Jordan Henderson interview roundtable: Crafton, Ornstein and White discuss

Jordan Henderson’s decision to leave Liverpool was one of the most controversial stories of the summer.

The England international joined Al Ettifaq in Saudi Arabia for a fee of £12million ($15.4m), bringing to an end his 12-year stay at Anfield.

The Athletic’s David Ornstein and Adam Crafton sat down with Henderson earlier this week for an exclusive interview. On Tuesday, they were joined by Joe White, co-chair of 3 Lions Pride, the LGBT+ England fan group, and Ayo Akinwolere on The Athletic Football Podcast to discuss Henderson’s move.

Here is an edited version of their conversation…

Ayo Akinwolere: How exactly did this interview come about?

David Ornstein: Since Jordan Henderson moved over to Saudi Arabia or even since reports surfaced that it was a possibility, everybody within this industry has wanted to speak to him to hear his version of events, and so everybody of repute within our environment would have been requesting it.

It was confirmed at pretty short notice that this would be going ahead. And the desire was for both myself and Adam (Crafton) to do it; that was Jordan’s preference. Adam is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a brilliant journalist, and I think Jordan wanted to front up in this way, have questions asked of him that haven’t been asked so far and provide answers that there’s been a bit of a vacuum on.

There was nothing off-limits. There were no areas that we couldn’t go down or that we were told to go down. There was no copy approval. There was no audio or video.

Many people were saying that Jordan Henderson has to talk, and there was a lot of anger and frustration that he hadn’t given his version of events so far. He hadn’t put his head above the parapet and there has been a mixed reaction. It’s been pretty polarising, but it has really set the agenda and got people talking. And it was a real privilege for us to have the opportunity to do it.

Akinwolere: So no topics were off-limits?

Adam Crafton: No — and we simply wouldn’t have done it otherwise. You can’t have a situation where you’re interviewing someone who has essentially gone to work for an employer that’s funded by the Saudi state and then giving the state some sort of control over our product. That was never going to happen. But that’s our approach to all Athletic football interviews. We just don’t do that.

And Jordan Henderson is 33 now. He’s a big boy. He can talk for himself if he wants to talk for himself. This was something that he wanted to do. He said he wanted it to be an open conversation. He said he wanted to be challenged and to listen as well as give answers. And that’s what we did.

(Jan Kruger/Getty Images)

Akinwolere: Let’s start with why he left Liverpool. Was it almost time to move on?

Ornstein: I think this goes back further to the summer of 2021 when there was a contract situation involving Henderson and Liverpool. It seemed there was significant resistance from the hierarchy to give him a new deal and there was quite a lot of publicity around it. That deal was given. Jurgen Klopp was supportive of it, but maybe that was laying the foundations and sowing the seeds of what might follow.

Henderson made a very high-profile case for his fitness this summer. He looked in excellent shape and he says that that was to prepare himself for a return to Liverpool and the Premier League. He’s the captain of the club and I think he was going to give it one big last shot. But during conversations with Klopp and others, I presume it became clear that things were going to be changing and it’s likely that his game time would diminish. That left him with a decision to make.

With many of these players — and I’m not using this as a specific reference to Henderson — contracts are performance incentivised. So it’s conceivable that, at his age and stage of his career, his salary would have come down quite a bit over time.

Henderson suggests that there was no massive desire to keep him. And what he said in the interview was that there weren’t other opportunities arising. Ettifaq was the proposition and Liverpool seemed like they might be open to trading him, which might benefit them in terms of squad size and revenues. So this is an organic end to his 12-year Liverpool career.

But Henderson said that if just one person from within the club hierarchy had said to him, ‘We want you to stay,’ then he would have. But that didn’t come.

Akinwolere: So Henderson’s 33 and, on a financial level, moving to the Saudi Pro League also makes a lot of sense for him and his family…

Crafton: Yes, he’s had a great career, won lots at Liverpool, been the vice-captain of England as well as captain of Liverpool and maybe it’s time to take a nice payday? But Henderson was very insistent that he wasn’t motivated by money. Very insistent.

We put to him that there had been very significant reporting around him earning potentially four times his Liverpool salary in Saudi Arabia. He said that wasn’t true. He said the only point at which he spoke to Steven Gerrard, the Al Ettifaq manager, was about the football, not the money side of things.

Clearly, there will be a level of scepticism around things that he said. But Jordan’s allowed to defend himself and give his version of events. And that’s what he says.

Ornstein: Well, there’s one misnomer on this from my information, and that’s that Jordan Henderson is earning £700,000 a week. I’ve spoken to some pretty decent contacts who say the number is lower than that, quite significantly. So we do need to just respect his words on it being lower.

Akinwolere: Speaking of Saudi, what about Mohamed Salah? The Saudi transfer window shuts on Thursday. Will there be another audacious bid for the Liverpool forward?

Ornstein: Listen, the Saudis will try until the window closes at 10pm (UK time) on Thursday to sign Salah. They had the verbal bid rejected last week, as we reported and revealed on deadline day, but Liverpool have no intention of selling. Let’s see what happens in January.

Akinwolere: Let’s bring in Joe White, co-chair of the Three Lions Pride and LGBTQ+ Supporters Group, which follows England home and away. Notably, many of the people within the group are talking about not supporting Henderson when he comes and plays for England. What were your thoughts on his move?

Joe White: It’s very much the disappointment. It doesn’t feel like it lines up with what he’s said his values are. Saudi Arabia is a country that criminalises our existence, that penalises who we are. I don’t believe I’m LGBT. I am LGBT.

A really important part that comes out in the interview is the naivety Henderson has, and that comes out when he’s talking about Qatar. Of course in Qatar (at the World Cup), as a professional footballer, you’re going to see the best side of a country because they want it to look great for you. Those on the ground have a very different feeling.

We saw rainbow flags being confiscated, people being strip-searched, people being detained for having anything with a rainbow on or anything related to LGBT issues. So there definitely is a naivety there that doesn’t match up.

And it’s one thing to say all of these things and to say that you’re an ally, to say that you are going above and beyond for the LGBTQ+ community but, actually, when your actions aren’t matching up to your words, that’s where there’s an issue.

Yes, he’s getting far more scrutiny than other players who are moving to Saudi, but that’s because he’s put his own position out there far more than any other players. It’s not holding him to a higher standard. It’s asking and seeing where his actual views and values are and how much he holds himself to them.

(Michael Regan – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)

Crafton: Jordan was talking about how before the Qatar World Cup, the English Football Association invited Amnesty International to provide a kind of presentation about what had been going on in Qatar — whether it was in relation to workers’ rights, worker welfare, potentially also LGBT related matters, I’m not sure. And Jordan said he was then involved in a press conference about 45 minutes later and he was asked about Qatar and he said something to the effect of, “Yeah, it really doesn’t look good based on what we’ve seen”. And then when he went out there, was introduced to some of the workers and it seemed different.

I remember being out there and the English FA, along with the Qatar Supreme Committee, organised for some workers to meet the England team. They did a bit of a training session on the pitch together. And clearly in that setting, Jordan Henderson would have met these people and thought, “Well, that’s not what I’ve seen.”

I went back to him and was like, “But surely you appreciate that what is going to be presented to you at that moment is perhaps a manicured version of the reality?”

Joe used the word naive, and green is probably a word I would use. It was actually quite a good insight into how cocooned life can be for professional footballers — and sheltered. You’re in that bubble and you’re seeing what your clubs and your national teams want you to see at certain points.

Akinwolere: Henderson says Saudi culture needs to be respected, as though being gay is a cultural choice. Joe, is it disappointing to hear that?

White: It’s only disappointing because he’s previously been very well-spoken on these issues and has come across as being very engaged and actually interested in knowing the right things to say. And this is one of those things. Our existence isn’t a belief, it isn’t a culture. There is LGBT culture around absolutely wonderful stuff. But our existence isn’t a culture and also our existence doesn’t necessarily have to conflict with faith. There are LGBT Muslims, there are LGBT people who live in Saudi Arabia.

There has to be a line if you’re saying you support human rights. I support the freedom of religion, the freedom for people to have their own beliefs — but I do not support people using those beliefs, using that culture to penalise, criminalise, to cause harm to people for their identity. And I think that’s a really difficult thing. Quite often we get in our mentions from both sides, you know, “Why are you calling out Islamophobia? Because these people would happily stone you to death”. And it’s like, but if we see something that is an injustice, we will call it out. We have a really great relationship with the Three Hijabis England (an anti-racist movement), who do amazing work and are really supportive of us as well. And I think there needs to be more understanding of the nuances and not just putting everything into, “Well, LGBT is not something that can go with people of faith”. There are LGBT people of faith. The intersectionality is something that needs to be more widely discussed and understood.

Akinwolere: I wonder if we have any insight into the code of conduct that players who do go to the Saudi league have to adhere to?

Crafton: One of the things that we directly asked Henderson was almost said to him as a yes or no question. “Does your contract contain any clauses?” Do you have payments if you do social media posts promoting the Kingdom? Because I think we saw the other day after a game, there was a post that he did which seemed sort of just praising Saudi Arabia as a country. This may be his genuine experience. But it was one of those where I looked at it and was wondering, is he being paid to post that? And he completely denied that.

المملكة العربية السعودية، كرم الاستضافة، وحماس الجماهير، الدوري الممتع وإحساس الفوز الذي لا يعوض.

القادم أفضل

Great win, looking forward to meeting up with the lads now pic.twitter.com/vrlDNbLKVU

— Jordan Henderson (@JHenderson) September 2, 2023

We have to take that, again, at face value. We do know that other players who have gone there do have some of these clauses in their contracts. We know that some of the tourism ambassadors have payments for a certain number of social media posts per year promoting Saudi Arabia — so it wouldn’t be hugely unusual.

One of the big controversies after he made the move was his announcement video. Al Etiffaq did a montage of Henderson photos from his time playing for Liverpool and England.

In one of the photos, he was wearing an armband that looked a lot like the Rainbow Laces armband for Liverpool. And in this video, it was kind of greyscale, which gathered so much traction on social. On Twitter, there was a community note placed against the announcement video suggesting that it had been greyed out — censored in some way. Jordan said that he didn’t know about that until it was out.

If Jordan’s going there and saying that he feels he can make some sort of change, even if he’s not talking about changing laws — he’s pretty clear on that, saying he’s not a politician, OK — but this is that the kind of thing where he could turn around to his employers and say, “No, actually, that’s what I wore and that’s who I am? And you’ve potentially greyscaled that”. I thought that was an interesting moment just in terms of the social media dynamics.

(Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Ornstein: I had a question for Joe and Adam, but Adam and I talk more often than myself and Joe. (To Joe): What sort of actions would make members of the LGBTQ+ community feel better about this, if any? Because the words are ringing a little bit hollow to many people. He didn’t rule out wearing the rainbow armband, although he did say if that is disrespectful to Saudi Arabia’s religion, then I won’t be doing that. The mere fact of him, with his beliefs, being there, that is better in his eyes than, as he calls it, burying his head in the sand.

You could say turning down a move, that would have been more powerful. Do you feel, Joe, we have to see something now? Should he wear something or should he say something in that country or is that unrealistic and too much to ask?

White: There are two points to this. One is what would the impact be on local LGBT people? We had this conversation around Qatar. Is doing something going to cause more damage to people? Is it going to cause a backlash that ultimately harms the people you want to help the most? And in somewhere like Saudi Arabia, you run a real risk of there being a harsh backlash for those local LGBT people.

If he were to consider doing something like wearing a rainbow armband, he would need to engage with local experts on what the response would likely be and what would the impact actually be to those who it matters most.

The other thing is that it’s too late, from an England LGBT fan group perspective. We’ve seen cop-outs on Twitter. We’ve seen quite a lot of posts about their disappointment and their reaction to The Athletic interview today as well. It is too late just by him going there.

As you said, it would have been a far stronger thing for him to have turned down the move and said it doesn’t align with my values. “I can’t play or live in a country that criminalises LGBT identities”. But by going there, he’s already undermined his position on that in the eyes of the vast majority of the community that we talk to. And I think anything now would just feel like him trying to regain some credibility on these issues and not be because it feels like he actually cares.

A lot of people will read that and come from the point of maybe it would have been easier if he hadn’t said anything. We could process and deal with that in our own ways.

Maybe it would have been far easier for us to hear that he went for the money. That would not have been a great thing to hear, but it would have been far easier to process and deal with.

The nuance of what came out in the interview creates the difficulties on how people within the community can process that. He is still saying that he has these values and will keep supporting them where he is living and playing.

Ornstein: Is his previous work eroded? Do you still see him as an ally and appreciate his work, or is it all broken?

White: I think we can appreciate the steps he took in the past and how that has had an impact on the landscape and where we’re at now, while still holding him to account and being disappointed and moving forwards, not holding him up and putting him on a pedestal for, he says, going above and beyond for the community. He wore some rainbow laces. He wore an armband. Our expectations of ‘going above and beyond’ were very minimal, like having a conversation with us, talking to us like normal people. If that is our expectation of going above and beyond — and that is the expectation of footballers, of going above and beyond — then I think we need to reframe and re-evaluate how we perceive ourselves within the game.

I’ve hated the term allyship for years because it is very easy to say you’re an ally and not actually do anything. And so one of the calls that we put out was for people to become champions of equality, because just by changing the dynamics of being an ally to a champion, it feels like you have to do something to earn that title. It’s not something you can just self-label yourself.

We’ve seen in recent months, Aaron Ramsdale’s wonderful piece talking about his brother. That support of his brother being a gay football fan and Aaron just wanting him to be able to celebrate on the pitch — if Arsenal won a title, if England win a tournament and Ramsdale is in the squad, wanting to have that security. And I think, knowing someone has no teeth in the game, so to speak, really does help it feel more genuine. And it felt like Jordan chucked in, “Oh, I’ve got friends, family who are LGBT”. It felt like that was just an aside to try to do similar to what Ramsdale has done.

Crafton: I suppose, just to give some balance, which I think is important — we obviously were in the room, it’s quite an interesting dynamic. I totally understand (the reaction) because people are reading (Henderson’s words) written down and there can be a brutality to something written down compared to hearing or seeing a conversation. And there were moments in the conversation where there were — I think David would agree — significant pauses where you could tell Jordan was a bit like, “I’m not sure where to go from here”. Mostly that wasn’t the case. I think it was actually towards the end, when David put the point around England fans saying they might turn their backs on Jordan because of how they feel — as though he’s turned their backs on them. I felt at that point he was genuine that it wasn’t his intention to cause hurt.

Early in the interview, he said things like, “I’m sorry if they feel that way”, which I know people don’t like as a framing because it can make you feel like you’re going a bit mad to be annoyed with someone. But later, in response to that specific point about England fans, he did say, “I’m sorry I’ve made them feel that way”. And he did say, “I understand the anger and the frustration. And I’m not sat here asking why people are criticising me”.

I’m definitely not here to defend Jordan Henderson or anything like that. But I do think it’s important just to reflect those aspects of what he said, because I’m also conscious that some people won’t have read the full transcript, and you see quotes that are on Twitter. Equally, there will be plenty of people who read the entire transcript and still come away thinking that. But I just thought it was important to put that in as well.

(Francois Nel/Getty Images)

Akinwolere: Yeah, I’m thinking as we’re all talking about the England setup as well and the FA in particular, what situation does this then leave the FA and the England organisation in? If you’re having a moment where you are wearing a rainbow armband to support LGBTQ+ rights, can Jordan Henderson realistically do that based on playing in Saudi Arabia? Does it put them in a grey area with it all?

White: The biggest issue for the FA is that this is a lot of unnecessary difficulty for them. Their focus should be on picking the best team and making sure England have the best chance of winning and preparing for the Euros properly and that they can be the best team there is. The bigger difficulty in selecting Henderson is: is he at that level and how does he prove that when he’s playing in an emerging league? Is the quality of that league strong enough for him to then be playing at an international level with England? That is more of a question for the FA. The bigger question on LGBT issues with the FA is their response on Qatar was weak. Their standard go-to has been to light up the Wembley Arch. And we (3 Lions Pride) had a wonderful meeting after the World Cup when we had very strong comments and feedback that we gave to the FA.

And actually, the travel club side have been superb in facilitating and making sure that we feel welcome at Wembley. Rich Weekes (The FA’s membership and operations manager) has done a great job of actually pushing and driving LGBT visibility and safety, home and away — and that’s something that took a long time to do. But there’s that disconnect on what we can sometimes see on the pitch and then what the FA do and say on LGBT issues around Pride month, around Rainbow Laces.

It just needs to be more of a “pride every day, not pride for one special event, pride for one month”. It’s about how is there tangible and cohesive work being done to make sure that, on the ground, inclusion is embedded throughout the practices?

Akinwolere: Will Henderson be at that level to play for England, to represent his country, playing against some of the greatest teams across the world while he’s playing in — fundamentally — a start-up league?

Ornstein: Let’s see. He clearly believes in himself to retain the level of fitness and technical ability to be an option for Gareth Southgate. Let’s be clear: it would have been easier for England and Southgate to not have this subject on their doorstep. It was quite interesting that there was a desire for us to get this out as soon as possible in the international break because I think, in England’s mind, they knew Jordan was doing this interview.

Let’s see if he does further media during the week. I’m not aware of that and focused fully on what we’ve got here. Southgate has spoken about this as well. He was on talkSPORT a few weeks ago. It’ll be a merit-based decision whether he contributes on the pitch. I suspect he’s he’s fallen down the pecking order a little bit by virtue of Jude Bellingham rising, Declan Rice rising. Let’s see what other options he uses in there.

But he is very loyal to players who have delivered in the past. Henderson is England’s vice-captain. He’s said to be a really strong and vocal influence in the dressing room, which won’t be an insignificant factor heading towards a major tournament that could be Southgate’s last. There is an expectation in the fanbase that England now finally go on to try to win something in this era.

There are a lot of young players. Henderson is very close to Bellingham, who is this emerging star of world football for club and country. And so perhaps he is still seen as a valuable asset now and he will think that he can do the business. But let’s see on the pitch, because he’s had a little injury over in Saudi, the quality of the facilities and competition and pitches are not what they are in the Premier League. And so the proof will be in the pudding.

Crafton: Yeah, I think it’s just the reality of getting old and getting older. I should say, I’m not calling 33 “old”. But that’s top-level football, right? You are at the highest level. There’s only so long where you can compete.

Henderson, from a football perspective, has had a sensational career to be at a club like Liverpool for 12 years — to maintain those standards from a fitness and technical point of view, to keep being in the team, to get better. Every time a new signing came, he still would come back. So he’s had a 12-year run at it. I think that’s longer than Roy Keane was at Manchester United, right? It’s significantly longer than Patrick Vieira was at Arsenal. I’m not comparing his ability to those two, but that’s a good run. And he even said, “I knew that it wouldn’t last forever”. Maybe he didn’t think it would come about so imminently and as quickly as it did — but these goodbyes often do.

It’s very rare that you get a goodbye in football where it is as everyone would like it. I remember Rio Ferdinand leaving Manchester United to go to Queens Park Rangers (in 2014). All of a sudden, you’re not getting a new contract. I think there was a story about Ferdinand being told in the dressing room after a game that Mancester United wouldn’t be renewing his contract.

Sometimes it doesn’t work out like that. And I’m sure that’s difficult for Henderson, but ultimately he’s made a decision to move to Saudi Arabia. He’s given all his justifications, all his explanations. Some people will see it as an explanation; some people will see it as excuses. Have a read, make up your mind. That’s his words.

(Top photos: Ian Hodgson)