says . After scoring all the goals in a 6-0 win as a teenager, he remembers his father telling him not to be satisfied: “you missed that check, you missed that cross.” This paternal presence “helped the athlete to a certain extent”, but it “did not help the human being that much”, he concludes.