Thierry Henry – Biography, Wife, Net Worth and Career Achievements

Quick Facts

To ardent fans of football all over the world, the man Thierry Henry needs little or no introduction. Playing for different club sides, he won nearly all of football’s most-prized trophies including the Ligue 1 title, the EPL Title, the La Liga and the UEFA Champion’s League. Henry reached the zenith of international football when he helped his home country France lift the highly-coveted FIFA World Cup in 1998. He also helped the French team win the Euro 2000 and the 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup.

The football star retired as a player in December 2014 and a few months later, he made the transition into football coaching. He also had a 3-year stint as a football pundit on Sky Sports. Indeed, Thierry Henry has proven to be an all-around football royalty.

Thierry Henry’s Biography

He was born Thierry Daniel Henry on August 17, 1977 to Maryse and Antoine Henry in Les Ulis, a southwestern suburb of Paris, France. There, he spent most of his childhood and the neighbourhood also provided him ample opportunity to develop his inherent football talents. Interestingly, Henry was not particularly eager to pursue a career in football but his father Antoine persuaded him to keep attending training.

The youngster was first recruited at age 7 by CO Les Ulis, a club in his local community. He moved to another club US Palaiseau at age 12 and later played for ES Viry-Châtillon in his teenage years. It is said that a gold fish has no hiding place and this was the very case of the young Thierry Henry. Back in 1990, 13-year old Henry caught the eye of an AS Monaco scout Arnold Catalano, for scoring all six goals for his team in a resounding 6-0 victory. He was quickly asked to join Monaco as a youth player and there he met football coach who ultimately became his longtime mentor and with whom he would create football history at his latter club Arsenal.

Career Achievements

On August 31, 1994, Thierry Henry marked his professional debut with AS Monaco which marked the beginning of one of the most decorated careers ever known in club football. Henry spent 5 seasons with Monaco during which he won several accolades. He was named the French Young Footballer of the Year in 1996 and more importantly, he helped Monaco win the Ligue 1 title in the 1996–97 season.

Henry’s relative underachievement at AS Monaco has been largely attributed to the fact that he was deployed as a winger rather than his natural position of a striker. He was transferred to Italian club Juventus in January 1999, however, his 8-month spell with the team was largely uneventful.

On August 3, 1999, Thierry Henry made the career-defining move to English club Arsenal where he reunited with his former boss Arsène Wenger. Unlike their first spell at Monaco, Wenger took the decision to deploy Henry as a striker, a decision which totally transformed the latter’s career and ultimately made him a world-class footballer. The talented player had a highly successful 8-season stint with Arsenal during which he formed a crucial component of the team.

With Arsenal, Henry won 2 Premier League titles (2001–02, 2003–04), 2 FA Cup titles (2001–02, 2002–03) and 2 Community Shield titles (2002 and 2004). He was part and parcel of Arsenal’s history-making team “The Invincibles” which finished the entire 2003-04 season without losing any league game. The football star also helped Arsenal to a first runner-up finish in the 2005-06 UEFA Champions League.

In the summer of 2007, Thierry Henry joined Spanish giants Barcelona where he spent 3 highly successful seasons. He was crucial to the Barca’s unprecedented harvest of trophies in the 2008-09 campaign. The team won a treble ( the La Liga, Copa del Rey and the UEFA Champions League titles) which was later extended to a sextuple when they also clinched the Spanish Super Cup, the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup. Henry also won a second La Liga title with Barcelona in the 2009-10 season before departing the club in July 2010.

The football legend spent the last 5 seasons of his pro career playing for the New York Red Bulls in America’s Major League Soccer. He won one title with the Bulls, the 2013 Supporters’ Shield.

Coaching Career

While working as a football pundit on Sky Sports, Thierry Henry got hired to coach the youth team of his former club Arsenal in February 2015. A year later, he was hired as a second assistant to the coach of the Belgium national team Roberto Martínez. In this capacity, Henry contributed to Belgium’s third-place finish at the 2018 FIFA World Cup grabbing a bronze medal for himself in the process.

He was promoted to Belgium’s first assistant coach in August 2018, a position he held for only 2 months. In October 2018, Henry was hired as the club manager of his boyhood club AS Monaco on a 3-year contract.

Net Worth

In his heyday as a professional football player, Thierry Henry was ranked among the top ten most commercially-valuable footballers in the world. His brilliant talents ensure that he enjoyed several multi-million-dollar contracts throughout his career. Thanks to this and other ventures, the football star has been able to amass a net worth of $60 million. This enviable sum is expected to get even higher in the near future as Henry is poised to establish himself as a football coach of repute.

Wife, Girlfriend

Though unmarried at the moment, Thierry Henry is known to be in a long-term relationship with Bosnian model Andrea Rajacic. The duo got together in 2008 and have remained inseparable ever since. They have 2 children together; a son and a daughter. They welcomed their son Tristan in August 2012 and their daughter Tatiana was born in August 2015.

Henry had been married in the past. He had a 5-year marital union with English model Nicole Merry (née Claire Merry). The duo tied the knot on July 5, 2003 and they had one child together, a daughter named Téa, born on May 27, 2005. The marriage ended in a divorce which was concluded in December 2008.

Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.