Jordan Henderson was booed by his own fans on Friday evening as England faced Australia.
The £12m midfielder has had his own supporters turn on him after making what many feel to be a back-stabbing move to Saudi Arabia.
However, this isn’t the first time Henderson has faced scrutiny from his own so-called supporters.
Speaking on The Game Football Podcast, Tony Cascarino and Alyson Rudd have recalled that Henderson has faced this exact scenario many times in his career and that he’s actually pushed on from these moments very well.
Henderson has always gotten stick
Cascarino and Rudd spoke about Henderson’s relationship with his own fans throughout his career.
“Jordan Henderson, you can go back five or six years ago and people felt he didn’t warrant a place in the team. I remember thinking he got a lot of stick and he did really well. This was way before the Saudi issue. He was getting stick five years ago, would that be a fair point?” Cascarino said.
“Even the Liverpool supporters weren’t bowled over by him but they were won over very gradually by Klopp having faith in him,” Rudd added.
Different
Cascarino and Rudd are right, Henderson has always gotten some element of stick throughout his career, but this time it’s different.
Now, he’s not getting booed because people think he’s a bad footballer or that he doesn’t warrant a place in the England team, it’s because he sold out and chased the money with a move to Saudi that has rubbed many up the wrong way.
It’s one thing to be criticised for your ability, but it’s quite another to be criticised for your life choices and making a move that goes against everything you would appear to have stood for at one point in your career.
Five years on from the instance Cascarino mentions, Henderson is still receiving that same amount of stick, but this time, it’s for a very different reason.