{"id":841221,"date":"2026-09-09T01:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T01:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/841221\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T01:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T01:40:11","slug":"thierry-henry-arsenals-transfer-window-champions-league-and-cesc-fabregas-the-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/841221\/","title":{"rendered":"Thierry Henry: Arsenal\u2019s transfer window, Champions League and Cesc Fabregas, the manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thierry Henry is talking about last week\u2019s end of soccer\u2019s summer transfer window, a blitz of billion-dollar activity in which Arsenal\u2019s Premier League rivals broke records in pursuit of Mikel Arteta\u2019s defending champions.<\/p>\n

Arsenal made big plays for big players of their own, both for Real Madrid\u2019s Vinicius Junior<\/a> and Atletico Madrid\u2019s Julian Alvarez, but instead found themselves two men down in attack having sold Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus and Leandro Trossard and sending Ethan Nwaneri out on loan for the rest of the season, despite spending \u20ac40million ($45.8m, \u00a334m) on 24-year-old winger Christos Tzolis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After Arteta\u2019s team won the Premier League and reached the Champions League final last season, there were plenty of fans who craved an extra sprinkle of stardust to propel the north London club into a period of extended dominance. But former Arsenal striker Henry, speaking to The Athletic ahead of his return to the CBS Sports studio for the U.S. network\u2019s UEFA Champions League coverage starting this week, makes a different case.<\/p>\n

In a Premier League where change has been the order of the day, where more than half the division\u2019s 20 managers or head coaches were appointed this calendar year and players are recycled across clubs with ever more brutality, Henry sees strength for Arsenal in continuity. He also takes lessons from the big winners of world football during the past two seasons, when Spain won the World Cup without a cast of billboard names and Paris Saint-Germain conquered Europe in both years by finally abandoning its indulgence of stars and prioritizing the collective under coach Luis Enrique.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people right now are focusing always on names, transfer windows, and, \u2018My god, this guy\u2019s gonna change my club!\u2019\u201d Henry says on a video call held last week. \u201cNo. You being a team and having cohesion will change your club. You having an identity, and a coach who knows what needs to happen and 11 players running, whatever their names are, will change your club.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes, we go so much into, \u2018Let\u2019s go and buy that guy \u2014 he will change the club\u2019. It\u2019s easy to say now that PSG is a good team. When all those guys (including Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Lionel Messi) left two years ago, everyone thought, \u2018Oh my god, where are they going to go from that?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThen they got Bradley Barcola, and then they got (fellow attacker) Desire Doue. At that time, you\u2019re not thinking those guys are going to do what they did. But because Luis Enrique is so sound on how he likes to play, they have done it. Do you remember what (PSG\u2019s 2025 Ballon d\u2019Or-winning France forward) Ousmane Dembele said? He said, \u2018If you don\u2019t run at Paris Saint-Germain, you\u2019re out\u2019. Simple as that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at Arsenal, you don\u2019t have an offensive midfielder or a striker that was in a (Premier League) team of the year last season. But they\u2019re a team.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople might have been saying about Spain, who is that guy (Alex) Baena playing on the left, or who is (Mikel) Oyarzabal? They conceded only 10 shots on target the whole tournament. They made France and Argentina look like normal teams (in the semi-final and final, respectively).<\/p>\n

\u201cWith transfers, you\u2019re not sure of anything, but what I\u2019m sure of is everybody needs to run, coaches need to have a great identity, and the plan is to be coachable.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Arsenal, Henry says he sees a set of players unaffected by ego or sense of place in the dressing room. He highlights how Eberechi Eze tore Tottenham Hotspur apart home and away last season, scoring five goals in those two games,<\/a> but also at times accepted his contributions would come from the bench.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you know who the alpha is, it\u2019s easier for the group,\u201d Henry says. \u201cIf the alpha is the team, it is even easier. Once everybody knows the system makes them tick, everybody applies and goes with the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see how PSG press? They\u2019re unplayable. But it took (Luis Enrique) a good five to six months to get that team going. People do forget that players need to be coachable. That\u2019s a massive thing that people do not talk a lot about. If you\u2019re a coach and your players are willing to do everything you ask them to do, and they have a tiny bit of quality, you can go places. If they rebel a tiny bit, it can be more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Arsenal\u2019s lack of a glitzy signing since last season does not unduly worry Henry, he sees the potential to do more in those already at the club. He has challenged Bukayo Saka to hit 15 goals and 15 assists across all competitions this season, a feat the England international has never achieved before, coming closest when he scored 20 and created 14 in 2023-24. But despite Arsenal\u2019s strong early-season form, Henry is wary of making quick judgements.<\/p>\n

\"Thierry<\/p>\n

\n Henry made 20 assists for Arsenal in 2002-03. Can Saka get close to that this season? (Stuart MacFarlane\/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Henry says he expects it to take a while to see the best of Chelsea and Manchester City under new managers Xabi Alonso and Enzo Maresca, particularly when there has been so much flux at those clubs. He recalls how, this time last year, champions Liverpool began the season with five league wins out of five under Arne Slot.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was like, \u2018Liverpool know how to win. I don\u2019t see how they\u2019re not going to win the title again\u2019. Two weeks after, it went south for so many reasons. When they didn\u2019t buy anyone, they won the league with Arne Slot (in 2024-25). They went on to buy people, they imploded. That\u2019s why when people ask me, \u2018Who is a challenger, who is a contender? Do you think if that player goes there, they can challenge?\u2019, (I say) \u2018Hey, we have to wait. Let Maresca work, let Xabi work\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I coached. People would tell me, \u2018Thierry, you coached for one minute and a half (his sideline career includes leading France\u2019s men to silver medals in the 2024 Olympic soccer tournament)!\u2019 But still, (it is not easy) to put the team together during the Olympics in two weeks; a team that never played together before and will never play together after, to build an identity and a philosophy in two weeks. This is why I say let the coach work. Let\u2019s see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Henry managed France\u2019s men to the Olympic soccer tournament\u2019s final in 2024 (Claudio Villa\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

This season\u2019s CBS coverage, which will see Henry reunited with presenter Kate Scott and studio analysts Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards, will also devote plenty of airtime, and possibly an on-site visit, to Champions League first-timers Como, the Italian club that has qualified for the competition under his former Arsenal team-mate Cesc Fabregas.<\/p>\n

Both Henry and Fabregas invested in Como in 2022, when it was in second-tier Serie B. Fabregas first joined as a player that same year, before coaching at under-19 level and then taking charge of the senior team, which was promoted to Serie A in 2024 and finished fourth in May, ending the campaign with the division\u2019s best defensive record.<\/p>\n

Como host Manchester United in the third Champions League gameweek in mid-October and travel to Fabregas\u2019 hometown team Barcelona, where Henry also played, later in this initial eight-matches-each league phase, which runs until late January.<\/p>\n

Henry compares their rise to a Leicester City story, albeit without the equivalent of a fairytale Premier League title<\/a> just yet. Fabregas and Henry, it should be said, have the same agent.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut people will tell you, I will call a spade a spade,\u201d says Henry. \u201cThe guy (Fabregas) is good. He has evolved. The Cesc that I saw coming out at Arsenal at 16 years old, bossing the midfield, playing against Patrick Vieira and Gilberto Silva (in training), you\u2019re not dumb to be able to do that at 16, so you know that guy is a thinker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henry says there was a period where he wondered if Fabregas was \u201cgoing to be that stubborn guy\u201d, the type of coach who is so principled in his approach that it undermines a club\u2019s chance of progress with them in charge. The style of the Como team is adventurous, \u201cbeing on the ball and pressing\u201d. But, Henry says, Fabregas has also shown flexibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cCesc has to now be the hottest thing on the market as a coach at a non big-big club,\u201d he adds. \u201cHe earned it, because he worked really hard. He started with the youngsters, he was the assistant when we went up, he took the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at our starting XI and the starting XI last year, I don\u2019t think a lot of people would have known a lot of players. But again, we are a team. It goes back to exactly what I said before. What we brought is players that are coachable in the style that says Fabregas likes to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cCesc can go places. He has that something else \u2014 when a coach speaks and people go, \u2018Yes, yes, yes\u2019, like a (Alex) Ferguson or (Jose) Mourinho. You\u2019re like, \u2018How did you manage them to make them do that?\u2019 On top of that, he is very clever. He sees the game, he can manage the game well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henry does not help to run Como day-to-day. This is the domain of the Indonesian ownership group, headed by Mirwan Suwarso, which has tapped into the club\u2019s geographic allure (Como sits beside an idyllic lake in northern Italy) to create popular branding for jerseys and apparel. \u201cLike the youngsters would say, there is a bit of a sauce with it,\u201d Henry says.<\/p>\n

How hands-on does Henry get as an investor? He says he was initially reticent to get over-involved, as he knows it may have irritated him, in his days as a coach at Monaco of France\u2019s Ligue 1 and CF Montreal in MLS, to have other voices chiming in too often.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played with Cesc, so it\u2019s a bit more intimate, so we talk about players. But he\u2019s the coach. I don\u2019t call after a game and say, \u2018Hey, why did you play like that?\u2019 When Cesc calls me and asks what I think about the game, I\u2019ll tell him. It\u2019s more of a supporting way, and obviously he calls me and we talk about shall we or shall we not go for that player? I give him my opinion. I don\u2019t say, \u2018You must\u2026\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a coach, and it can be a bit annoying when someone is over your shoulder and you\u2019re like, \u2018Hey, can you let me work, please?\u2019 But I view it a little as, who helps the helper? Everybody wants things from the coach. Fans, sponsors, players. And then who helps him? Sometimes, you just need to sit and listen, because that guy needs to vent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho thinks about the coach? People forget that a coach is human. You don\u2019t see players going to knock on the door of a coach and say, \u2018Are you OK, Coach?\u2019 No. It\u2019s like, \u2018Why didn\u2019t I play yesterday?\u2019 But, by the way, Cesc doesn\u2019t need a lot of help.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thierry Henry is talking about last week\u2019s end of soccer\u2019s summer transfer window, a blitz of billion-dollar activity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[463,10535,1088,1084,34640,403,99,1794],"class_list":["post-841221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-arsenal","tag-champions-league","tag-paris-saint-germain","tag-premier-league","tag-serie-a","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}