15 July 2023 , 07:00
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Cast your mind back to April 2020 and the panic surrounding the pandemic.
Matt Hancock was the Health Secretary and criticised footballers for their apparently obscene wages, suggesting they take a pay cut to "play their part". It seems almost laughable now of course, as we look back on the breaches of rules that Hancock and his chums carried out.
Yet as players like Jordan Henderson responded, by setting up the #PlayersTogether Covid-19 Appeal and doing far more for the NHS than the government has ever done, he was told to ‘stop meddling in politics’. So was Marcus Rashford by the way, for not wanting kids to go hungry. Natalie Elphike, among many Conservative MPs, suggested he concentrate on playing football rather than playing politics.
I mention all this because now Henderson has been offered a salary which amounts to almost £40million-a-year to concentrate on playing football in Saudi Arabia, there is absolute outrage about the prospect of him doing so. The Liverpool captain has always been one of the decent guys in football. He has shown genuine support for various causes, including the NHS and LGBT+ campaigns because he cares about equality.
So yes, the fact that he is considering an offer to play in the revamped Saudi Pro League is troubling, to say the least. Liverpool’s official LGBT+ fans’ group, Kop Outs, has absolutely every right to condemn him for his interest in effectively supporting a regime where homosexuality is illegal, and women and LGBT+ people are hideously oppressed.
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They are right too, to point out that a player who has used his profile to support such important causes, can be accused of hypocrisy when it comes to his own enrichment. Henderson was nominated as a Football Ally in 2021, at the LGBT Awards, and has been respected for his deeply held beliefs in standing shoulder to shoulder with anyone who feels excluded.
Henderson has faced criticism for the proposed move (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)Do you agree with David Maddock? Let us know in the comments below!
So yes, it feels like a betrayal that a footballer of standing, who in my experience has always been decent, honest and supportive in driving equality and inclusion, should be considering such a move, which effectively supports - through sportswashing - a rancid regime. There is no doubt the money that Saudi Arabia has thrown at the sports world is done for a single reason - not for financial profit, but reputation management and PR - in the sense that it assimilates the country within the world, despite their horrendous human rights abuses.
It is not just football of course, though the disgusting World Cup in Qatar showed just how effective sports washing within football can be. In fact, it has shown the way for Saudi Arabia, who you can surely predict even now, will host a World Cup finals themselves soon. Yet my question, whilst agreeing with all of the above, is why should Henderson shoulder the burden of helping the Saudis launder their reputation alone? Why should we limit our criticisms to ‘soft’ targets?
Hancock did it back in 2020 when he tried to deflect his own government’s failure by pointing out how much footballers earn. And subtly it is happening again. Our government has sold billions of pounds worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, arms which are used to murder people, used to worsen the desperate situation in neighbouring Yemen, and other places.
Our government constantly courts the Saudis because of their investment web which permeates throughout the business world. There is barely a capitalist pie that their fingers are not plunged in. Snapchat, Uber, Twitter, Starbucks, Microsoft. It is not just Formula One, golf, boxing and now football. Are we chastising the leaders in those industries for furthering their reach and influence?
And yes, you can argue they are not marketing and promoting Saudi Arabia as directly... but they are equally complicit in staying silent over the abuses. Don’t forget either, it was exposed recently that Boris Johnson's government gave the green light to the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United in return for what it expected was to be a £30bn investment into the UK over the next five years.
The list goes on and on, but the point is clear. Yes, we can feel let down by Henderson and the thousands of other sports people who have taken the money and looked the other way.
But we should feel more let down by our own government, and our biggest companies, who do more every day to further the interests of a regime which continues to discriminate and oppress large sections of their population. It is a reckoning we all need to come to terms with.