An abject and petulant display from Les Bleus at the recent World Cup finals in South Africa did little to dissuade the average American Joe that the French national side was just another pitiful example of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys he loves to hate.
Thierry Henry's arrival in New York as a member of the Red Bulls Major League Soccer team on Thursday afternoon may offer the chance for a revision of that perception, although certain Irish enclaves in the bars of Woodside, Queens, and McLean Avenue up in the north Bronx may need just a little more persuading.
As a public relations exercise, though, you could not have asked for a better moment to unveil Henry as MLS's newest star signing.
With American interest in soccer at an all-time high, the USA team having come home from South Africa as heroes after a heart-breaking round of 16 exit to Ghana and a record 24-million-plus having watched last Sunday's World Cup final between Spain and Holland, those clever fellas at MLS are keeping the pot boiling by choosing to present their latest marquee player just four days later.
Henry's coming to America was the worst kept secret in US sport but confirming it now was a master stroke and in joining the Red Bulls from Barcelona he will link up with a team and football club going in the right direction in search of its first MLS league title.
The New York franchise has struggled to punch its weight in American professional soccer, haunted by the legacy of Pele and Franz Beckenbauer at its predecessor the Cosmos in the ill-fated NASL of the 1970s and 80s and unable to find the right blend of management and star names to rid itself of those ghosts.
Such coaching luminaries as Carlos Alberto Parreira, Bora Milutinovic, Carlos Queiroz as well as former USA manager Bruce Arena and his successor Bob Bradley have employed the likes of Roberto Donadoni, Lothar Matthaus and Youri Djorkaeff to get New York over the finish line in first place. All have tried and failed.
Current owners Red Bull believe Henry, 32, can succeed, however, and in making the Frenchman the highest profile signing in MLS since David Beckham joined the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007, they have given their New York football club the necessary wings to take flight.
Whether Henry gives enough New York fans a reason to repeatedly cross the Hudson to the impressive new 25,000-seater Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, is the big question.
Even having moved from the cavernous old Giants Stadium to a new state of the art soccer-specific arena and with a team led by Juan Pablo Angel that is playing its best football in years, New Yorkers have still not embraced their local team. The only sell-outs so far have been friendlies against attractive foreign opponents like Santos with a similar scenario likely next Thursday when Tottenham will be on hand as former Arsenal star Henry makes his club debut.
Strutting his stuff, perhaps in tandem with another big-name arrival such as former Barcelona team-mate Rafael Marquez of Mexico, or ex-Arsenal pal Freddie Ljungberg, who is soon to be out of contract at the Seattle Sounders, will help to put more bums on seats for more humdrum, regular season affairs against the likes of the San Jose Earthquakes and Kansas City Wizards.
But leading the New York Red Bulls to a hitherto elusive MLS title after 15 winless campaigns since they joined the league as founding members in 1995, that will be the one and only mark of Henry's success.
