As ever, I seem to have misread the room, this time with people’s reactions to the Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson’s decision to sign for the Saudi Arabian club Al-Ettifaq for a weekly wage of some £700,000 a week. Henderson became a bit of a hero for me, leading Liverpool to an unprecedented period of success. A great leader and desperately underrated player, he became a great human being, too, organising financial support for the NHS during the Covid pandemic and, crucially, becoming an ally to the LGBT community via his very public support of Rainbow Laces. His decision to trouser a large fortune in a country where homosexuality is illegal and carries the death penalty overshadows all his achievements and trashes his reputation and legacy. It appears that on social media at least, mine is a minor view.
In the main, Liverpool fans are thankful to Henderson’s contribution to the club’s success. They wish him well for the future. Well, I don’t exactly wish him harm for the future, but as with the likes of Steven Gerrard, Cristiano Ronaldo and many more, I am sickened, as much with some of the on-line reactions.
There were plenty of versions of, “Well, it’s only a few gays who are upset and they’ll soon find something else to be offended by”. I saw something approaching the red mist when ploughing quickly through responses like this, suggesting that some people appear to be far more offended by LGBT rights than the likes of Henderson who are trashing them. But the one that boiled my … er … urine was this reply to me on twitter:
“You’d sell your soul for 700 bags a week. We all would!”
This person, a Bristol Rovers fan so it’s doubly disappointing, makes an astonishing assumption that in the unlikely situation that I’d do exactly the same thing as Henderson, that I’d walk away from a contract paying me a mere £175,000 a week, at one of the greatest football clubs in the world where I’d won everything, to quadruple my wages in order to aid sportswashing. Of course, the scenario is entirely hypothetical and I know I would never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever take filthy Saudi money. I won’t even visit a country where women are treated so badly and gay people executed for being gay. Christ – I won’t even go on holiday to Muslim countries like Turkey or Tunisia (and I have thought long and hard about going to the latter, but I just can’t do it). How hard can it be for someone to understand that not all of us would sell our souls in order to trouser vast sums of money, particularly if we were already multimillionaires in the first place? (Spoiler alert: I’m not.)
“We are Liverpool: this means more,” goes the blurb at Anfield. In Jordan Henderson’s case it’s more of a case of “I’m off to Saudi: money means more than principles.” I’d rather live in our ex council house on a modest income, thank you very much. I’d quite like to be wealthy – we all would, as someone said – but not by trampling over my beliefs and principles. And if you really think I’d sell my soul for 700 bags a week, whatever that means, you’re an idiot.
