Thierry Henry has defended himself after criticism over the way he hosted Monday’s Ballon d’Or ceremony.<\/p>\n
The former France and Arsenal forward, who has come under fire for remarks he made towards Barcelona star Lamine Yamal, overall winner Harry Kane and co-host Kate Scott on the night, has addressed what he said was “people getting really excited about nothing”.<\/p>\n
Henry, who was presenting the ceremony alongside CBS Sports colleague Scott, joked with Lamine Yamal about him winning a third successive young player of the year award.<\/p>\n
He also corrected Scott’s pronunciation of Brazil legend Socrates’ name and admitted he wanted fellow Frenchman Kylian Mbappe to beat Kane to the top prize.<\/p>\n
Addressing the Lamine Yamal situation, which received an audible reaction from the audience in attendance, Henry said he wasn’t “checking his ego” and emphasised his admiration of the young Spaniard.<\/p>\n
On the night, he teased Lamine Yamal by saying of his young player award: “It’s your third one, right? But is it the one you really wanted to win?”<\/p>\n
Speaking in a social media video on Wednesday, Henry said: “I’m a big fan of Lamine Yamal. I wasn’t checking his ego at all – that you didn’t like the joke, I can understand.<\/p>\n
“But don’t do that, he’s one of the players I’d pay to watch, I love him.”<\/p>\n
The 49-year-old also responded to criticism over his response to co-host Scott’s pronunciation of ‘Socrates’, claiming she was in on the joke herself.<\/p>\n
“You didn’t like the joke, I understand, but please stop saying I disrespected Kate,” Henry said.<\/p>\n
“I will never do that and you can ask her, she was on the joke with me. She did Soc on purpose, and I said Soc, so please stop inventing stories.”<\/p>\n
Arsenal forward Bukayo Saka won the Socrates Award for his humanitarian and charity work.<\/p>\n
Henry added Kane was a “worthy winner” of the Ballon d’Or before telling everyone to “relax” after his support of Mbappe’s claim to the prize.<\/p>\n
“I’m French and I was always going to back up and support my fellow countryman,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I said to [Kane], ‘You are a worthy winner, you deserve it, you are the example that work ethic is a talent, working hard is a talent’. Well done, Harry Kane – and I call him Sir Harry Kane since the World Cup.<\/p>\n
“So please, people out there, relax, relax. I love Harry Kane, I love Lamine Yamal and I didn’t disrespect Kate. She was on the joke with me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thierry Henry has defended himself after criticism over the way he hosted Monday’s Ballon d’Or ceremony. The former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-897653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897653","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=897653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}