Jordan Henderson's has betrayed his LGBT+ fans – like me

This is an article about Jordan Henderson, and how I – and a lot of other people like me, let down by his imminent transfer to Saudi Arabian club Al Ettifaq.

But, before we start, I’m going to set some ground rules.

First, we’re not talking about other footballers who have gone to the Saudi league this summer, like Ruben Neves, Jota, or N’Golo Kante. 

Second, we’re not talking about the Saudi-backed takeover of Newcastle. Yes, that fanbase loves to defend their ownership at any given opportunity, but this isn’t about that. 

This is a piece about Jordan Henderson, and how he has disappointed his queer fans. 

You could even say he’s betrayed us. In fact, I will. 

Jordan Henderson has betrayed a community he said he would stand ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ with, selling us out for money despite already being in the top 0.01% of earners in the UK. 

I’ve been a queer football fan my whole life. 

It’s not going to come as much of a surprise that an LGBT+ supporter in their early 30s has had some experiences with unpleasantness on matchdays.

Like sitting quietly in a stand full of people chanting about ‘benders’ or ‘rent boys’ or, once being followed to a train station and battered to the point of a concussion and some broken ribs for being effeminate and having long hair. 

Having spent most of the 00s attending football stadiums from the top flight through the lower leagues all the way to the further reaches of the non-league pyramid, I have, as they say, been through it. 

I’ve been at grounds where people have chanted slurs at players. I’ve kept my head down. 

It’s not even necessarily that I’ve been scared that a homophobe might take exception to me – I’ve been scared that the straight people around me won’t intervene if they did. 

But the more visible allies that have emerged in recent years, the better I’ve felt. 

Unless, say, they go out of their way to talk about that point of view. And in this case, Jordan Henderson nailed his colours firmly to the mast.

‘The idea that any [gay people] would feel excluded from playing or attending a football match, simply for being and identifying as who they are, blows my mind.

‘The idea they’d have to hide from it to be accepted? But that’s exactly how too many members of the LGBT+ community feel. We know this because they tell us. So we should listen, support them and work to make it better.’

That was Henderson, less than two years ago. 

And now, without a single comment about the community he has championed, he is set to play in a country where homosexuality is effectively illegal. 

Where ‘cross-dressing’ is against the law, denying the gender expression of trans people. 

It’s hard to tell just how many LGBT+ people have been executed for the ‘crime’ of being themselves, because the country refuses to release the figures. 

It’s hard to be surprised when a straight person outs themself as a hypocrite at this point (sorry that your estimated £50million in career club wages aren’t enough for you, Hendo) but that doesn’t make it sting any less. 

Put frankly, for queer fans, Henderson was one of the ‘good ones’. Those of us without any connection to Liverpool FC had a soft spot for the captain of such a big club making a point of supporting our community. 

And now that’s shattered. 

Henderson himself said, less than two years ago, that he didn’t know why gay footballers don’t come out in the modern English game. 

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Nobody, surely, expected that he himself would provide the clearest answer to his own question so quickly. 

I know how the counter-argument goes. That most people would take the Saudi money to triple their wages, and that it wouldn’t necessarily change who we are.

But we can’t compare ‘ordinary’ workplaces to football. 

Millions of people don’t pay to watch me do my job every week. 

My former colleagues and I aren’t public figures with a global platform, and our personal decisions are essentially that; personal.

What Jordan Henderson does is public, and he knows that. That’s why he endorsed the Rainbow Laces campaign at the end of 2021. 

Jordan, *this* is why men in football don’t come out. Because even their most enthusiastic advocates in the Premier League will go and sign up to sell a league where being queer is illegal, at the first sign of more money.

A place where your queer fans would have to risk their freedom to visit just to see your play. 

You’ve made an estimated £50m in wages from your clubs alone, putting aside your own revenue streams, so what is the need to triple your money? Do you need another house? Are you buying TWO packs of Lurpak on a shopping trip?

We actually hoped, for a bit. We hoped when the deal stalled for a few days that you’d listened to your fans, and that you weren’t going to sell out the things you told us were important to you. 

We shouldn’t have hoped. We should’ve known that you, like almost everyone before you and assuredly hundreds of players later, would let us down. 

You’ve sold out, Hendo. See you never.

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