Henry Signs With Red Bulls

The Signing:

MLS’s New York Red Bulls has just signed French star forward Thierry Henry and his debut will take place July 22 against the English Premier League’s Tottenham Hotspurs. Henry was the face of Arsenal in England and a scoring machine from 1999-2007 and was then transfered to Barcelona where he played up until his signing with the Red Bulls. His last season with Barca, Henry rarely started and was played quite sparingly. Recently he played in the World Cup for a very disappointing France team and, like for Barca, sat on the bench and was usually subbed in mid-2nd half only to not help the team score anyway, France only scored 1 goal in 3 games, and that was in their last
game against South Africa and South Africa was down a man.

With this signing, the Red Bulls add to an already prolific goal scoring line. He will team up with fellow goal scorer Juan Pablo Angel who has had no problem finding the back of the net ever since coming to the United States. Henry and Angel should give MLS defenses a lot to handle.

Not the Beckham Experiment:

Although some may bring up the seemingly failed David Beckham experiment with the Los Angles Galaxy when the Henry signing is brought up, don’t be so quick to compare. It seems like bringing Beckham over to the U.S. was a failed attempt to integrate soccer into the American culture, but without Beckham, the memorable U.S. World Cup may never have happened. Beckham came over here and everyone knew that he would sell a ton of jerseys and sell out crowds, but what everyone expected was that he score goals to attract attention to the game itself. A goal scorer, however, he is not. Beckham has never been known as a goal scorer and was unfairly expected to score as if he were. What Beckham did goes beyond scoring, if it weren’t for Beckham, Landon Donovan wouldn’t have been the player he was during the World Cup. Many people haven’t noticed, but David Beckham made Landon Donovan and the other LA Galaxy World Cup member, Edson Buddle, significantly better than they would have been. Before this year, Donovan had a reputation of disappearing in the big moments. His past trips to play soccer in Europe and his play in the 2002 and 2006 World Cups were more than disappointing. However, this year Donovan was loaned to Everton in England where he played fantastically and I don’t need to remind anyone what he did during this year’s World Cup, especially how he changed American soccer with his goal against Algeria. So maybe Beckham didn’t put the ball in the back of the net as much as people would have liked, but he still helped American soccer and, even more importantly, American soccer players.

The Henry signing isn’t meant to have the kind of off field impact that Beckham’s did. He isn’t going to sell nearly as many jerseys and he isn’t going to attract as much attention. Henry, though, will satisfy what Americans like most about soccer, goals. Henry is in America to score and score he shall. He may be past his prime, but the defenses in the EPL and La Liga are much tougher than those in the MLS. Henry should boost soccer interest in America with his goal scoring prowess because as it was said in  “Field of Dreams” (soccer edition): If you score them, they will come.