Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson revealed he was once ‘ready to kill’ a former Reds team-mate after an incident during a training session.
Henderson has been at Liverpool for 11 years, having joined from fellow Premier League side Sunderland under the management of Kenny Dalglish.
He was made Reds captain in 2015 following the departure of Steven Gerrard. Henderson has made nearly 500 appearances for the club, and is one of Jurgen Klopp’s most dependable players.
He has won eight trophies with Liverpool, including the Premier League and Champions League on one occasion each.
Now 32, Henderson played at his third World Cup in Qatar, and made four appearances for England during the tournament, scoring once.
But things were not always quite so positive for the midfielder in the early stages of his time at Anfield. He explained in an interview with BT Sport’s ‘Between the Lines’ (via Daily Mail) earlier this year that Liverpool were willing to allow him to leave the club in 2012 – just a year after he arrived.
A bid was accepted from Fulham, but Henderson chose to stay and fight for his place – a fight he emphatically won.
The Reds captain has also previously revealed an incident that took place in training shortly after he first moved to the club.
Henderson on Liverpool training incident
Speaking on Jamie Carragher’s ‘The Greatest Game’ podcast in 2019 (per GiveMeSport), Henderson spoke about the pressures that he experienced at a young age – and how tempers once got the better of him and team-mate Luis Suarez.
Suarez joined Liverpool in January 2012, in the window after the ex-Sunderland player made the move to Anfield himself.
Henderson explained: “I was trying to do the best I can do. Being a footballer, there is criticism and people doubting you all the time.
“At that time, I was a young player, and there were one or two things Luis did in training that I didn’t like. It made me feel I wasn’t good enough to be in the same team in training.
“The arms were up like, ‘What the f***, what is he doing?’ Like I shouldn’t be there. That really hurt me.
“He did it three times and then I exploded and I was ready to kill him.”
But Henderson revealed the pair quickly patched things up, and never looked back.
“From that point, I had a good relationship with Luis. The next game, I set him up for his goal. He was brilliant after that and I was really close to him after that, and he was another big player I learned from.”
Henderson and Suarez played alongside each other for two-and-a-half years until the Uruguayan left to join Barcelona in the summer of 2014.
Carragher explains reaction to Henderson/Suarez incident
Carragher told Gary Neville on Sky Sports in 2020 of how the incident impressed him.
“It was nothing major but a few words were exchanged, and I thought straight away, ‘Yeah, I like that’,” he said.
“Suarez was the best player at the time, along with Stevie Gerrard, and Suarez had got frustrated with a pass Jordan had given him.
“For him to stand up as a young kid of 20, 21, it showed how much it meant to him, but also how much he’d been going through. Almost like, ‘Oh, I don’t care any more. I’m going to have a go at the best player at the club if he’s having a pop at me’.
Source: sportbible.com
