Jordan Henderson has described a prolonged period of difficulty after his exit from Liverpool in 2023, admitting he could not watch the club for a time. After a six-month spell in Saudi Arabia and a subsequent period with Ajax, Henderson is now back in the Premier League with Brentford, which gives him the prospect of facing the Liverpool side for which he made a total of 492 appearances over 12 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a really tough period when I left Liverpool,\u201d said Henderson, who led Liverpool to Champions League glory in 2019 and the Premier League title 12 months later. \u201cI was there for a long period of time, 12 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaving Liverpool itself was huge and really difficult. At any point it was going to be hard, because it had been my life for so long. And then it is gone just like that. So I have struggled for a period after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cI couldn\u2019t watch a lot of games, I certainly couldn\u2019t watch Liverpool. I didn\u2019t watch a lot of Premier League. It was tough. Because I was there for so long, because I had such an attachment and I dedicated a large part of my life there, when I left I found it really difficult. It felt like a breakup. It was just difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have been at a club for so long, and you have that attachment to them, whether you retire or move on, for a period of time that was hard. With time, things change, you move on. That was probably the most difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henderson\u2019s move to Saudi Arabia attracted significant criticism. Henderson faced significant criticism for his move to Saudi Arabia, primarily because of the fact his previous work to support human rights causes and homosexuality did not align with the laws in the Middle Eastern nation. The 35-year-old repeatedly rejected claims he chose to move simply for the money. His departure from Al Ettifaq after six months prompted a fresh wave of tension from fans who again questioned his motives.<\/p>\n
Henderson accepted that his decisions might look different in retrospect. \u201cIn hindsight, maybe I would have made different decisions,\u201d Henderson admitted. \u201cBut at the time that is how I felt. And the decision I made was for many different reasons, and only I know the reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, I tried to do the right thing. I thought it was best to do it at the time, and then best to come back to Europe and play for Ajax, which I really enjoyed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Henderson says leaving Liverpool felt ‘like a breakup’ and he struggled to watch matches after 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[728,175,969],"tags":[1081,1006],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brentford","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-adaptation","tag-captaincy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}