Kevin McCarra reflects on the pros and cons for Thierry Henry's big summer decision

Thierry Henry was comfortable at the microphone in a London hotel last week and not just because he has had practice at accepting the Footballer of the Year award. He spoke fervently about this country's love of the game and yearned for England to win the World Cup. France must have slipped his mind, unless he had simply despaired after being tipped off that Jean-Alain Boumsong would be in the squad instead of Philippe Mexes.

In any case few footballers have ever settled so completely in the Premiership. That only magnifies the mystery over his intentions this summer. Barcelona have expected for many months that he will join them and if a man could be reeled in by phone calls Henry would be hauled off to Catalonia thanks to Ronaldinho and Ludovic Giuly.

Those who have a certain acquaintance with the Arsenal captain debate the matter and keep on coming to tentative conclusions. They mostly suppose tonight's Champions League final will be his last appearance for Arsenal and that he was saying goodbye to more than the Highbury stadium after the win over Wigan. And yet no one is categorical about it.

There are too many parallels with Patrick Vieira, who had cleared his locker and prepared to move to Real Madrid before deciding at the last second that he would stay with Arsenal after all. Even when he did depart, the midfielder, despite a Serie A title with Juventus, joined the many footballers who have learned there is disillusionment beyond the magic circle of Arsene Wenger's presence.

In contrast with Vieira, though, Henry is at his peak and Camp Nou will be a magnetic field for any stylish footballer so long as Barcelona's team is so elegant. Arsenal can pit against that the allure of an ever more exalted place in its history. When a man is sure to be senselessly rich, other rewards, such as the right to lead his side out at the new 60,000-seater Ashburton Grove ground, start to look enticing.

The inducements of Barcelona and Arsenal are, however, unlikely to be the decisive factors. Wenger, with his usual pared down psychology, has avoided badgering Henry, well aware of how counter-productive such an approach could be. The player's own interpretation of his life and career will determine his future.

He is the supreme footballer in the Premiership but that makes English people forget how much remains unresolved for Henry. Though this prolific striker has constant access to a goalscorer's joy, he is not all that blissful a character. His suitability to be captain, for instance, is debatable when he does not merely demand high standards but sometimes goes into a sulk if a team-mate lets him down. Young players can shrivel in the face of the scorn.

Henry speaks of the rage, born of a boyhood in a Paris banlieu, that drives him and he is far from fulfilled yet. His glory runs mostly in the channel of Arsenal's fame. The unbeaten Premiership season and the title itself would not have been Highbury's but for him. The side, floundering during its third fixture in seven days, was 2-1 down to Liverpool on Good Friday 2004 before he completed a remarkable hat-trick.

His goals against Real Madrid and Juventus tipped the balance this year in the last-16 and quarter-final of the Champions League. That, even so, is not enough. Provincialism blinds the English to his disappointments. It must, for instance, be galling to him that he has never been voted European footballer of the year despite the fact that the Ballon d'Or is the invention of France Football.

Henry would not be rudely personal about it but what is he to make of the presence on the roll of honour of Michael Owen, who has won rather less? The Arsenal striker's supremacy is specialised and it does not apply in his own country, where people cavil that his club sees the best of him. While Henry was France's top scorer at the 1998 World Cup, he did not appear in a final where Stephane Guivarc'h got a winner's medal. Henry's national team is designed according to Zinedine Zidane's specifications and only the imminent retirement of the midfielder offers him new status.

Henry has meant everything to Arsenal, but he has not yet found everything he wants there. It is understandable that he should wonder if there is better nourishment for his dreams in the soil of Camp Nou, but no one has abandoned hope yet that he will pursue an even greater phase of his career in his club's fresh start at Ashburton Grove.