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The actor Gary Webster, who played Ray Daley in the latter years of the classic TV series ‘Minder’, tweets this:
“When will anyone at Sky Sports bring up the moral decision with regards to the Saudi backed league? If you play there then any family members, any friends, anyone you know who is gay cannot come & watch you play for fear of being arrested, imprisoned or even sentence to death.”
It’s a very good point as players fall over themselves to grab the millions available from Saudi Arabia to play in their football league. Yet Webster’s voice, while not being a lone one, is definitely a minority one. Much of the media merely points out how much money players will trouser when playing there, but in truth the riches on offer represent sportswashing in action with players abandoning any principles they might once have had to cash in. One of the most obvious examples of the latter is the case of the Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, who is set to join Steven Gerrard’s Al Ettifaq for a salary reported to be £100,000 a day.
Henderson, as well as being a fine footballer who has won everything at club level, is well known and respected for supporting good causes, not least the LGBT Rainbow Laces campaign. He said this just last year: “I have regularly worn rainbow laces and today will be no exception because this kind of visible support can only have a positive impact. It also sends the powerful message that football is for everyone and the more of us who can take this message back into our homes, workplaces and daily lives the better.” Well, he won’t be wearing them at his new club because homosexuality in Saudi Arabia is punishable by death.
Clearly, a mere £200,000 a week was not enough for Henderson and he is now dead to me. Whatever he has done in football, whatever he has done off the field in helping and supporting others; none of it matters to me, now. His new deal, worth some £36 million a year, may just see him scrape together enough money to smooth the way for early retirement but the Saudis will see it as chicken feed as they seek to pretend everything is perfectly normal in their country. Spoiler alert: things are not normal in a country with such a terrible human rights record.
Also dead to me are my favourite ever Liverpool player, Steven Gerrard, who will be Henderson’s new manager, Roberto Firmino, my favourite player from the Klopp era and soon the world class defensive midfielder Fabinho. It is ironic, though hardly the fault of Liverpool, that a club with such excellent principles should see former heroes trash their reputation and legacy in search of what I regard as blood money. But, I fear that as with so many things, I am out of step with most people. Where I usually see only black and white, others see shades of grey.
I have largely fallen out of love with the only club I will ever support, Bristol Rovers, because of the actions of previous and current owners, more recently the employment of Joey Barton as manager and the manager’s subsequent acquisition of a player with convictions for beating women. I wouldn’t dream of telling others that they should not attend Rovers games in future – that’s entirely a matter for them – but, just like when a friend of mine was banned by a previous owner from attending games, I will carry out my sad and lonely one man boycott. If I am strongly opposed to sportswashing by Saudi Arabia, then I am always opposed to domestic violence and I have only one way of showing it and by having nothing to do with it.
This is just me and I am not you. Jordan Henderson is free to sign for a so called club in a country with a shocking record on human rights. He won’t give a toss what I think, nor that he is now dead in my eyes. But in my mind, I am standing with the LGBT community in my own small way, as I stand alongside victims of domestic abuse, again in my own small way.
Life would be far easier if I could just let things go, as some people have suggested, because, in this instance, ordinary fans are not able to choose the owner, the manager or the players. All they can do is support the shirt. I understand that, but for me some things mean more. That’s why, pointlessly you may conclude, I’m alone again, naturally. Because if I don’t do what I believe in, or I do things that I don’t believe in, what’s the point?
