We Need To Talk About Jordan Henderson

the year is 2034. Saudi Arabia covered almost entirely in solar panels has led the world in decarbonisation ending all fossil fuel exploration a decade ago and turning to Renewables the tyrannical House of Saud was long ago overthrown in a peaceful Revolution replaced by a paradise of openness tolerance and Democratic freedoms a period of Tranquility has descended upon Western Asia stretching all the way from Armenia to Yemen and from the West Bank to Tehran Jordan Henderson looks up at riyadh's first gay bar which he helped to inaugurate across the road from the Interfaith worship space which he opened the Jews Muslims and Christians alike Smiles at himself lets out a little sigh arata's five simple words my work here is done what's a man England International former Liverpool captain and they very highly paid Sleeper Agent bringing peace freedom and Justice to the world when we all thought that he'd just gone over there for a shedload of cash he might not be the hero we deserve but he is the one we need this is the world according to Jordan Henderson a man who we were all far too quick to judge and to whom we must now apologize it was easy to dismiss Henderson as a duplicitous hypocrite following his decision to move to Saudi Arabia having previously betrayed himself as a vocal Ally of LGBT people but following a recent interview with the athletic it's evidence that he's actually just a credulous imbecile yes I am afraid that the time has come we need to talk about Jordan Henderson who has just given the worst interview by an Englishman since prince Andrew sat down with Emily mightless declared that he was physiologically incapable of sweating couldn't possibly be a nonce because he was too busy at Pizza Express and still didn't regret his friendship with the world's most famous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein so in today's video we're going to analyze some of Jordan Henderson's claims including such Classics as I didn't go for the money I want to grow sport all over the world I would have been criticized whatever I'd done and my personal favorite I didn't see any human rights abuses in Qatar despite what Amnesty International said sure does make you think doesn't it yes it should be a wild ride and if you're still sane by the end of it then you're a better man or woman than me the biggest headline or takeaway to come out of Henderson's interview aside from the Revelation that his head is as Hollow as an Easter egg is the claim that is moved to Saudi Arabia wasn't motivated by money so we'd probably best start with that it would be fair to say that even those previously sympathetic to Henderson's cause who don't really think there's anything wrong with footballers or anyone else for that matter chasing the bag so to speak and making one or two moral sacrifices in the process weren't particularly sold on his claims say what you want about Odie nogalo who joined Chang Chun yatai at the age of 27 and has played for three different Saudi clubs over the last two years but at least he was honest about his sole motivation speaking to the Nigerian sports station egalo stated quote I've played for passion all my life now it's for money I'm not one of those players who come and say I play for passion for other it's money at the end of the day it's money is Ronaldo still playing out of passion Ronaldo has earned a hundred times more than I have in my entire life and yet he went to Saudi Arabia did he do that out of passion it's for money bro end quote Henderson by contrast speaking to David Ornstein and Adam Crafton from the athletic was unwilling to make any such admission when asked about the perception that he had joined al-atifah who finished 7th out of 16 teams in the Saudi pro league last season primarily for the money Henderson responded quote that was the hardest thing people will see this club come with loads of money and he's just gone yeah I'm going when in reality that just wasn't the case at all people can believe me or not but in my life and my career money has never been a motivation ever don't get me wrong when you move the business still has to be tight you have to have fun you have to feel wanted and you have to feel valued and money is a part of that but that wasn't the sole reason and these possibilities came up before money was even mentioned end quote Oh Deary Dairy me poor old hendo eh honestly these days if you quit being Liverpool Captain to join a mid-table team in Saudi Arabia on a reported 350 000 a week tax-free salary people just assume that you've done it for the cash and finest Henderson and I do want to be as charitable and good faith as possible here none of us can see inside of his head we can all make judgments in terms of probabilities and whether something passes the smell test but only he really knows whether massively increasing his after-tax earnings at the age of 33 is the main reason why he decided to play in a league rank just outside of the world's top 30 below the Scottish Premiership but above sarriabi so what justification does he give if not buckets full of Petro dollars Henderson told the athletic quote I think there was always going to be criticism regardless of what I did whether I stayed whether I went so basically I had to make the decision on what was best for me and my family so the football is the football side so do I go somewhere to try something new to grow the game that I love in another country and grow the league into one of the best in the world that excites me because I want to grow the sport all over the world and that got me going really end quote that's right hendo was motivated Above All Else by a burning desire to grow the game that he loves in another country and to grow the league because he's always been passionate about growing the sports all over the world and if you don't believe him you nasty cynics just take a look at his career before joining aletifac Henderson was born in Sunderland and joined the Sunderland Academy at the age of eight when he was 20 having impressed in the Northeast he moved all the way to the north west joining fellow Premier League side of Liverpool oh and do not forget in the 200809 season Henderson also played all of 10 games in the championship on loan at Coventry City Coventry isn't even in the north of England it's in the West Midlands which is practically another continent Henderson uh then spent the next 12 years at Liverpool in case you still don't believe him I have helpfully plotted Henderson's globetrotting career on a map here illustrating the extraordinary lengths that he has gone to in his unwavering mission to spread football around the world if I just zoom out here for a moment you rarely start to get a perspective on how committed Henderson has been two footballs expansion I mean Sunderland to Liverpool alone is a journey of almost 125 miles and with the UK's poor travel infrastructure it will take you around three and a half hours by either car or rail now admittedly that is less than the 3271 miles from Liverpool to the city of damam neighboring Bahrain on Saudi Arabia's East Coast about 96.3 percent less in fact and it does just so happen to Henderson spent the first 15 years of his career from 18 to 33 playing in the league which offered him the highest wages all within a 170 mile radius of where he was actually born and only left England as soon as he was offered more money to play somewhere else at the age of 33 but I find it hard to believe that anyone out there would be such a cold-hearted skeptic as to doubt his one-man mission to spread football around the world and why that just so happened to take him to the exact country that is currently offering footballers enormous wages where football is already very popular and not say Tonga Palau Fiji or Mongolia countries where football actually could do with some real growth no I'm sure that if novotka FC a mid-table team from the Tonga Major League had just shown an interest in Henderson he would have gone there instead that's just how committed he is speaking of interest in Henderson the former Liverpool Captain also claims that despite being a current England International there was very little of it in him and that Liverpool made no attempt to keep hold of him when asked if he would have stayed at Liverpool if they had fought to keep hold of him Henderson replied quote if one of those people said to me now we want you to stay then we wouldn't be having this conversation and I have to then think about what's next for me in my career now that's not to say that they forced me out of the club or they were saying they wanted me to leave but at no point did I feel wanted by the club or anyone to stay end quote that is a little bit unusual because when the move first happened Jurgen klopp stated almost the precise opposite at a press conference during Liverpool's pre-season tour in Singapore klopp stated quote if he wants to leave there's no reason why we should throw any rocks or stones in the way hendo knew exactly the situation that we wanted to keep him it was full of respect full of everything you need in a situation like that end quote that is just he said she said or more accurately I suppose he said he said and whether you choose to believe klopp or Henderson is really up to you similarly whether you believe Henderson's testimony that he couldn't join another Premier League team because he wouldn't have felt right playing against Liverpool due to his connections to the club having been perfectly fine with playing against his Boyhood Club sunderland's 12 times with Liverpool is up to you what I find somewhat less believable however to put it kindly is Henderson's claim that one of the motivations for his moods of Saudi Arabia was because he felt that it would improve his chances of being selected by England for the Euros yeah sorry Jordan I'm not buying that one for a start the idea that he would be dropped by Gareth Southgate just because he wasn't starting every game for Liverpool seems a little bit far-fetched Calvin Phillips and Harry MaGuire say hi but the premise that playing regularly for Al ETI would have been preferable to his prospects of being selected that either being rotated at Liverpool or playing regularly elsewhere in England or in Europe is quite obviously absurd it would be the equivalent of Graziano palla claiming that he joined shangdong lunang in 2016 to improve his chances of being selected in Italy's 2018 World Cup squad because he was worried that Charlie Austin might start to take minutes off him at Southampton also just quickly to return to that previous quote Henderson opened with the sentence and I quote I think there was always going to be criticism regardless of what I did whether I stayed whether I went end quote that was in response very specifically to a question regarding Henderson's prior support for the LGBT community and the obvious legal discrimination faced by LGBT people in Saudi Arabia and where the punishment for homosexual acts includes life imprisonment and the death penalty so how exactly does Henderson imagine that he would have been criticized by the LGBT community for not going to Saudi Arabia maybe I am misremembering though it was less than two months ago but I can't exactly remember a wave of LGBT people rallying Henderson to go and join aletifac and sharpening the pitchforks ready for him potentially rejecting a move to a country where they would be locked up for life or killed again maybe I just missed it later on in the interview though we get an insight into how Henderson's mind works or doesn't work it might be more honest to admit and why he imagines that some people would would actually have criticized him had he not gone to Saudi Arabia you see Henderson believes or has convinced himself in order to get a better night's sleep that him being in Saudi Arabia is actually a positive thing for the LGBT community though his thoughts are a little bit more muddled as to why that might be the case Henderson told the athletic quotes now when I was making the decision the way that I tried to look at it was I felt as though by myself not going we can all bury our heads in the sand and criticize different cultures and different countries from afar but then nothing's going to happen nothing's going to change End quotes Okay I hear you that is somewhat coherent and I would very Loosely agree the idea that Henderson was ever likely to affect change in Saudi Arabia is put kindly painfully stupid and infantile but if he had gone over there being extremely outstanding spoken in its criticism of the House of Saud the plight of LGBT people in Saudi Arabia and broader human rights concerns in the Gulf States nothing would have been likely to change other than perhaps emboldening existing suppressed voices in Saudi Arabia his contracts perhaps would have been terminated and maybe would have faced some legal persecution but at least you could say that Henderson had been consistent and had stuck to his guns in his words he wouldn't just be criticizing different cultures and different countries from afar or burying his head in the sand so is that what Henderson has done uh well not quite Henderson Saudi escapadas so far consisted of the rainbow armband in his announcement video being greyed out by his new club him having said absolutely nothing whatsoever about any of the issues that he claims to still care about and Sweeting in Arabic which I must say picked up very quickly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the hospitality of the hosts the enthusiasm of the fans the exciting league and the Irreplaceable sense of Victory I way to go hando don't stop speaking truth to power you Brave foot soldier of the Revolution I'm sure that LGBT people in Saudi Arabia can scarcely believe their luck having such a high profile and outspoken voice in their corner at long last within about 30 seconds of that absolute dribble Henderson did a full 180 and admitted that by not criticizing from afar or bearing his head in the sand on issues that he purports to care deeply about what he actually means is that he's not going to criticize at all but from very very close and instead of merely metaphorically bearing his head in the sand now he can actually bury his head in the sand having relocated to a literal desert on his football spreading Crusade when asked whether he would wear his rainbow laces or a rainbow armband in Saudi Arabia Henderson replied quote I wouldn't rule that out but at the same time what I wouldn't do is disrespect the religion and culture in Saudi Arabia if we're all saying everybody can be who they want to be and everybody is inclusive then we'll have to respect that we'll have to respect everyone and by doing something like that if that did disrespect the religion then no I'm not going to do that but if the opportunity comes where I can do it and it doesn't then yeah because that's my values end quote so basically if the house of Saud legalizes homosexuality while I'm here and the regime spontaneously decides that it is totally chilled out about gay people after all with no external pressure then sure in those circumstances I'll pop on the old rainbow armband and laces for all time's sake if however other and I shouldn't think that this is very likely but you know if the house of Saud remains virulently homophobic and keeps locking up and killing LGBT people then I'll probably just keep stun hey I wouldn't want to offend anyone at least of all the people paying my astronomical salary which and uh I don't know if I mentioned this earlier on I'm not actually bothered about the categorization of anything and everything under the umbrella of culture and the reluctance to criticize it because you have made it a cultural difference or at least to qualify those criticisms is one of the most weasel-like forms of apologia for Dreadful Behavior out there and it is by no means exclusive to Henderson this is a point that I've made before but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which is the largest denomination of Mormonism bad black men and women from participating in ordinances of its temples necessary for the highest level of Salvation up until 1978. from the mid-1800s to 1978 then a period of more than 100 years the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an explicitly racist religion until God apparently had a sudden change of heart and decided that he was all right with black people after all and to think they say that people can't change it was right up to 1978 to criticize the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for being explicitly racist against black people even though that was firmly ingrained within the culture of the religion just as it is right and proper to criticize the persecution of LGBT people even if you consider that part of the culture of Saudi Arabia or anywhere else for that matter there is no moral equivalence between the people who want to murder gay people and gay people who don't want to be murdered even if that can be described as a cultural difference personally I think that it is a little bit more fundamental than that but even so they are not morally equal positions Henderson actually claims at one point that Saudi Arabia signing him given his prize support for LGBT people is it of itself evidence of progress despite admitting that he's not going to publicly support any of those causes now that he's there seemingly it hadn't occurred to Henderson at any stage that his prior support and reputation might be precisely why the Saudis were so Keen to sign him I'm sure LGBT people in Saudi Arabia are delighted and see it as a reassuring sign of progress though they probably can't quite believe their luck to have such a strong and supportive Ally you know bravely doing absolutely nothing whilst earning a fortune the most extraordinary part of the entire interview though and I think the most revealing was Henderson's response to being asked whether he had any concerns that perhaps he was being used to improve Saudi Arabia's image overseas and whether at any point he had interacted with LGBT people or voices critical of the Saudi regime and thought to himself I can't do this Henderson responded and I'll give you the full quote since no synopsis could ever quite do the rank in your face stupidity of it justice quote it's hard to know what the reality is and what's not true because you hear about stuff and you're like is that true but when you speak to people who are close to me and have had experiences over in Saudi or over in the Middle East it's like well actually that's not the same a perfect example would be before Qatar we had a meeting with the fa about human rights about the issues around the stadiums I think it might have been amnesty who had sent the images and stuff and then half an hour later I go into a press conference or some media and I've commented on that situation I was like well it was quite shocking and horrendous and that was quite hard for us to see but then I went to Qatar and we had the experience we had at the World Cup you get to meet the workers there and it was totally different End quotes well there you have it ladies and gentlemen sure Amnesty International with that team of reporters and investigators Gathering evidence and speaking to thousands of people on the ground they might have expressed some concerns about human rights abuses and the conditions of Migrant workers in Qatar in the 12 years building up to the tournament but once Jordan and his Pals rocked up to their five-star hotel that England stayed up for three weeks everything seemed absolutely fine honestly from the balcony of my luxury hotel where rooms cost up to six thousand pounds a night outside of the World Cup I didn't see any human rights abuses at all while I was doing laps of the pool and playing table tennis with Nick Pope I didn't even see anyone get executed in the courtyard as me and the boys tucked into a five course fine dining menu everyone in Qatar at least as far as my eyes could see was well paid and well fed so really it's hard to know who to believe it would be easy to like and Henderson's a western academics who were taken on guided tours of model Soviet towns in the 1950s and wrote glowing reviews of stalinism in Western Publications meanwhile thousands perished in Stalin's gulags and purges but it's actually worse than that back then it might have been naive to think that you were being shown a fair and accurate reflection of an entire nation and of the policies implemented by an authoritarian regime during an authorized visit but at least it was actually quite hard to find out what the truth of the matter really was in the internet age and in an age of information there are far less ambiguities not only that Henderson didn't even actually have to do any investigating or thinking of his own he was presented with Comprehensive detailed and well-researched information about Qatari human rights abuses by a actual human rights organization he absorbed that information had the red car up it rolled out for him upon arrival and then went oh no now I don't know what to believe there are people out there who would be convinced that they had won the Nigerian Lottery because of an email found in their junk folder who still aren't that credulous and gullible furthermore the idea that the World Cup in Qatar Jordan Henderson playing football in Saudi Arabia or the influx of foreign players into the Saudi pro league as a whole is going to force change or bring about reform which seems to be Gary Neville and others his favorite talking point building up to and during the 2022 World Cup is obviously just absolutely spot on that's why Qatar is now a democracy rather than an absolute monarchy where free speech and minority rights flourish soon it will rival Bangkok and Mykonos as the gay capital of the world such was the extraordinary pace of change during that single month-long tournament the same was true of course of the two 2018 World Cup after which Vladimir Putin liberalized the Russian people gained far greater freedoms and any ideas of military expansion were quickly forgotten all the 1978 World Cup in Argentina which brought down rather than handing an enormous propaganda Victory to the ruling fascist military Junta and who could forget about the 1936 summer olympics a roaring success after which Hitler decided that he wasn't a massive racist after all no one died as a result of Nazism and Germany didn't start the deadliest conflict in history just three years later oh no hang on I'm getting word that oh oh well you know still It's gotta be worth another go hasn't it it's bound to work this time around at times it is hard to tell whether Henderson is extraordinarily disingenuous or just unfathomably stupid the reality of course is that he is both he is a very silly person as is evidenced by all of the very silly things that he says who never actually cared about all of the causes that he aligned himself with and I'm sure that he thinks that he did and still does just you know not enough to ever make any kind of even very minor personal sacrifices for them and combine that with a deep desire to explain away his own behavior and a credulity that will allow him to believe almost anything that suits his own narrative and you end up with that Meandering Hulk of nonsense which Henderson hoped would Salvage his reputation but has served to do the precise opposite we shouldn't idolize footballers or anyone else for that matter it is a recipe for disappointment and we ought to scrutinize genuinely powerful people like politicians and chief Executives more or at the very least as much as we scrutinize footballers it is more than a little absurd that Jordan Henderson's decision to play football in Saudi Arabia receives a tougher Hearing in the British press than rishi's sunax decision to roll out the red carpet for Muhammad bin Salman have him meet with the royal family arm him up to the eyeballs and seek an ever closer relationship with Saudi Arabia with no strings attached in regard to the supposed values that sunak would claim the British government cares so deeply about nonetheless you can have expectations of footballers without idolizing them and you can criticize them just as you would criticize anyone else when they fall well short Jordan Henderson is an idiot a useful idiot who created a set of Expectations by showing solidarity with LGBT people which is why he has been criticized more so than any other footballers who have gone to Saudi Arabia of whom less if anything was ever expected if Jordan Henderson's aim was to grow football around the world be a force for good in Saudi Arabia and improve his prospects of making England's Euro 2024 Squad he has undoubtedly failed if his aim was to massively increase his after-tax earnings destroy his reputation in England and convince everyone that he is a grossly dishonest impressionable clown then he has done an outstanding job that is it for today's video but thank you all very much as ever for watching hit the like button if you enjoyed it let me know your thoughts Down Below in the comments and of course make sure that you are subscribed and have notifications turned on both for this Channel hrtc 7s and my second Channel Alfie pot Samba both of which should be on your screens now along with a couple of videos the YouTube thinks you might enjoy watching after this you could also find me on Twitter or on Instagram via the username at hrtc Sims on both and all of those links that I've just mentioned plus much more will be linked down in the description below

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 282,512

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Jordan Henderson, Jordan, Henderson, Liverpool, England, Saudi Arabia, Money, Wages, Interview, The Athletic, International, Premier League, Champions League, World Cup, Qatar, Saudi, Saudi Pro League

Id: YVoJtkFsnUk

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 08 2023