Allo, I Must Be Staying

By London_Duncan Last edited 214 months ago
Allo, I Must Be Staying
HenryDoor1.jpg

When Wembley eventually re-opens we trust the mayor will have used the delay to pass some kind of byelaw restricting cup finals involving London clubs to 75 minutes. We’re not sure the Londonist cardio-vascular system can cope with much more of this late, late despair malarkey.

After Barcelona’s first went in the whole thing began to resemble the end of the Seven Samurai as Thierry Henry and his noble swashbucklers, hopelessly outnumbered, tried valiantly to hold off the tide of marauders in the kind of rain that would normally be associated with Noah.

When it was over Thierry launched into a tirade that had a gobsmacked Londonist mentally totting up the fines: "Ten thousand Euros for th… wait twenty thou… do I hear thirty… forty…". Imagine our surprise when UEFA luminaries rushed to the nearest microphone to state categorically that Thierry would not face any action for what had been said so unfortunately in the heat of the moment. José must be storing that one up for future use.

We think Monsieur Henry could have taken Samurai’s Hollywood offspring, The Magnificent Seven, as his inspiration and greeted the cameras with Yul Brynner’s final words in that film: "The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose." Well, yes, stretching a point for a team who recently went through a season unbeaten, but as everyone enjoyed Eric’s enigmatic nonsense about seagulls and trawlers so much we think the farmers allusion would have kept media commentators amused for weeks searching for agricultural aspects of Henry’s psyche while it would also have deflected attention from the real struggle in Thierry’s mind.

On the plane back from Paris he addressed his fellow passengers talking about what "we" had to do next. His open criticism of Barcelona and the officials on Wednesday night also gave Arsenal supporters hope that he was going to stay. David Dein is said to have been in a surprisingly good mood on that plane and the press conference Arsenal have called for 2pm this afternoon looks promising. Let's hope Dein's posse have finally got their man.

Picture via wise's Flickr stream.

Last Updated 19 May 2006