Thierry Henry: The fabulous achievement of a virtual striker

I hope I am not the only one to trek on this site who has played playforyourclub.com’s Striker of the Month flash game.

For those who are unaware of this fabulous office spare-time killer, here is the deal: You get to select one of the Premiership’s strikers (and that means everyone on a roster from Portsmouth’s Benjani Mwaruwari to Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney) at the beginning of the game. Once you’ve made your selection you are given a static screen of a goalmouth with three defenders and the goalie standing between your striker and the goal. The aim of the game is pretty simple, “crosses” are whipped in from the left and right, and you must attempt to score each time.

You are given 15 “balls” (lives), which decrease by one each time the striker fails to score. There is a scoring system which rewards everything from just hitting the ball (no easy task at first) to scoring a goal. This would all be fine and dandy, but if it were not for the high-score system the game implements, you would not be reading this article. Once the game is over you are asked to submit your points, and there are two high-scores kept: one is related to personal achievement, with the amount of points you have amassed in the past 30 minutes, the other is the points of the striker for the given month.

So you see, the players attempt to get their favourite player the Striker of the Month title by scoring as many points as they can with him. This is where Thierry Henry comes into the picture. He has not surrendered the Striker of the Month honour since September 2005, when freshly-signed Spurs striker Grzegorz Rasiak won the title. This is a streak of 17 months and counting, as he (or rather his fans) has once again secured the honour for February.

I have been looking all over the Internet for non-fanclub websites that should offer non-biased voting for any player in any sport who has been able to hold any kind of Player of the Month award for such a duration, alas to no avail. Two sportsmen came pretty close - tennis’s Roger Federer and golf’s Tiger Woods. I believe Henry has to be flattered to be in the company of people who are so dominant at their respective sports.

Now I know that this “award” does not compare to the ones Tiger and Federer have received, yet I still believe this is an indication of just how well liked and respected the French striker is among football fans. The feat is even more astonishing if you consider that since September 2004 Henry has won every month except for three occasions: Ruud Van Nistelrooy beat him twice, with the aforementioned Rasiak's victory being the third. That means he has won the striker of the month 27 times out of a possible 30 in that span. It might not be a FIFA Player of the Year award, but I believe Striker of the Month shows how much the online fans love the Frenchman’s game.

With a top-ten list being provided monthly it is an interesting thing to see the rest of the best as well. Just as Henry has seemed to have the top spot secured all along, this season’s number two has been Rooney each time. It is interesting to see that the in-house battle between Andriy Shevchenko and Didier Drogba is mostly being won by the Ukrainian. Considering the fact that the nostalgic factor can kick in, it is no surprise that more fans would want to take control of the former Player of the Year winner.

Nostalgia seems to be a factor almost monthly, as every month there seems to be a striker in the top 10 whose past is much brighter than his present. A general returnee of this sort is Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler. We have all seen the banners last year upon Fowler’s return to Liverpool which had shown that the fans still thought of him as one of their favourites, and this sentiment is regularly on display in the top 10 standings of striker of the month. Most Liverpool fans have to be torn between playing as Dirk Kuyt or as Fowler, since their in-house war has seen them in a see-saw battle. Interestingly enough, the lanky Peter Crouch never seems to get into the argument.

Just for kicks, let me show the make-up of the top 10 by clubs. There are three Arsenal players (Henry, Theo Walcott, Julio Baptista), three Chelsea players (Sheva, Drogba, Frank Lampard), two Liverpool players (Kuyt, Fowler) with one ex-Liverpool favourite (now ex) Aston Villa player Milan Baros, and one Manchester United player (Rooney). I can’t quite explain  Baros, I’m pretty sure many Liverpool fans still like him enough to rack up some points for him, whilst the game has yet to be updated with John Carew having taken Milan’s spot at the end of January in real life. Were those votes for Carew, another internationally-renowned striker?

This article is to be taken lightly, of course, as the Striker of the Month is no more than a monthly highscore table for a flash soccer game. Henry's streak only means that either most better players in the flash game prefer him to the others, or he has the most fans amongst those who visit the game's website.

Either way I still say it is a nice accomplishment.  And who’s to say it is a less worthy one than winning over people of the press for a yearly award?