Jordan Henderson bumwash has trashed his reputation in five Saudi Arabian months

All credit to Jordan Henderson. We’ll admit we scoffed at the idea that he might be able to effect meaningful change in not just Saudi Arabian football but also Saudi Arabian culture as a whole in just two years. But now, as he’s achieved all of his goals as a sporting and cultural ambassador in just five months, there’s no need for another year and a half.

For a deeply principled man like Henderson, to stay in Saudi Arabia pocketing vast sums of their cash when his work is already done would be unthinkable, and thus his decision to seek a return home is easily understood and is typical of the man.

Let us not pretend he is entirely selfless here. There is undoubtedly a huge dopamine hit to be had from knowing you have helped others and, having transformed Saudi society and football so utterly, it is to be expected that he would seek out the next challenge, the next hit. Chelsea would certainly be a challenge even for so great a missionary as Henderson. Oh, Icarus, fly not so near the sun lest thy waxy wings should melt.

What a dreary, pitiful waste of time and dignity this has been. The speed with which Henderson has grown disillusioned with his altruistic Saudi endeavour is as grim as it is predictable.

All those fancy words. All that self-deluding bumwash about his motives. At least we know money wasn’t a factor, so that hefty tax bill he now faces for failing to stick it out for two years won’t bother him. And let’s also not pretend that this tax hit is crippling; he’s still been obscenely well rewarded for his mini-retirement playing tinpot football and the occasional England game.

But it does also mean he has thoroughly demeaned himself and trashed a hard-won reputation for a more meagre financial benefit. It’s hard to imagine he still believes any of it was worth it. Maybe he’ll have an honest sit-down with Adam Crafton and talk about how he thinks his influence can really change things in the right-wing hellscape of the UK. Maybe he’ll believe it.

Henderson’s time in Saudi Arabia will gradually drift from view, especially if – as seems likely – the league never comes particularly close to achieving its lofty ambitions to cause the kind of schism in football that LIV has achieved in golf.

READ: Firmino, ‘desperate’ Henderson followed back to Europe by Liverpool turncoats in Saudi renegade XI

But his reputation will never recover. It’s maddening now to think how carelessly, how grubbily that was tossed away. For Liverpool’s captain to be as widely admired across tribal boundaries as Henderson was no mean feat. There was a decency to him that really did appear genuine.

And that’s all been spaffed away for five months of dirty, grubby money. And it’s not just him. Others have been caught up in it all.

Look at Gareth Southgate. Now, whatever you think of Gareth Southgate the football manager, pretty much everyone apart from the kind of culture war dullard who uses ‘woke’ as a pejorative would have agreed he was a thoughtful, intelligent and thoroughly decent sort of chap.

Yet Henderson’s little Saudi jaunt and Southgate’s genuinely inexplicable refusal to even countenance not selecting a semi-retired 33-year-old in all the squads left the England manager having to pretend not to understand what all the fuss was about when a seemingly principled campaigning footballer buggered off to Saudi Arabia for bucketloads of cash. It was an undignified position, insulting both our intelligence and his own.

It is Henderson, though, who will suffer the reputational damage of his actions. And frankly he deserves to. He has achieved nothing in Saudi Arabia. He has moved the needle not one iota on any issue. Because of course he hasn’t. He was never going to. We still don’t really believe he ever thought he might; he was never stupid enough to swallow his own bullsh*t, he just thought a sizeable enough percentage of football fans might be. And he was wrong about that as well.

He’ll come back to the Premier League now, because he’s still a handy and experienced footballer for a mid-table outfit like Chelsea or wherever he turns up to have around. But his role at Liverpool was about so much more than Henderson the footballer, and it’s hard to see how he can ever be that kind of figure again at any club he rocks up at now. He’ll wear a rainbow armband, he’ll wear rainbow laces. It will be hollow as hell. He has shown everyone who he is.

A lifetime defined by one decision and five months. Really hard to see how that can possibly have been worth it.