THE BEGINNING OF THE HEND?
It may not be the most eye-catching headline of the day [Football Daily makes ball shape with hands] but news of Jordan Henderson closing in on a move to Ajax, after apparently ending his contract with Al-Ettifaq, would certainly bewilder any time-travellers bursting through a wormhole from, say, last January. Yet here we are: six months after earning Liverpool a £12m fee, Hendo is heading for another European powerhouse, who would never have feasibly paid £12m for him. In the meantime, he’s played 17 games in Saudi Arabia, racking up no goals, four assists and the fat end of £10m in wages. Jordan, as the kids say, is out here playing 4D chess. Or something like that.
Still, the sidestep to Amsterdam via Dammam has inflicted some collateral damage on the Henderson brand. As a long-term champion of LGBTQ+ rights and a vocal supporter of the Premier League’s Rainbow Laces campaign, his decision to take his talents to a nation where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death achieved something we had thought impossible: a modern footballer had genuinely disappointed us. Liverpool’s LGBTQ+ fans’ group, Kop Outs, questioned whether their former captain “was ever an actual ally”. Jake Daniels, the first active British male footballer to come out in more than 30 years, called Henderson’s Saudi move “a slap in my face”.
In his six months of jogging and pointing in front of four-figure crowds, Henderson has tried to straight-bat questions over, as Mrs Merton might have put it, what it was that first attracted him to super-rich Saudi club Al-Ettifaq. In a trainwreck of an interview with the Athletic, he attempted to keep a number of colliding narratives on the rails – the move was not about money, but “you have to feel valued … and money is a part of that”. Henderson also claimed to understand the LGBTQ+ community’s “frustration and anger”, while offering the spurious counter-claim that “having someone with [my] views and values in Saudi Arabia is only a positive thing”. Did he still support Rainbow Laces? Yes, of course. Would he wear rainbow laces in Saudi Arabia? No, he wouldn’t.
Henderson’s move has derailed his career as well as his off-field reputation – we would like to think those boos at Wembley were attacking his hypocrisy, rather than his lack of big-match practice, but we weren’t born yesterday. There is, of course, another argument to be made: that he is no more deserving of criticism than the dozens of players who have flown out to fill suitcases with riyals without ever offering their thoughts on the plight of persecuted groups around them. Throughout his ill-fated spell, Henderson has maintained he does care about fans who felt betrayed by his decision, contorting himself into bursts of agonising doublespeak. He could try to spin the move to Ajax as the result of a crisis of conscience. Then again, Henderson is not the only big-name signing hanging around the departures gate in Riyadh these days. A far more likely motivation is his fading role with England, the looming Euros and a sudden abundance of flexible hybrid full-backs ready to step into Gareth Southgate’s midfield. Call us cynical, but modern football made us this way.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Dominic Booth from 5pm GMT for hot minute-by-minute Afcon coverage of Morocco 2-0 Tanzania, while Scott Murray will then be on deck for all of the evening’s FA Cup third-round replay action.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’ll be a hell of an occasion. It’s a fourth-round tie against Manchester United, for me the biggest club in this country, in Europe and in the world … I can’t get my head around it to be honest, they are unbelievable names. Just to have Manchester United coming to Rodney Parade is a hell of an achievement. I don’t know when it will sink in, I’m sure my family are doing Irish jigs around the house at the moment” – Newport County manager and massive United fan Graham Coughlan reckons their upcoming FA Cup date at home to the Jonny Evans All-Stars is the biggest game in the club’s history, bigger even than the Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-finals in 1981.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
I’ve been tracking the equivalent of David Rose’s Fair Play Times (yesterday’s Football Daily letters) for a few years now, simply dividing possession time by fouls committed to figure out which teams are the quickest to foul when out of possession. Chelsea and Liverpool have been ever-presents in the top four for the last three-and-a-half seasons, along with regular appearances by Leeds and Brighton. At the other end of the scale, West Ham are usually the cleanest team, or slowest to foul at least. Crystal Palace are consistently among the quickest to be fouled when they have the ball, along with Aston Villa both before and after Jack Grealish’s departure. High-possession teams like Manchester City and Liverpool get fouled with the lowest relative frequency, although teams seem to foul Manchester United pretty infrequently as well. Yours, boringly” – Rob Hamilton.
Todd Boehly’s crass and disruptive PR stunt during last weekend’s Chelsea v Fulham match had men in green jackets standing up in unison at the back of the dugout to clean their teeth and read from books and so on apparently to promote his new film Argylle. In response, I suggest Chelsea fans attend cinemas showing Argylle and rise up together in the auditorium during the film to deliver their favourite football chants” – Mick Beeby.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Rob Hamilton, who lands a copy of The Africa Cup of Nations: The History of an Underappreciated Tournament, published by Pitch Publishing. Visit their football book store here.
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It’s an Afcon special in the latest Football Weekly podcast.
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