Henderson rises again after painful Liverpool ‘breakup’

A renewed Jordan Henderson tells Richard Jolly about his amazing return to the England setup under Thomas Tuchel

- RICHARD JOLLY SENIOR FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT

There is a wry smile on Jordan Henderson’s face when he says that he was in the right place during his six-month spell in Saudi Arabia. His time at Al-Ettifaq has come to look ill-fated, with Henderson tarnishing a reputation as a hugely admired figure and, when he curtailed it to join Ajax, proving far less lucrative than it seemed it would.

But perhaps the way to view it is as the journey of a jilted man on the rebound. Henderson was mourning what he had lost, the sudden end to his Liverpool career. “It felt like a breakup,” he said, casting his mind back to 2023. Henderson and Jurgen Klopp had been a Champions League and Premier League winning double act of skipper and manager but the German had signalled he was willing to countenance his captain’s departure.

“It was a really tough period when I left Liverpool. I was there for a long time, 12 years. Leaving Liverpool itself was huge and really difficult. It had been my life for so long and then it is just gone like that,” added Henderson, clicking his fingers. “So I struggled for a period after that.”

Thousands of miles away, near the Persian Gulf, Henderson found distance helped block out his past. “I couldn’t watch a lot of games,” he said. “I certainly couldn’t watch Liverpool. I didn’t watch a lot of Premier League stuff then... I probably picked the right place for that, halfway around the world.”