Henry, who turns 31 in August, may be entering the closing seasons of a career which has brought so much joy to so many, but the Barcelona forward has no intentions of resting on his laurels.

Yet a £16.1million move to Spain, by Henry's own admission, did not go according to plan either on or off the field.

Shortly after leaving Arsenal for the Nou Camp - having a year earlier declared the intention to see out his career at the Emirates Stadium - it was announced Henry would divorce from wife Claire and the resulting problems of diminished contact with his two-year-old daughter Tea clearly affected his game.

Barcelona - now with Henry added to their star-studded line-up of Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto'o - struggled to make an impact in the La Liga title race. Although the Spanish giants reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, their European aspirations were ended by Manchester United.

Rumours of a return to England were, though, swiftly rebuffed by Henry, who also found himself linked to a big-money move to play Major League Soccer in the United States.

Tactically, Henry's switch was also an adjustment, often deployed wide on the left as a winger rather than with the freedom to roam he had once been given under Arsene Wenger at Arsenal.

However, the 30-year-old maintained: "You can't compare it with what I used to do with Arsenal. It is impossible.

"Here at Barcelona, I am the guy who plays on the left, only the guy who plays on the left.

"You can't score as many goals whether you play in the box or, like I do, you start running 60 metres from goal. I have never run so much in my whole career."

While Henry may have been forced to adapt his club game, goals continued to come for France, as he passed Michel Platini as Les Blues' top goalscorer of all time when he netted a late double during a qualifier against Lithuania in Nantes.

Despite competition from Lyon's Karim Benzema and the resurgence of Chelsea front man Nicolas Anelka, France coach Raymond Domenech sees Henry as his first-choice striker for this summer's finals in Austria and Switzerland, where they will face off against World Cup winners Italy, Holland and Romania in the so-called 'Group of Death'.

Henry knows to stay at the top, you have to produce virtuoso performances time and again.

He observed: "What is important is being consistent, and it turns out that when you are consistent, you end up breaking records. You have to be there all the time."

That, though, was not the case when Henry arrived at Arsenal from a disappointing spell with Juventus.

Henry may have left as the club's all-time league goalscorer with 174 goals, but back in 1999, the forward was honest enough to admit the famous timepiece in the Clock End of Highbury was often more in danger of being hit than the back of the opposition net.

Wenger, though, always had faith in the player he had seen as a promising teenager coming through the ranks at their shared former club, Monaco.

"Thierry was not convinced that he could score goals, but I was as I knew him when he was 16, when he was at Monaco and was top scorer in his age group in France," recalled the Arsenal manager.

"I told him 'if you can score at 16 then you can score at 21'. Thierry was surprised when I first asked him but in fairness, he said 'let's try it'."

Henry would drive the Gunners on to unprecedented success over the next eight seasons, but just one thing was missing from his Arsenal CV following defeat to, ironically, Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League final.

More agony was to follow that summer, however, as Les Bleus battled to within 90 minutes of World Cup glory, only to miss out to Italy.

Henry, though, looks back with a sense of pragmatism.

"Over the years people were saying I could take my team somewhere - and I did that in the two most important competitions in the world," he said.

Yet suggest to the brilliant Frenchman that it is all about him, only his goalscoring feats will not get you very far. However, mention his assists or tackling back and Henry's eyes light up.

While any striker who insists that it "doesn't matter who scores" is never really telling the truth, Henry genuinely delights in the fact he leads the assists tables at the end of most seasons.

He declared: "It's a team game, not a one-man show.

"I will always say that - without my team, I am nothing.

"When you play as a team you can see individuals do their thing, every single one of them.

"You have to play as a team, no matter who you are and what you do."

Some, though, just cannot help but do that better than others.