Jordan Henderson leaves for Saudi Arabia
The ex-Liverpool skipper has betrayed a community he once ardently supported and opted for greed over integrity
When I first heard rumours that Jordan Henderson might be joining a club in Saudi Arabia, I wrote them all off as total nonsense. “The biggest load of rubbish I’ve read all summer”, were my exact words, in a summer where I have seen Liverpool linked to Federico Valverde and Kylian Mbappe. Some journalist I am.
I never saw it coming. Not after everything Jordan Henderson has done and said off the pitch about football being for everyone, not with his footballing story (which is one of my favourites), not while he’s still trying to get in the England team, not with his wife and two daughters, not when four Liverpool players got a huge send off in May, and after a poor season where The Reds are currently transitioning and could have done with their skipper to oversee the next step of this journey.
Not Henderson.
The easiest and most obvious argument to raise is the claim of hypocrisy. And there’s a reason for that; it is undeniable that Jordan Henderson is a massive hypocrite and that his comments on football fans from the LGBT+ community were nothing but a PR stunt.
What exactly did Henderson say?
Speaking to The Athletic in 2019, Henderson said: “The idea that anybody I love and care about wouldn’t feel safe or comfortable coming to watch me play if they were part of the LGBT community makes me wonder what world we live in.”
Yeah Jordan, I wonder what world we live in as well, where someone makes a statement as bold as that then completely turns their back on everything they’ve said.
There’s no other way of looking at it. As much as I aim for nuance on The Modern Age, I don’t see how you could look at this at any other way. It’s hypocrisy and total betrayal of a community that Henderson purported to not even entertain the idea of backstabbing. Now he has chosen to do so.
Do not tell me to ‘just respect the culture’, because discrimination and punishing people for who they love is not cultural in any way. This is just a cliched and lazy point that I see people making all the time. Anyone who knows me well will know I’m also know I’m not ‘PC brigade’- far from it. I am simply calling this how I see it.
In case any readers aren’t aware, being gay is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. So Jordan, I don’t think people from the LGBT+ community would feel safe if they came to watch you play. Not with a gun to their head.
This whole interview, amongst the other things Henderson has said and done has all turned out to be one massive, sickening PR stunt. I honestly don’t know who to trust anymore. Henderson could not have been any more convincing and could not have come across any stronger, yet it turned out to be utter bullshit.
If Henderson is willing to go to Saudi Arabia, I’m left wondering who wouldn’t go.
This club is so against LGBT+ rights they greyed out the captain’s arm band on Jordan Henderson in their announcement video just so that the rainbow would not feature on their twitter page.
Where I can accept that there will be different perspectives is on the move as a whole; whether it’s the right thing for him to do, whether ‘anyone’ would take the money.
One of the most common is of course the whataboutery argument. What about Gerrard, Firmino, Benzema, etc?
The difference is they weren’t outspoken against LGBT+ issues like Henderson. They didn’t put their neck on the line by taking such firm stances. They shouldn’t get a free pass, and I would rather no one went there, but Henderson easily deserves more criticism.
I also don’t accept that we should just leave players alone and simply let them get on with their own career choices. Fans are perfectly entitled to criticise players for their decisions if that’s how they honestly feel; we constantly speculate as to where players might or should go based on what’s best for their careers; we have been doing it with Harry Kane for years. Just because it’s Saudi Arabia, that doesn’t mean we can’t say we don’t think it’s the best decision for Jordan Henderson.
We can’t physically stop anyone from going, but we can question their decision. We do it in all walks of life, not just football. So I don’t buy that we can’t comment on a players career choice if we don’t like it.
Do you expect all the journalists, especially journalists from the LGBT+ community, to sit there and write generic fluff, just so their opinions are censored? To say this move is a great footballing decision for Jordan Henderson? Now that really is going back to the dark ages.
And I don’t think it is a great footballing decision. This is a lad who is so passionate about his football, about the emotional side of the game, who hasn’t got many years left at the top level. And he wants to spend them in a league of crap players that no one cares about and that no one will watch.
I doubt he will enjoy the lifestyle and I doubt his family will, if they are coming with. I wouldn’t even trust that he’s going to get paid all of this money that he’s being promised. Maybe it’s too ‘good’ to be true.
The other argument is that ‘anyone would take that money’, which to me is a lazy and silly point to make. Would someone LGBT+ move there with their partner for tonnes more money? They would not.
Kylian Mbappe has turned down the opportunity to play there for a year. I know I wouldn’t go. I know my dad wouldn’t, because he would want to put his family first. Especially with women in your family, you wouldn’t want to be going to a country still stuck in the dark ages with regards to women’s rights as well.
If you’re unemployed and penniless, and someone offers you ridiculous money to work there, then yes, that’s fair enough. Especially if you have a family and it’s only way to get food on the table. I’m not saying that there are no circumstance in which this is an acceptable decision to make.
But Jordan Henderson was earning £200,000 a week at Liverpool. Then add in endorsements and bonusses. Realistically, how much more money does this man need? I can accept that it’s an offer he might want to take, but there is no way on earth that this is a deal Jordan Henderson needed to take. I don’t see this as ‘life changing’ money, because he’s already been on ‘life changing’ money for over a decade.
If we’re purely talking about football, I’m still not best pleased with Jordan Henderson. Off the back of a poor campaign where The Reds failed to achieve Champions League qualification, largely because of the issues in midfield, in which Henderson was a culprit, it seems very disappointing for the captain to leave against the managers wishes just because someone offers him a huge lump of cash.
To me, a Liverpool captain should be overseeing this period of transition, fighting back after a poor season both individually and as a team- that’s the real Jordan Henderson I know. This is not how a Liverpool captain should leave the club.
The 33 year-old has dumped himself out of the England squad when he still had another tournament left in him, a tournament for which I think England are actually one of the favourites. Henderson easily could have done what James Milner did, and gone to an exciting, youthful team at the top level, looking for an experienced professional in that top level.
There are so many clubs who would have taken Henderson where he still could have enjoyed football at the top of the chain while he is still good enough to compete (which he is, despite a poor season), but he will now vanish into obscurity, his legacy tarnished.
It just seems like such an anti-climatic way for a captain who has won the lot at this club to leave. We never even got to say goodbye.
In some ways, this exit has hurt me more than any other Liverpool player that has left in the past. I don’t know who to trust anymore.