The return of the ‘Hendo shuffle’ at Wembley this year was a sight Liverpool supporters all over the world were delighted to witness again.
Only twelve months earlier, the edifices around the empire the Reds captain and his team-mates along with Jurgen Klopp and his staff had painstakingly built over previous years appeared to crumbling as a wretched run of form in the opening months of 2021 put paid to hopes of retaining the league title so memorably won the previous summer to end the club’s long 30-year championship drought.
Having scaled that metaphorical Everest, the next step for Klopp’s men may well have proved difficult in normal circumstances but the nature of behind-closed-doors pandemic football seemed to have rip the heart and soul out of a side which had clearly been designed from day one to feed off the emotional connection the Liverpool team enjoys with their passionate followers who suddenly were no longer in attendance.
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Salvaging Champions League qualification from the wreckage of that campaign should be regarded, given the circumstances, as one of the finest achievements of the Klopp era when it is assessed in totality and it’s impossible not to feel that late-season recovery has set the tone for what followed.
The Carabao Cup triumph over Chelsea was the first of two trips to Wembley in 2021/22, with the FA Cup sealed with another penalty shootout win over the same side just two months later. Another victory was secured at Anfield South in the Community Shield against Man City in August. The Reds also came within a whisker of winning the league as well as a Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid.
And Jordan Henderson will without doubt go down as one of Liverpool’s finest ever captains by virtue of the trophies he has lifted, the addition of the League Cup and the FA Cup meaning he has lifted every major trophy during his time leading the side other than the Europa League.
His contribution goes far beyond mere silverware though, the Sunderland-born midfielder’s integrity and leadership away from the field being hailed throughout football by many of his peers and even some of his former critics due to the way he has stepped up repeatedly when it mattered as football tried to navigate a path through the unprecedented troubles of Covid-19.
Henderson’s human values and resilience have in fact been evident from early on in his time with Liverpool with one incident in particular often cited as a real turning point in how he was perceived by his team-mates during those difficult early years.
Having broken into the first team at his boyhood club Sunderland at the age of 18, his impressive progress at the Stadium of Light saw him play over 70 games for the Mackems and receive a first senior England call-up before Kenny Dalglish swooped to bring him to Anfield for £16m in the summer of 2011.
Even before he pulled on the red and white stripes of the side he used to watch as a youngster in earnest however, Henderson’s self-belief and willingness to stand up for himself had already marked him down in the eyes of one of the modern game’s most ferocious characters as someone who had the mental toughness to succeed in the brutal world of top level football.
Roy Keane’s 12 years at Manchester United had made him one of the most feared players in the game and he had made a successful start to life in management on Wearside, guiding Sunderland to promotion in his first season in charge as manager and keeping them up the following campaign.
Henderson had been impressing for Sunderland's youth team during that time and in the summer of 2008, he was handed the opportunity to impress for the first team but only after a fierce encounter between Keane following an abject reserve team performance which caused the Irishman to rip into his young charges.
"It was a reserve game. We played Gateshead away and it was pre-season," Henderson recalled when appearing on Jamie Carragher’s ‘Greatest Game’ podcast.
"We were shocking, we got beat and Roy wasn't at the game. His coaching staff were there and he heard what had happened. He got us back straight from the game to the Academy and we were all in the lounge area. We were all dotted about and he walked in and I was a young lad and I was sweating.
"He started: 'This is your f*****g problem. Get together'.
"So we all started shuffling together like a huddle and obviously he has some words to say and he is not happy. As we go off, some of the senior players, I remember David Meyler, one of my good mates, he had just signed for I can't remember how much it was.
"He had a pop at him and he had a pop at a couple of others and then he pointed at me and went: 'Do you think you are good enough to play for the first team?'
"Well after this rant I am thinking 'f*****g hell.' There is buckets I am sweating, all sorts coming off me.
"I was a young lad and I looked up to Roy a lot as a player and as a manager and to be fair I went, 'yeah, I do'.
"And I think he was bit like 'oh right, OK'. He was having that because he had heard that in the game I had still worked hard, I had still wanted it and he said 'good answer' and moved on.
"I remember when he walked out everyone was like 'f*****g hell' and sweating, it was the Roy Keane effect.
"After that game I got a phone call saying I was in the first-team squad for a pre-season game at the Stadium of Light and that was where it all started.
"Obviously I was delighted, he was delighted with my reaction and it went from there.
"That is probably what gave him the confidence to put me in games. I made my debut at Chelsea when we were 3-0 down at half-time and he put me on, straight in the deep end, off you go.
"He was one of the best midfielders ever to play in the Premier League so for someone like that to have confidence in me at a young age, all I wanted to do was go and impress him.
"I think he could see how much I wanted to be a player, what it meant to me and what I was prepared to do to get there.
"It gave me a lot of confidence because if Roy Keane thinks I have got something unique then that gives me a lot of confidence to go out and perform."
Henderson arrived at Anfield among an influx of new players brought in by Kenny Dalglish as he looked to rebuild the club having been given the manager’s job by new owners Fenway Sports Group on a permanent basis after initially succeeding Roy Hodgson as caretaker.
Having signed Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez and Newcastle forward Andy Carroll in January 2011, the iconic Scot was given a war chest in his first summer transfer window back in the Anfield hot-seat and used it to bring in £20m winger Stewart Downing from Aston Villa, £6.75m midfielder Charlie Adam from Blackpool, £6m left back Jose Enrique from Newcastle, £4.9m Uruguayan centre back Sebastian Coates and Welsh forward Craig Bellamy on a free transfer from Manchester City in addition to the £16m acquisition of Henderson.
The young north-easterner would eventually prove to be comfortably the most successful of all those buys but it took him some time to truly win over the doubters at Anfield and beyond, famously turning down a move to Fulham in 2013 after Brendan Rodgers had taken over to stay and fight for his place.
Despite playing a key role in agonisingly-close Premier League title bid in the spring of 2014 and going on to succeed Steven Gerrard as club captain the following year, questions still remained in the eyes of some and there was a school of thought following the transformative signing of Virgil van Dijk in January 2018 that the big Dutchman was in effect a Liverpool ‘captain in waiting’ but Henderson again rose to the challenge to cement his position.
His appetite for success and relentless desire to prove himself was by this time well-established and no surprise to those who had witnessed Henderson's continued willingness to stand his ground at Liverpool and demonstrate the kind of mental toughness needed to survive at one of the world’s most scrutinised clubs for over a decade and remembered the first time..
Dalglish’s one full season back at Anfield in the modern era was a tumultuous one, the Reds reaching both domestic cup finals - winning the League Cup after a penalty shoot-out triumph over Cardiff City but falling just short in the FA Cup final after Wembley defeat to soon-to-be-crowned European champions Chelsea, poor league form particularly in the second half of the campaign leading to a 8th-place Premier League finish, which cost the manager and ultimately director of football Comolli their jobs.
It proved to be an invaluable learning curve for Henderson however and even if it would be some time before Liverpudlians would see the benefit of it from him on the pitch, with a training ground row highlighting the young midfielder’s fierce determination to prove himself.
Luis Suarez’s volatile reputation and win-at-all-costs attitude was already known before he arrived at Anfield six months before Henderson, the Uruguayan having served a ban for biting an opponent while playing for Ajax in Holland and making global headlines shortly before his move to the Premier League with a cynical handball that enabled his country to reach the 2010 World Cup semi-finals in South Africa.
Early in the time together as Liverpool team-mates, the pair were involved in a bust-up during training at Melwood which years later is still referenced as a crucial moment in Henderson winning round the doubters in his own dressing room that he belonged in such exalted company.
“Being a footballer, there is criticism and people doubting you all the time," Henderson told Jamie Carragher's ‘Greatest Game’ podcast.
"At that time, I was a young player and there were one or two things Luis did in training that I didn't like and it made me feel I wasn't good enough to be in the same team in training.
"The arms were up and it was like "what the f***, what's he doing?', like I shouldn't be there.
"That really hurt me. He did it three times and then I exploded and I was ready to kill him.
“From that point, I had a good relationship with Luis after that. The next game I set him up for his goal away to Stoke. He said before the game to Lucas that I was going to set him up because of what happened during the week.
"He was brilliant with me after that and I was really close to him after that and he was another big player I learned from.”
Carragher himself was still a Liverpool player at the time and witnessed the incident, revealing in a Sky Sports feature with Gary Neville years later how that was the moment which put to bed the initial doubts he had over whether the young midfielder had what it took to make it at Anfield.
“When he initially came in, I remember him backing out of a couple of tackles at Anfield and right away the crowd are not going to be having that type of thing. He was brought in as that type of player and I think that’s grown in him over time. Football means so much to him now, he’s very intense and you can see that on the pitch, often the player who’s having a go at his team-mates if he needs to and he’s always in the referee’s face.
“I remember speaking with him recently about the little bit of a bust-up with Luis Suarez because he was finding it really tough to be accepted by certain players in the dressing room over whether he was going to be good enough.
“It was nothing major but a few words were exchanged and I thought straight away “Yeah, I like that’.
“Suarez was the best player at the time along with Stevie Gerrard and Suarez had got frustrated with a pass Jordan had given him.
“For him to stand up as a young kid of 20, 21.. it showed how much it meant to him but also how much he’d been going through, almost like ‘Oh I don’t care any more, I’m going to have a go at the best player at the club if he’s having a pop at me’.
“And that was something evident early on because even when Brendan Rodgers came in, Jordan was put in the Europa League team where I was as well as I was coming to the end of my career and it’s well-documented Rodgers tried to move him on to Fulham which he was upset by.
“But he didn’t just accept it, he fought back and that’s where if you’ve got that something inside you, the character and resilience you can get your rewards at the other end and that’s what’s happened to him. Never under-estimate those with that personality and resolve to change people’s opinions of them.”
Another senior Liverpool squad member of the time Glen Johnson also felt it was a watershed moment during Henderson’s tricky settling-in period and has spoken of how he advised the young midfielder to stick at it when doubts were swirling around him.
"When Hendo turned out, he was a young kid and I think he was a little in awe of the faces that were in the dressing room," Johnson said.
"Because he was such a hard-working kid and so eager to please, things weren't coming off for him. It takes a bit of time to understand, no disrespect to Sunderland, to come to Liverpool it's a big step-up and a very high standard change.
"There were times in training when Hendo would make a minor mistake, not deliver a pass how someone wanted it, a handful of players would look at him, not roll their eyes but that body language to say 'oh god, what's he done again', that sort of attitude.
"You could see it getting to him. I remember speaking to him and saying 'look, you're here for a reason, just keep doing what got you here in the first place', that's what Lamps (Frank Lampard) said to me when I was at Chelsea and I thought it was a nice touch.
"I said Hendo 'look, just relax, it'll happen. Just let it come out, rather than forcing it'. This specific moment there were people looking at Hendo, this particular pass didn't come off and Luis (Suarez) was throwing his arms up, expecting more and that's when Hendo snapped.
"Like Carragher said, I thought 'this is great'. You can't let people run all over you or think they can.
"He's continued with that attitude, how hard he works and the effort he puts in to improve and we're all seeing that now."
Gary Neville worked closely alongside Henderson during his time with the England coaching set-up and saw first hand how the tough lessons learnt during those early years served the Liverpool skipper well when he took over the armband from, and was inevitably subjected to comparisons to, Steven Gerrard.
“Jordan Henderson was belittled in his first few years at Liverpool, not just by Liverpool fans but by fans outside Liverpool who would say ‘you could never win a league with Jordan Henderson’.
“He was compared with Steven Gerrard I felt unfairly in that he would never be as good a central midfield player. However when I watched Jordan with England and when Steven was there as captain you could see there was an immense respect between them.
“There comes a point where the older one has to leave to let the younger one come through and I have to say when Steven retired with England you started to see Jordan grow a bit more and I suspect that’s what happened at Liverpool.
“Incident like what Jordan had with Luis Suarez are big moments in your growth as a football player when you have to stand up to players in your own dressing room and that helps you start to lead them further down the line.”
Carragher admitted he saw something of his own struggles during the early part of his Liverpool career in what Henderson experienced and believed coming through the other side of it has made everything achieved since all the more impressive.
“When he initially came, it was raised eyebrows in some ways because where was he going to play? He was a central midfield player, we already had Steven Gerrard at the club and Charlie Adam had come in at the the same time so there were already a lot of midfield players.
“I think it was actually Damian Comolli who brought in him, young English player with great energy and ability, but he found it tough early on as he was playing out of position really on the right when he’s a central midfield player.
“The thing I love about Jordan Henderson, and it’s similar a little bit to my journey in some ways in that I found it tough and people said I wasn’t good enough and at times people have said that about him. It just shows the character of who he is and we can use words like ‘great professional.. great character..’ and these are just words but what does it mean?
“It means the way he trains every day, the example he sets. People used to question why he was captain and I used to argue for Jordan all the time and I’d say 'I know the character and personality I’d want as captain in my club and that’s him'. Who could be captain after Steve Gerrard?
“Players like Jordan, they have something special about them where you just can’t write them off. At different times in his Liverpool career someone would come in and you’d think ‘Oh he might not play now’ but he always still did, it might be Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain or Naby Keita, big money signings - young, energetic with different qualities but Jordan Henderson would still play.
“His time at Liverpool is testament not just to his ability but to his character and his personality because he knows as well as we all do that the two biggest clubs in the country are Liverpool and Manchester United. There’s a lot of pressure to play for those clubs, a lot of media intrusion, fans all over the world judging and talking about your performance and it’s not easy and a lot of players - great players - can’t cope with that scrutiny.
“At the end of his career Jordan’s going to go down as one of the great Liverpool captains who’s lifted plenty of trophies and shown his real leadership qualities off the pitch as well.
“That resilience comes partly from his working-class background in the north east. There were questions asked when he first came to Liverpool and I remember doing some TV work with Roy Keane and we were talking about Liverpool’s situation at that time.
“There had been a lot of signings made and Kenny and the club were criticised for them, actually the sporting director Damian Comolli lost his job on the back of signings that didn’t work out and Jordan almost was put into this category.
“Roy obviously knew him from his time at Sunderland and he said ‘No, don’t write that lad off’ all because of his character and personality, and Roy was proven to be spot on.”
Henderson and Suarez would go on to enjoy a good relationship on and off the field even after the Uruguayan’s 2014 Anfield departure, with the Liverpool skipper speaking about the influence the firebrand forward had on him ahead of the Reds’ Champions League clash with Atletico Madrid earlier this season and Suarez himself left no-one under any illusions of the respect he still holds his former team-mate.
"I think he is a player who has improved a great deal”, Suarez said.
“When he joined Liverpool, he came with the tag of somebody who had cost a lot of money. He was young, English, coming from Sunderland. This may have put some pressure on him.
"But as he grew in confidence with the team, he took many things from Gerrard and experienced players such as Carragher and he took on board things from me. He has learnt from everyone, he has matured in that sense and has become a fantastic player.
"He shows his personalty in every game. The team might be there, four goals up, but he's on top of his teammates. This is something he from learned from Steven Gerrard at that time.
"As a captain, he has matured a lot. During his career, he has made the club grow and he is a role model for English football."
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