Thierry Henry defends Ballon d'Or jokes about Lamine Yamal and Kate Scott after backlash

Ceremony and online backlash

Thierry Henry, the 49-year-old former Arsenal and France forward, co-hosted the Ballon d'Or gala in London on Monday, 26 October, alongside CBS Sports colleague Kate Scott. The three-hour show carried the easy banter the pair use on the Champions League programme, and several remarks landed badly with viewers. Criticism spread on social media that evening, with most of it aimed at Henry. The Catalan sports outlet Diario Sport called one of his jokes tasteless. Harry Kane won the men's award, and on the night Henry admitted he had wanted fellow Frenchman Kylian Mbappé to beat him to it.

The Lamine Yamal question

Henry called Lamine Yamal to the stage for the Young Talent of the Year award, which the 19-year-old Spaniard had won for a third year in a row. Henry asked him whether it was the trophy he really wanted to win. The audience laughed, but online critics read the question as an attempt to rattle the Barcelona player, who had finished second behind PSG forward Ousmane Dembélé in the previous year's men's vote. Yamal said he wanted to win everything but would have preferred the award to go to Pau Cubarsi.

The Socrates exchange

Scott introduced the Socrates Award, which France Football created in 2022 and which went this year to Bukayo Saka for his humanitarian and youth work. She pronounced the name in the English manner, and Henry interrupted to correct her on air. Scott accepted the correction and told the audience to trust Henry on the pronunciation. Andrew Downie, author of the biography Doctor Socrates, later wrote that Henry was rude and wrong and that Scott had said the name correctly. Henry's answer was that Scott had been in on the bit from the start.

“I will never do that and you can ask her, she was on the joke with me.”

Henry's video and Kane

In a video posted on 27 October, Henry set out to clear up what he described as overblown reactions to a few jokes. He said he had not been testing Yamal's ego and called the Spaniard one of the players he would pay to watch.

“I wasn't checking his ego at all.”

Henry also addressed Kane, who had called him out for backing Mbappé. He told Kane that as a Frenchman he would always back a fellow countryman, and he described Kane as a worthy winner of the Ballon d'Or.

“You are a worthy winner, you deserve it, you are the example that work ethic is a talent, working hard is a talent.”

Henry closed by asking people to stop claiming he had disrespected Scott, saying he loved both Kane and Yamal.