So he could won the old ballon d'or anyway. should of. whether he won the FIFA World player of the year or not.

I guess you could say he deserved a ballon d'or in the same way even David Beckham deserved it more than Michael Owen in '01. . but he never deserved a FIFA World Player of the year award (again, imo) because he was never THE best player in the world, but always among the best. (two well-deserved runner ups)

2004 was won by Shevchenko, not Dinho. I think it should have been Dinho, but since Sheva won it they might aswell have given it to Henry, who won the league undefeated that year and the Golden Shoe. The problem is Arsenal surprisingly fucked up against Chelsea in the CL and France had a bad Euro... but Ukraine didn't even make it to the tournament and Milan also fell in CL quarterfinals, so I'll never understand how they chose Sheva over Thierry or Dinho (although the brazilian was trophyless and didn't play the CL, so you could argue that).

2006 shouldn't have been Cannavaro, let alone Zidane imo. The best players at the time were Eto'o, Kakà and Dinho, but they failed in the WC (Eto'o didn't even make it) so that kind of ruled them out. Zidane was mediocre at best for the first half of the year, and he was retired during the second half of it. He had a great WC though... but still, 7 games can't make up for a whole year. Cannavaro had a good season at Juve and a great WC (although personally I think Materazzi was Italy's best player in the tournament). I do think Henry would have been a worthy winner after carrying Arsenal to their first ever CL final and being instrumental in France's WC run (dispite not being as good as Zidane in that tournament). Overall, I think it's debatable who should have won it that year (which probably explains why they gave it to a defender for the first time), but I do think that Henry would have been a better choice than Cannavaro.

was an amazing striker, definitely one of the best of his time.

the handball vs. ireland however, how he celebrated the goal and tried to blame the ref will always be a black spot on his great career...

we need a Thierry Henry through the ages or legacy/legends signature in memoriam.

Well I was talking about the award that at the time was given to the world's best player, namely the FIFA World Player of the Year award (as discussed in this thread with LepInTheHood.) the old ballon d'or has peculiar choices for their award. Nedved, Owen and Shevchenko come to mind.


Owen was never even top 5 imo, the FIFA award got it right giving it to Figo. 2003 had Zidane written all over it and same with 2004 and Ronaldinho, and they did win those years here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Player_of_the_Year

^ Looking at that list, I don't find a single place to put Henry tbh. (but both runner ups seem accurate)


Cannavaro got both the ballon d'or (56-09 edition) and the FIFA POTY (91-09 edition) in '06 but I can say with 99% certainty it would have gone to Zidane if not for two major reasons:

* Zidane didn't play half the fucking year (retired july 2006, award is jan-dec)
* Like Luis Suarez who didn't even get nominated for this years ballon d'or for biting, Zidane's headbutt on Materazzi would hinder him from winning FIFA POTY / ballon d'or

its sad we will never see goals like this being scored again

Holy fucking shit.

1 year in barca > rest of his career ^^^^^^

This post was edited by B4al on Dec 18 2014 05:16pm