Football Writers' Week: Ollie Holt on the Joys of Interviewing Thierry Henry

It's 'Football Writers' Week' at Bleacher Report and Day 3 brings Ollie Holt, chief sports writer at the Mirror, on the business of footballer interviews and his experience with Thierry Henry.

Day 1—Duncan Castles on the dark arts of the transfer window

Day 2—Kristian Sturt on the secrets of freelance success

This isn’t about an interview. Not a conventional one anyway. It’s about three interviews. Or, rather, three phone calls.

It’s rare that players call journalists now. Or that journalists call players. A few journalists still have plenty of player numbers but not many. There are too many layers now, too many people who set their minds to being obstacles, who want a piece of the middle-man action.

I phoned Jamie Redknapp once when he was at Southampton, because I’ve known him for a long time, to do an interview about the approaching end of his playing days. A few hours later, I got a call from the then Southampton press officer berating me for not consulting her first.

The desire for control at football clubs is growing stronger and stronger with each passing season.

Anyway, there are still a few players who don’t worry too much about control and relish the opportunity to tell a journalist what he thinks and maybe upbraid him.

Thierry Henry was like that. I found that out after I wrote a story about him and teammate Lauren having an altercation in the tunnel at Highbury after a game against Manchester United in the spring of 2004. The Arsenal press officer rang me the next day and said Thierry was livid about it. She wanted to know where the story came from.

The day after that, my phone rang again. It was Henry. He was talking fast. He reiterated that he wanted to know who the source was. He then said he knew where it came from anyway. He mentioned one of the United players and said the story was a ruse to destabilise Arsenal.

Clive Mason/Getty Images

We talked for about 20 minutes. Rather, he talked for about 20 minutes. I asked him if I could quote him on what he was saying. He said "fine."

I was pleased he had called. Even then, a decade ago, the barriers had been put up between journalists and players in English football. We bore some of the blame for the greater distance, of course. So did agents and clubs who wanted more of the action for themselves.

Even then, when you did get a face-to-face interview, it was usually controlled by a sportswear company or a sponsor. Typically, you’d get a 15- or 20-minute slot amid a welter of similar slots. A couple of minutes from the end, a PR guy would stand behind the player, out of his line of sight, and start drawing his hand across his throat to signal your time was up.

It was actually a lot more satisfying talking to Henry, unfettered and supremely articulate, over the phone. He was an obsessive, somebody who enjoyed the verbal confrontation, who wanted to stand up for himself, not delegate.

A couple of years later, in the run-up to the Champions League Final between Arsenal and Barcelona in Paris, I took a trip to the outskirts of the city to do a piece about where Henry had grown up.

I visited the apartment building where he had grown up, spoke to some of the people who lived there and wrote the article. The next day, which was the day before the final, Henry called again. He was aggrieved. He said I had been to the wrong building.

I apologised for the error but Henry would not be mollified. He kept complaining. I kept apologising. There was never any sense with him that he would bear a grudge, just that he was determined that people who wrote about him should be held accountable.

He was absolutely right about that. Again, it was a welcome change from the sullen stand-off that ensues with many players. I did think it slightly odd that Henry was taking a chunk out of his morning so close to the biggest club game of his career to complain about an error that, while stupid and annoying, was neither malicious nor damaging.

But once again, it was a fascinating insight into his compulsive character.

A month later, just before France’s last warm-up game before the 2006 World Cup, I got the third call.

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

The Mirror had run a piece about a dance Henry’s team mate Djibril Cisse had performed on the pitch and a message it was supposed to contain. It was an innocuous piece but it had angered Thierry and, once again, he wanted to set the record straight.

This time, there was a twist. “Anyway,” he said, after a while, "speak to Cisse." He put Cisse on the phone and Cisse repeated most of what Thierry had said about the nature of the dance.

France played China that evening and poor Cisse suffered an horrific leg break and missed the tournament. I spoke to Thierry in a mixed zone at the tournament and he raised his eyebrows and shook his head sadly when I reminded him about our most recent conversation.

He was one of the best players I ever saw but as a communicator with journalists, he was out on his own.

Follow @ollieholt22