Thierry Henry “cried almost every day” early in the COVID pandemic, the World Cup winner has said, as he opened up on depression.

The 46-year-old ex-footballer, who became Arsenal’s all-time top goalscorer and won virtually every major honour he could across a stellar career, linked his struggles to his past search for approval.

Growing up with a father who was critical of his performances, he told the Diary of a CEO podcast he feels he cried for “everything he didn’t get” as a boy.

“Throughout my career, and since I was born, I must have been in depression,” said Henry, who was manager of Montreal Impact when he had to isolate in the Canadian city in 2020, away from his family.

“Did I know it? No. Did I do something about it? No. But I adapted to a certain way. That doesn’t mean I’m walking straight, but I’m walking.

“You’ve got to put one foot [forward] and another one, and walk. That’s what I’ve been told since I’m young.

“I never stopped walking, then maybe I would have realised. [But during] COVID, I stopped walking. I couldn’t. Then you start to realise.”

The Frenchman said he had a “cape” for when he “felt a struggle coming” during his playing career and after retiring in 2014 he was “trying to find a way to wear that cape”.

Not being able to see his children – who were in London – for a year was “tough”, he said, and he was “crying almost every day for no reason”.

“Tears were coming alone. Why I don’t know, but maybe they were there for a very long time,” he said.

“Technically, it wasn’t me, it was the young me. [Crying for] everything he didn’t get, approval.”

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Henry, who won the World Cup in 1998 and the Champions League in 2009 with Barcelona, said his father was “very particular at times on how I was as a player”, adding: “As a little boy it was always, ‘you didn’t do that well’.”

Henry stepped down from his role in Montreal after returning home to visit his family in 2021 – and he reflected on the moment that made him stay in London just as he was about to head back to Canada.

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“I put my bags down to say bye and everybody starts to cry, from the nanny to my girlfriend to the kids,” he said.

“For the first time… I am like, ‘oh, they see me’ – not the football player, not the accolades, and I felt human.

“I put my bags down and I stopped coaching in Montreal. I said, ‘what am I doing?’

“Going to go again into a situation just because of your pursuit of pleasing people? They love Thierry, not Thierry Henry.

“I stayed. For the first time, I felt human… and it felt nice.”

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