Premier League 100: Artist, architect, revolutionary, how Thierry Henry transformed English football forever

What’s the point of football, really? What’s it all for, this bedazzling bazaar of glorious nonsense? Is it simply an exercise in accumulating precious metal? Show us your medals, show us your trophies? Is it ultimately about who won and who lost, who scored and who didn’t? Or can it – should it – must it – be about more than that?

The following two statements are facts. Ryan Giggs won more Premier League titles than anybody else; Alan Shearer scored more Premier League goals than anybody else. The following two statements are also facts. Brian McClair won more titles than Cristiano Ronaldo; Romelu Lukaku has scored more goals, at a quicker rate, than Didier Drogba. In short: there’s a natural limit to what numbers can tell us. There comes a point where “show us your medals” exhausts its usefulness. Thierry Henry is the greatest player the Premier League has ever seen, and I can’t prove it, or show it on a graph. He just is.

Oh, of course there were the tangible achievements: the two league titles, the pivotal role in English football’s only unbeaten season of the modern era, the four Golden Boots in five seasons, the 175 goals (still the most by a foreign player in the English top flight). After all, you don’t become the Premier League’s greatest footballer without a substantial body of work. But it’s the less measurable stuff where Henry truly distinguishes himself: the unsurpassable legacy of a player who changed English football itself.

You can split the Premier League into two eras: Before Thierry and After Thierry. Before Henry, under no circumstances could you have included the Premier League in any discussion of the world’s best leagues. After him, under no circumstances could you leave it out. Henry wasn’t solely responsible for the transformation, but he was the league’s outstanding player throughout its defining period: not simply its top scorer but its most prolific creator, its biggest talent, its most skilled entertainer.

Most of the names on The Independent’s Top 100 list can be described as great footballers. Henry, by contrast, was at least three great footballers in one. As a striker, as a winger, as a playmaker, he moulded English football in his own image, snapping it out of its rigid strictures and helping to forge something entirely new. Between around 1998 and 2004, Arsenal under Arsene Wenger played the sort of football never before seen on English pitches. Tactically, athletically and aesthetically, they set a standard that raised the bar for the Mourinho Chelsea teams and late-Ferguson United teams that would follow. Henry was at its heart: a pure creator, even as he laid the rest of the league to destruction.

Indeed, some of the above roles could be parsed even further. At his peak, Henry wasn’t simply one kind of forward, but several: penalty-box poacher, target man, second striker, advanced runner, deep-lier. He is one of the most underrated headers of a ball the Premier League has ever seen. And he knitted it all together with a technical ability, tactical intelligence, physical ability and breathtaking flair that no other contender for this crown can match. Some scored more goals. Some (occasionally) scored better goals. Nobody scored as many goals, of a comparable quality, whilst also creating just as many, and also winning things.

Roy Keane inspired one club to pre-eminence. Henry inspired a whole league. Ryan Giggs dominated the Premier League when it was at its weakest before receding into the ensemble. Henry dominated it during its seminal era, and for pretty much the entire time he was here. Eric Cantona got crowds on their feet and won titles with style and grace. Henry did it for longer, more productively, and without kicking anybody in the face. Cristiano Ronaldo lit up English football for a few seasons before going on to greater things abroad. Henry did his best work here, before squeezing out the last few drops of his career abroad and moving into a vaguely unsatisfying life of car adverts.

And perhaps that’s why, in retrospect, and for all he’s done, English football still underrates Henry. Perhaps overexposure has reflected a little of the immaculate light from his playing feats. Cantona and Keane still retain some of the enigmatic mystique of their playing days; Giggs hasn’t really been retired long enough yet; Ronaldo is still, somehow doing it. Henry, meanwhile, seems to have left all that behind long ago. Now, as then, he longs to create something new. Thus far, it’s been an unremarkable coaching career, a slightly pedestrian punditry career and a disastrous managerial career.

But what he left behind – that will stand the test of time. And so we come back to what, ultimately, football is for. Of course it’s about winning, it’s about trophies, it’s about pouring every last drop of yourself out onto that pitch and leaving nothing in reserve. It’s about doing it when it matters, when the clock’s running down and the limbs are tired and you’ve got to win both of your games in hand.

But if it’s about all those things, then surely it’s also about art and spirit. It’s about beating your man, producing the unexpected, loosening jaws, playing with our emotions, creating something that’s never been seen before. It’s about possibility and enchantment and occasionally barefaced cheek. It’s about the sort of joy that goes beyond tribalism, the sort of exhilaration you can’t express in a graphic, the sort of inspiration you can’t weigh in precious metal. And if we’re anointing the greatest player of the Premier League era, is it possible that we’d settle for anything less?