The Jordan Henderson lesson is clear – no free pass for rancid hypocrisy

Bleakly, belatedly, Jordan Henderson sees how all that glitters is not gold. A weekly wage of at least £350,000 loses its lustre when playing for Al-Ettifaq crowds of a sparseness to embarrass a League One club. And even the promise of generational wealth fades once the ascetic daily rituals in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, compel your family to live across the border in Bahrain.

The former Liverpool captain is also said to be unhappy with the heat, which suggests he did not quite finish reading the brochure. No wonder he posted his Instagram New Year’s Eve message from the snow of Val d’Isere.

There is not a violin small enough to play the laments at Henderson’s change of heart. In just six months, he has produced an entire manual on how to trash a reputation from scratch. Rarely has a once-admired player abased himself so abjectly in apparent pursuit of personal enrichment. How about the sight of this self-proclaimed LGBT ally decamping to a regime where his rainbow armband had to be rendered in greyscale? Or the video of an England stalwart gushing over the Saudis’ 2034 World Cup bid? These are the types of reputational scars no money can heal.

The damage for Henderson is self-inflicted. He was warned for months that taking the Al-Ettifaq cheque would not only be a one-way ticket to professional oblivion, but that it would invalidate all the activist credentials he had worked so hard to burnish. Henderson chose his role as a champion of the gay community carefully. He led the marketing spiel for Liverpool’s match programmes, just as he fronted the Pride Month campaigns. And yet as soon as the Saudis came up with the requisite riyals, he scarpered to one of the few countries where homosexuality is still punishable by death.

With some gall, Henderson called it “disappointing” that he was booed at Wembley during England’s friendly against Australia last autumn. But the hostility sent a message that nobody deserves a free pass for rancid hypocrisy. The midfielder made the situation worse with his specious excuses for his move. At first, he said he wanted to be seen as a trailblazer, arguing that having somebody with his views playing on Saudi soil “could only be a positive thing”. And in the next breath, he conceded that he would not be wearing any rainbow colours so as not to offend his hosts on religious grounds. So much for his soaring moral crusade.

After six months, Henderson reportedly covets a return home, having made scarcely a dent in the Saudi Pro League with either his football or his purported values. In a way, this grubby little chapter cautions anyone tempted to follow the same path to choose between money and self-respect. It could also signal a watershed in the trend of past-their-prime players chasing one last bounty under the desert sun. Henderson’s experience lays bare the reality beyond those eye-watering cheques: the boredom, the lack of fulfilment, the endless opprobrium.

He has traded the adoration of the Kop for the tumbleweed of a quarter-full Prince Mohamed bin Fahd Stadium on the shores of the Persian Gulf. His would-be successors in the Premier League are entitled to think that this is not an exchange worth considering, at any price. Just look at how far the stock of his own manager, Steven Gerrard, has plunged. At Rangers, Gerrard was portrayed as the thrilling young future of management. Today, at just 43, he inhabits a backwater, with his Al-Ettifaq players failing to win in two months and his overlords trussing him up in a thobe and ghutra to promote Saudi National Day.

It is becoming a lonely ordeal. Gerrard has just lost his assistant Ian Foster to Plymouth Argyle, and now Henderson, his marquee signing, looks likely to depart. Suddenly, Saudi Arabia looks less like the land of milk and honey than a place where once-distinguished careers go to wither. This change highlights the perilousness of the entire project. Yes, the Saudis secured priceless PR when they enticed Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Karim Benzema with obscene riches and Lamborghinis galore. But beyond the surge in replica shirt sales, the underpinnings are fragile. Henderson’s volte face is an indication that it does not take long for the spell to break.

There is a popular narrative that Saudi Arabia, having bought the World Cup and a plethora of superstars on the wane, represents the next frontier in football. But what if it is merely the next China? You may recall how, in 2016, the Chinese Super League used apparently limitless funds to persuade everybody from Carlos Tevez to Javier Mascherano, Manuel Pellegrini to Luiz Felipe Scolari, to head east. Eight years on, the only name of any repute who remains is Oscar, once of Chelsea. At only 25, the Brazilian swapped global exposure for lucrative obscurity. And he never played for his country again. Let this serve as a lesson to Henderson. He imagined that he could have it all: the fortune, the image, the place with England at the Euros. And now it has all been exposed as the most extravagant delusion.

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