If Thierry Henry thinks Barcelona fans will fret about his absence, thanks to the fever that kept him out of training yesterday, from tomorrow's Champions League semi-final first leg against Manchester United, he will be disappointed - almost as disappointed, in fact, as they have been with him.
Some 35,000 people attended Henry's presentation as a Barça player last summer, gathering to see him perform a few keepy-ups. The feeling now is that he has done little else; he certainly has not been worth €24m (nearly £16m at the then rate of exchange). Nor has he been the player he was in the Premiership. He has snapped at suggestions that he should aspire to be so. "You can forget all about the Arsenal Henry," he said. "This is the Henry you'll see from now on."
That is not the message Barça fans want to hear; this is not a player with whom they are enamoured. Nor is Barcelona's notorious "entourage" impressed, the media regularly attacking him - although Johan Cruyff, the former coach and unofficial presidential adviser, a kind of Cardinal Richelieu to Joan Laporta's Louis XIII, has defended him. The vice-president Ferran Soriano said Henry was not for sale. A decent offer and that could change.
Henry has scored 14 goals in 40 games, seven in the league - a goal fewer than Lionel Messi, despite playing over 1,000 minutes more, and, in the league, seven less than Samuel Eto'o, who has missed over half of the season. Nor has he always been available, suffering with an achilles problem and chronic back pains brought from London. One newspaper declared: "The man who was supposed to solve the problems of Ronaldinho's absences has become a problem in his own right."
After one recent game he was described as a "relic", a reporter remarking that "to describe Henry as pathetic would be an understatement". The Barcelona newspaper Sport gave him four out of 10 for his display in the Champions League quarter-final second leg against Schalke, saying he had performed "as flatly as he has done of late". El Mundo Deportivo shrugged: "No. There's no way of getting him to play well. Not even the Champions League could reactivate him."
That Henry has not had the impact anticipated is hardly surprising: he has too often played in an unfamiliar left-sided role as the Barcelona coach, Frank Rijkaard, remains faithful to the 4-3-3 tradition, passed down by Cruyff, which once cost Gary Lineker, another centre-forward forced to play wide, so dearly.
"If I play on the left, you'll see the Henry who plays on the left," the Frenchman said recently. "I have lost my attacking reference points by being on the wing. I'm just the guy that plays on the wing at Barcelona. I start 60 metres from goal, I run more than ever before and I'm not succeeding in one-on-ones because I'm shattered." Rijkaard merely shrugged. "He's playing OK there," he said.
Henry also complained that he has been unable to see his daughter, Tea. During one press conference he returned to the same theme again and again - to the exasperation of the local press. Asked what he could do to improve he snapped, "Get my daughter here with me," refusing to countenance any other reason for his dip in form, despite subsequently revealing his tactical concerns.
While Henry has a point, his complaints have not fallen on sympathetic ears. His professionalism and his desire not to get drawn into the Eto'o-Ronaldinho civil war have won him the respect of most team-mates, as has his desire to be a father figure to Bojan Krkic, who is likely to replace him against United. But the media and supporters have grown tired not just with his displays but also with what they see as self-indulgence and a propensity to whinge, on and off the pitch.
When, yesterday, one Catalan journalist was asked what kind of fever had kept Henry out of the weekend's 0-0 draw with Espanyol, he snapped: "An 'I can't be bothered' kind of fever." That might have been unfair but it said much.
"What was he doing leaning on the post just watching the move that led to the goal?" asked El Mundo Deportivo after the Schalke game; Sport picked up on Henry's "constant moaning". He is, as one headline put it, "the man who's never happy". And that is not just because he looks set to sit out the biggest game of his Barcelona career.
. . . but Bojan has boosted Barcelona's belief
The day before Bojan Krkic made his Champions League debut this season he could be seen at the team's hotel, his head buried in Plato's Republic. Not because he is a closet intellectual but because he had an exam coming up. If Bojan looks like a schoolboy, that is because he is. He might already be an idol at Camp Nou, but he is still only 17. He is the youngest player ever to score for Barcelona in La Liga and the first 1990s-born footballer to play in the Champions League. Only an untimely bout of sickness prevented him becoming the youngest player ever to make his Spain debut and he looks likely to make it into the squad for this summer's European Championship.
The hurry to hand Bojan his international debut was understandable. Bojan's father, Bojan Krkic Sr, was a Serbian footballer who played for Red Star Belgrade and Yugoslavia. He met Bojan's mother Maria Lluisa Pérez when she was working as a nurse in a Catalan hospital where he was being treated for injury. And although Bojan has won an Under-17 European Championship and finished runner-up in the U17 World Cup for Spain last summer, Luis Aragonés wanted to ensure he would play for Spain at senior level too.
Bojan has scored eight league goals this season - more than Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho - and is quick and clever. There is something of the Michael Owen at St-Etienne in 1998 about him.
His rise to prominence has brought comparisons with Raul. "Bojan has the daring that all great players have," says Jorge Valdano, the man who gave Raul his Madrid debut. "He always makes the right decisions," adds his coach Frank Rijkaard. "Bojan is a treasure."
