Henry hails youth experience

  Sunday 15 July 2007

by Greg Demetriou & Mark Pettitfrom London

As the 6th UEFA European Under-19 Championship prepares for kick-off in Austria on Monday afternoon, FC Barcelona striker Thierry Henry has been reflecting on the invaluable grounding in international football which such tournaments provide.

'Good all the time'
Henry is perfectly placed to assess the importance of the UEFA youth tournament having scored the only goal of the 1996 U18 final as France defeated Spain, an achievement that was followed by FIFA World Cup glory just two years later and victory in UEFA EURO 2000™. The striker told uefa.com that playing at such a high level at such a young age focuses players to hit their top form as often as they can, saying: "To be there and play and to be the one to be picked to play you need to be good all the time. You need to work really hard and that is the what helped me arrive where I am right now."

'Work hard'
Although France's victorious U18 squad included the likes of William Gallas, Mickaël Silvestre, David Trezeguet and Nicolas Anelka, success in such tournaments is not necessarily a precursor to a high-profile career in the senior game, however, as the 29-year-old Henry recognizes. "It doesn't mean if you don't get selected for the youth team you should give up and it doesn't mean when you do it all that you are going to be picked for the first team because so many of my team-mates from that time didn't make it - so many times you see people doing well with the youth team and then after they struggle to go further. Then you have a guy like me who went through since the U15s all the way, whereas Franck Ribéry never played in any youth tournaments. Whatever path you take you just need to work hard and have a little bit of luck."