Thierry Henry talks about his rivalry with Ruud van Nistelrooy

It happened during a recent podcast, where Thierry Henry finally opened up about his particular rivalry against Ruud van Nistelrooy.

During the Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ era, Thierry Henry had Ruud van Nistelrooy to worry about in terms of a rivalry. We are talking about two of the greatest strikers in the world during that time in the two greatest football clubs in the world. Although they only took their rivalry to the domestic stage, it was clear they were in a league of their own. For many years, it was almost as if Thierry Henry didn’t think he had any opposition as a striker.

However, he just confessed Ruud van Nistelrooy did fire him up to be more competitive on a weekly basis in the Premier League. Keep in mind that Ruud was the player who effectively ended Arsenal’s incredible invincible run of 49 consecutive matches in the tournament. It’s only natural Henry sees the Dutch striker as his obvious foe during his golden years playing for the Gunners.

Henry always kept an eye out for Ruud.

While talking on the Robbie Fowler Podcast, Henry was asked if he checked on Van Nistelrooy’s goals: “Yes, I did because it’s normal – you’re battling with someone. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me but it didn’t dictate me or my game. I knew what I had to do for my team. I wasn’t going to shoot from every angle just to beat Ruud. He was a hell of a player, don’t get me wrong. I’ll always say that we have to score, not I have to score. More often than not, it would be me but the team has to score, not me. We have to win, not me. If you look at it, I didn’t score a lot of goals in my career at Arsenal and then we lost the game.

“Those goals, I’m taking them, but those goals didn’t mean anything for me when we lost. I wasn’t like: ‘I have done my job, scored my goals, but we lost 3-2’, no, it wasn’t like that. I cared because I didn’t do enough and that’s how you should feel as an individual. Yes, did I look at if Van Nistelrooy scored? Yes. Did I look at if Manchester United won? Yes. Obviously I’m looking at whether Man United won a game, then I’m looking at Ruud because we were battling. At the time, people didn’t care too much about assists, so I wasn’t looking at who was making assists. It became a thing recently, in the last four or five years. I did look at it, but that was not going to dictate the person and the player I was going to be.”