Thierry Henry has consistently deflected questions about whether he will retire at the end of the New York Red Bulls' season, wanting the focus to remain on the club's playoff run.

“I can’t talk about it,” Henry said. “It’s playoff time. The focus should be on the team and nothing else.”

“The credibility he brought us is just not something we could have achieved without him,” Don Garber, the M.L.S. commissioner, said Friday. “When I travel around the world, there isn’t a soccer person in any country that doesn’t know that Thierry Henry is playing in the United States in Major League Soccer.”

Red Bulls' manager Mike Petke recently said that talking to Henry about soccer was “like talking to Albert Einstein about physics.”

On Friday, Petke elaborated: “Thierry is the most intelligent soccer mind I’ve ever been around. He sees things three or four steps ahead.”