Henry delivery upbeat message after crucial win

Henry delivery upbeat message after crucial win

March 29, 2009

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France captain Thierry Henry believes his side's current position in World Cup qualifying Group Seven is better in reality than it looks on paper.
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Despite their 1-0 win over Lithuania in Kaunas last night, Les Bleus remain third in their pool, five points behind Serbia with around half the campaign gone.

But with the French having now played Romania, Austria and now Lithuania on their travels, Henry reckons France's situation is not too bad after all.

"In this course of qualification, I don't want to look for excuses but we have played three of our four matches away from home up to now," said the Barcelona striker, whose side play Serbia away in September.

"We will now have more matches at home and it will be up to us to close the gap on Serbia.

"It isn't a surprise to see them at the summit. They are a footballing nation who possess some great players."

France, who beat Serbia 2-1 at the Stade de France with some comfort back in September, are unbeaten in qualifying since their opening-round horror show against Austria, when they lost 3-1 in Vienna.

If they beat Lithuania on Wednesday in Paris in the return match between the two sides, France will climb into second place and to within two points of Serbia with five matches left.

That will take some of the heat off coach Raymond Domenech and his under-fire squad, although Henry insists he has not been feeling the pressure despite his country's poor start to qualification.

"People were talking before the match about our doubts, were they? I don't listen to what is being said," added Henry in L'Equipe. "The pitch, that's where the truth is. People speak because they want to speak. Us, we know what have to do.

"We must put all this into context - we haven't just beaten a top-10 team in the world. But this Lithuania team isn't easy to play against and we will see that again on Wednesday.

"Our team is in the process of being built; we can't do it overnight. To progress, you have to have matches like this (against Lithuania), matches like the one we lost in Austria, comebacks like we had in Romania (France came from 2-0 down to draw 2-2) and matches like we had at home to Serbia where everyone was expecting things from us.

"I am not going to talk about this Lithuania game being a turning point. I hope there will be more of them."

France also have home and away matches against group whipping boys the Faroe Islands to come.