THIERRY HENRY has opened up on his relationship with his father while chatting with Kate Abdo.
The Frenchman appeared on Abdo’s new show Kickin’ It.
Chatting with the CBS host and fellow ex-footballers Clint Dempsey and Charlie Davies, Henry admitted that he craved approval from his father over everyone else.
During the candid conversation, the 46-year-old said: “The stuff that I hear all the time, that’s what I wanted to hear when I was young.
“And I couldn’t care less… everyone tells me how great I was – I wanted to hear it from my dad.
“Only one guy beats a billion. But I wanted to hear it from my dad.
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“So, like I’m still trying to find that guy, you know.
“And I shared that so many times, that guy is at the bus stop… still waiting for the bus that will never come.
“How am I going to bring that guy with me? And what I know now, I’m at peace in a way but when I think deeper and I go back to the little man, I’m sad because I will never get it.
“I will never get that approval from my dad because my dad never approved anything.”
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Many fans appreciated Henry’s admission, with one tweeting: “Many of us can relate to this.”
A second commented: “The same to me.”
And a third wrote: “Life lessons.”
Henry was brought up in Parisian suburb Les Ulis by father Antoine, who hails from Guadeloupe, and mother Maryse, who is from Martinique.
In a 2018 interview with French broadcaster Canal Plus, Henry said of his dad: “Whether you like it or not, you’re the reflection of how your parents brought you up.
“I was brought up in relation to what didn’t work, rather than what did. My dad would always say ‘Oh you had a bad game, you put in a bad cross, you did this poorly, you messed this up…’
“So I developed a sort of shell because I knew that at the end of the game, he would tell me what I did incorrectly.
“So I grew up understanding what I did incorrectly. And not on what I did well. The greatest pressure I had in my career was putting a smile on my father’s face. If only to see one of his teeth! Anything… That was the hardest thing I had to do.
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“When you leave the dressing room, the face goes like this (a frown). I not only felt my father’s intransigent attitude throughout my whole career, it was inside me. It was inside me, and is part of who I am. It was my mindset, his mindset which he gave.
“As a kid I was able to surmount my father’s intransigent attitude, which helped shape me as an individual.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
