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.
