Thierry Henry's iconic Fratton Park moment – in a Portsmouth shirt. "I'll always remember it"
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Dan Sheldon
Across two meetings in 2004, the Arsenal striker showed his brilliance and was serenaded by opposition fans at the end of a historic season
Thierry Henry leaving the pitch to a standing ovation and with thousands of fans chanting his name was par for the course.
In a trophy-laden career that saw him win the World Cup with France in 1998, two Premier League titles with Arsenal in the early 2000s, and the Champions League at Barcelona, the now-CBS presenter and media pundit established himself as one of the game’s greatest strikers.
So, when a sold-out stadium is worshipping at the altar of Henry, there should be nothing unusual about it. Yet when this happened one Saturday in May 2004 after a 1-1 draw in the Premier League, it was anything but ordinary.
This was not Highbury, Arsenal’s home between 1913 and 2006 before their move to the Emirates; it was Fratton Park, Portsmouth’s 20,000-seater stadium on the south coast of England.
Arsenal were in their pomp, and would finish the season as Premier League champions, unbeaten as the ‘Invincibles’.
But Henry’s reception that day was not just for his performance in that match and that season as a whole, but for his heroics in an FA Cup quarter-final at the same ground a few months before.
On that night in March, to the surprise of nobody, Arsenal ran their mid-table Premier League hosts ragged, beating them 5-1, with Henry and Freddie Ljungberg scoring twice, and Kolo Toure netting the other.
Thierry Henry celebrates with Arsenal team-mates after scoring in the 5-1 win at Fratton Park (Martyn Hayhow/AFP via Getty Images)
The comfortable win — and Henry’s performance — was the start of a story which ended a few weeks later with the Arsenal striker donning a Portsmouth shirt after the league fixture back at Fratton Park.
“Every single time I meet someone from Portsmouth, that’s the first thing they say to me: ‘Oh my God, you put the shirt on that day and everything’,” Henry told a group of reporters, including The Athletic, in December.
“It was weird because you just beat them (a few months before), and they were still cheering. It was outstanding; they (the Portsmouth crowd) sang the whole game. The atmosphere was outstanding. Something happened that I will always remember, because it was special.”
With a Premier League-leading Arsenal side back in town today (Sunday) for an FA Cup tie, this one in the third round, as well as Henry, The Athletic has spoken to Portsmouth players who were involved in those two games for their memories of facing the Arsenal great.
Portsmouth — in their debut Premier League season and first in the top division of English football since the 1980s — were underdogs going into that FA Cup fixture (Arsenal were top of the league, Pompey two points ahead of last-placed Leeds United), but there was a sense within the team that they could do something special, especially as they had knocked out Liverpool in the previous round.
“I seem to remember doing lots of good things in that first half and thinking, ‘We’re still 3-0 down at half-time’,” Linvoy Primus, Portsmouth’s former central defender tasked with marking Henry in that FA Cup defeat, tells The Athletic.
“After 25 minutes, our right-back (Petri Pasanen), who was at the club on loan, looked at me and I looked at him, and we were like, ‘Please, ref. Call off the game now’. They were just too good.
“It’s interesting because you know what he (Henry) can do, and it’s pretty straightforward, but because of his pace and strength, you’ve got to be playing two games against him, one where you’re watching what’s going on with the other players on the pitch, but you also have to be fully concentrated on him. To play against Henry, who was in full flow that night, was something quite special.”
Primus going up against Henry in the Portsmouth vs Arsenal FA Cup tie in March 2004 (Adam Davy/EMPICS via Getty Images)
Despite the scoreline, Primus was arguably Portsmouth’s standout performer in the tie, and tells The Athletic how he approached Henry during the pre-game warm-up to ask if he could have his shirt as a memento after the match.
Much to Primus’ surprise, Henry handed him his top in the tunnel at half-time, noting how he had two more waiting in the dressing room. Henry took the defender’s shirt in return, although Primus jokes that the former striker “probably uses it as a duster for all his trophies”.
“Someone caught a photo of me and him going in for a tackle, and it was one of the best pictures I’ve seen anyone take,” Primus adds.
“I had a dozen or so printed, so we could get them signed for my charity. A month later, Thierry signed them for me, and just sent me one personally as well. In that moment, you just saw the man; you didn’t see the footballer. All-round, his footballing ability and the way he handles things, he’s just a solid guy.”
Matthew Taylor, who started in Portsmouth’s midfield in both matches, has similar memories of playing against Henry.
“I remember it’s the first time and probably the only time in my career where an opposing player has had his name sung by home supporters,” Taylor tells The Athletic.
“Sometimes in football, you just have to hold your hands up and say, ‘Look, they were far better than we were’, and there’s no shame in that. He was unplayable that day. He’s one of the best strikers that the Premier League has ever had. That was Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ season, so you look at it, and you look at their team against the team we had, with no disrespect to any of our players, but they were in a different league.
“They were playing a different sport to us that day.”
Taylor playing against Arsenal in the March 2004 FA Cup game (Phil Cole/Getty Images)
“People ask me all the time what it was like to play against them (Arsenal) and I always say there’s no point bringing your football boots because you might as well just bring a pair of Asics (track-and-field spikes) and run around the football pitch,” Nigel Quashie, who played in midfield for Portsmouth in both 2004 games, tells The Athletic.
“So, to experience that wasn’t nice at all, but to experience it in terms of the level they were at, it was from another planet. You just have to wait for the clock to run down, or ask the referee if he can bring another ball on, so you can have a touch.”
Even though Primus, Taylor and Quashie all highlight that they knew what Henry was likely to do given half a chance — cut inside from the left and shoot with his right foot — being able to stop it, they say, was almost impossible.
For his first goal in the FA Cup fixture, midway through the first half to make it 1-0, Henry received the ball inside the area, took a touch with his right foot to create space before striking it past Shaka Hislop in goal. His second (Arsenal’s fourth, early in the second half) came from outside the area, with the Frenchman curling a finish into the bottom corner.
“The difference (with Henry) is that if you switch off for even a second, he’s likely to be in, which is why your concentration levels have to be even higher,” Primus says, when asked to explain what it was like to defend against Henry that day.
“You aren’t just concentrating on him either. Ljungberg was the other one where you’d turn around and be wondering, ‘What’s he doing there?’.”
In the Premier League rematch it was Jose Antonio Reyes, not Henry, on the scoresheet for Arsenal.
Quashie, right, tries to challenge Henry during the Premier League game in May 2004 (Chris Ison – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
“Not only did he (Henry) have speed of mind, and he’s playing with excellent players that could recognise his movement, he’s really quick,” Taylor says. “And once he got past you, he was able to stay past you.
“Once that had happened, his decision-making and technique were that good on the night that it didn’t matter what type of finish it was, he was going to put it away.”
After the Premier League fixture on May 4, and with Arsenal having sealed the Premier League title two games earlier, Henry was evidently touched by what he had experienced from the Portsmouth supporters throughout those two visits to Fratton Park.
Speaking about the 5-1 FA Cup victory, Henry said: “I experienced something really crazy (at) Fratton Park. I was like, ‘I don’t understand’. They were, at the end of the game, singing my name. I was like, ‘But we just beat you. What are you doing?’. It was kind of weird!”
Although his performance on the pitch in that cup game remains memorable more than two decades on, what he did after the final whistle of the Premier League fixture a few weeks later became iconic. Henry returned to the pitch, wearing a Portsmouth shirt, having swapped with their striker Lomana LuaLua, and proceeded to applaud the fans as they serenaded him, in jest, by singing, “Sign him up.”
“I never usually do that,” Henry says of that moment. “I don’t usually put the shirt on like that (following a swap with an opposing player). I keep it on my shoulder. I just put the shirt on, and it stayed in history.”
“From all the time that I was there, I’d never seen that before at Fratton Park, and I don’t know if the fans had ever seen anything like that,” Quashie adds.
“I just think when class is around you, you’ve just got to appreciate it,” Primus, who didn’t play in that Premier League fixture because of injury, says. “You can’t be angry at it, and for him to come out and also show his appreciation of the Pompey fans for the noise they made from minute one to the end was something special, too.
“When you see an opposition player receiving that from your own fans, you recognise that they saw something special.
