Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. At the first whiff of that sweet life-changing cash all the rainbow stuff has simply been swished off the desk. But it only really hits home when it overlaps with your personal interests. A campaigner for women’s rights (giving the thumbs up for a patriarchal dictatorship). An advocate against racism (now doing PR for a structurally racist state). A much-praised advocate for LGBTQ+ rights (who is now planning to promote a state where gay people are criminalised). Which is entirely your own business if you happen to like that process, or if you want to ignore it and simply act as an economically rational agent.īut Henderson has presented himself as something else. Photograph: Phil Noble/ReutersĪnyone who takes those above-market fees to act as the public face of this (essentially a bribe to forget your remaining sporting ambitions) is knowingly taking part in those political aims. Jordan Henderson could be joining his former Liverpool teammate Steven Gerrard at Al-Ettifaq FC. The Saudi league is a political project, an attempt to gain influence while distracting from incompatible levels of prejudice and a bloodthirsty human rights record. He can go from ludicrously rich to brain-manglingly, obscenely rich in a single stride.īut there is an obvious moral hypocrisy here. There have been references in some sympathetic quarters to the Saudi deal as “life-changing” and as such unrefusable, as though only now can Henderson finally afford a car or a family holiday. Which brings us to the second Henderson, who is also on his way out and set to vanish for good judging by the first-wave response to his proposed move into Saudi sports propaganda. Throughout this Henderson has also radiated a basic decency, a sense of acting in the way everyone would hope they could given the same talent and platform. But Henderson has kept on running, a portable driving presence, able to alter the course of a game through sheer will, verve, vibe reversal. We remember Alex Ferguson’s vivid talk of how Henderson “runs from his knees with a straight back”, like a Gerald Scarfe creation in a Beatles cartoon. Midfielders of more obvious elite class – Luka Modric gliding past him at the 2018 World Cup like a man absent-mindedly skirting a stray traffic cone – raised concerns over his merits at this level. This Henderson has been a fine player and hugely admirable presence over the past 12 years at Liverpool, during which there were spells on the fringes, near departures, doubts over what this hard-running, unstarry kind of midfielder was actually going to be good at followed by the steady and tenacious assertion of a very obvious sporting will. In the process English football is preparing to say goodbye to not one but two Hendersons. At the time of writing Henderson seems likely to sign for Al-Ettifaq FC, one of those top-tier Saudi clubs not owned, as Newcastle United are, by the Saudi Arabia state investment fund (we can only imagine the response from the ultras of Al-Ittihad, Al-Ahli, Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal at seeing a former Sunderland player in the opposition ranks next season). This is a roundabout way of getting on to Jordan Henderson and the most depressing, illuminating, oddly necessary sports story of the week.
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