Tim Henman v/s Carlos Moya was top-draw. The unseeded Briton prevailed after five sets, winning the last set 13-11. Matching each other shot for shot, the players battled for almost four hours – a treat, a clash of contrasting styles; until Moya, who had saved half a dozen match points, double-faulted on the last point to hand the crowd favourite a place in the next round.
Surely the best match of Round 1 this year.
There are things we love talking about, but believe they will never happen. One such is the news that Thierry Henry will be unveiled as a Barcelona player in the coming days. Probably because the press has been talking about this for the past few years, this – the first real “shock-and-awe” move of this summer – doesn’t come as a major surprise. An air of told-you-so shrouds Henry’s departure from Arsenal.
I’m no fan of Henry. But the unwritten rule in sport is that if the opposition fans boo you, it means you are doing something right. Henry was / is a classy striker, someone you never want to see on the opposing team sheet.
A deadly mix of precision, guile, movement and positioning, he was around whom the Arsenal system was built. And that is the fear every Arsenal fan now will feel. Is the system good enough without its captsone? Indications are that it might not be. Arsenal’s form has revolved around Henry’s. Moreover, the present team is still a work in progress, and it needs the stability that a big-name player can provide.
In just the past two years, the team has lost a core of players – Robert Pires, Denis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell. And except for Fabregas who has stepped in and fit snugly into Vieira’s shoes, the replacements for the others (Rosicky, Hleb, Adebayor, Senderos, Flamini) are yet to rise and shine. The news from Ashburton Grove over the next few weeks is sure to keep everyone interested.
But don’t count the Gunners out yet. After all, Manchester United won the Premiership this season despite the loss of their top striker, Ruud van Nistelrooy (a striker, not as gifted as, but just as deadly as Henry). A top club only needs a couple of young players to step up and take control.
On the other hand
If anyone thinks that Barca have pulled off a major coup by signing Henry, that would be a mistake. The Catalans already have a top-draw forward line – Ronaldinho, Eto’o and Messi, the REM trio as they are known. Since Eto’o and Henry play a similar style, Henry would not directly fit into a 4-3-3. And since you don’t pay 16 million pounds to put a world-class striker on the bench, Rijkaard will have to work a system to fit Henry in. As one Spanish paper put it, such a system will definitely be unnatural.
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