Thierry Henry needs no introduction, nor justification of his greatness, when discussing his contribution to world football.
Quite simply put, he is a true superstar of the game, a player who started out at Monaco, graced Juventus as a left-wing, before making his name at Arsenal as an out-and-out striker.
In 373 games for the Gunners, Henry smashed 227 goals on his way to becoming the London side’s record scorer. From Arsenal, the next stop was Barcelona before heading out to the MLS with New York Red Bulls, a brief return to Arsenal on loan before retiring from football with the Red Bulls at the start of 2015.
After getting a taste for management as assistant to Roberto Martinez’s Belgium in the recent World Cup, Henry emerged as a front-runner for the Aston Villa job currently held by incumbent Steve Bruce.
Earlier ‘interest’ from the former Arsenal striker has now been firmed up according to David Woods, Chief Football Writer for the Daily Star. Woods writes that Henry “has agreed to become Aston Villa’s new manager,” in an article that broke late Monday evening.
It is thought that the new majority shareholders in Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens remain unconvinced that current boss Bruce is the man to take Villa forward and are looking at Thierry Henry to provide some va-va-voom to the Villa.
Woods goes on to say in the latter part of his article that a source “close to the takeover negotiations” admitted to the Daily Star’s Starsport that Henry has “verbally agreed” to sign on as the new boss at Villa Park.
All that stands in his way is for the new owners to relieve Bruce of his duties, something that the following tweet says will cost Villa’s new owners a severance fee of £2 million.
— Cian Carroll (@CianByNature) July 23, 2018
Other issues at stake are said to be the package that Henry will be negotiating with Villa and the transfer budget that he will receive. Other than that, the new Villa majority shareholders Sawiris and Edens will have to convince the footballing authorities that Villa can move forward within the strict budgets and loss structures of the EFL’s Financial Fair Play initiative.
However, all that aside, it looks like Aston Villa fans will have something to cheer about and possibly in the next couple of days.
