Early December, Amsterdam, and in the window of the Ajax club store at the Johan Cruyff Arena, Jordan Henderson’s face mingles with the tinsel.
Outside, Henderson’s gaze falls on Cruyff’s statue. Inside, Henderson shirts and scarves are on hangers, ready to go.
It is a sensible commercial choice: Ajax have Christmas merchandise to sell, need money and Henderson is popular. Famously, unexpectedly, his No 6 replica jersey sold in record numbers following his surprise signing last January.
Up the escalators, past another vivid colour photograph of Henderson, contrasting with the black-and-white imagery from the club’s past on the walls, and out into this vast dome of a stadium. ‘Fanfare For the Common Man’ soars as the teams of Ajax and Utrecht emerge for a re-arranged Eredivisie match.
Ajax may have ended last season as the fifth-best team in Europe’s sixth-best league, with the former England captain an incongruous presence in their midfield, but this match is second versus third and a crowd of 53,000 on a Wednesday evening offers a reminder of the scale of Ajax.
On the pitch, Henderson patrols and cajoles. He is the ‘1’ in a 4-1-2-3 in-possession formation. He takes the corners and free kicks, tries to impose control. It is a running-chuntering-pointing performance with which Liverpool and England fans are familiar.
Ajax go 1-0 behind, then 2-1 ahead. With 10 minutes left, Utrecht equalise. In the first minute of added time, Henderson has a shot, but it flies wide. He has yet to score for Ajax.
It ends 2-2, a fair result. Ajax had been good in the first half, weary in the second and their head coach of six months, Francesco Farioli, is asked a flurry of questions about “freshness”. He deals with them confidently, and points out that Ajax have played 25 games so far in the season, whereas Utrecht have played 14.
Henderson’s spell in Saudi Arabia did not last long (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
Farioli is in a strong position, because as 2024 ends, Ajax feels very different to a year ago.
December 2023 included a 3-2 loss away to USV Hercules in the Dutch Cup. Hercules are an amateur side from Utrecht. It was considered the worst result in Ajax’s history. Not too long before, Ajax had lost 4-0 at home to rivals Feyenoord — managed by Arne Slot — then conceded five away to PSV. It was a defeat that left storied Ajax bottom of the Eredivisie table. It was unthinkable.
Then Henderson signed. This was the second act of his 2024, his year of living differently.
It had begun — unsatisfactorily — in Saudi Arabia, with Henderson on the books of Al Ettifaq and with England appearances at the summer’s European Championship on his mind. As cultural and sporting criticism of his summer 2023 decision to go to the Saudi Pro League continued, he moved back in the middle of January — to Europe, though not England — and while in Amsterdam there was initial supporter praise, mockery from the press and pundits followed as Ajax laboured.
After a 2-2 draw with Fortuna Sittard in March, Henderson was asked if it was his “worst performance” so far. A 4-0 loss at Aston Villa in the Europa Conference League followed — painful in front of English fans. And though Henderson missed the 6-0 defeat against Feyenoord three weeks later, he was an expensive part of a club who eventually finished 35 points behind champions PSV.
And then he was omitted from Gareth Southgate’s Euro 2024 squad anyway.
It made Henderson’s decision to leave Liverpool the previous July ever more curious. Aside from the political backlash it provoked, professionally he was under contract at Anfield until June 2025.
He is likely to have derived optimism from Southgate’s attendance at his Ajax debut, and Henderson was named in the England squad for their games in March. But having been injured, by May he was out and any thoughts of him sharing his 34th birthday in June with England players reflecting on the group match against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen the day before were over.
Instead, Henderson’s summer became focused on Ajax and what comes next.
Farioli, just over a year older at 35, was appointed and fired Henderson with his enthusiasm — the captain’s armband was his, leadership was his. The two 30-somethings set about an Ajax recovery programme and after the Utrecht draw, Farioli says to The Athletic: “Jordan is an example. It was my decision at the beginning of the season to give him the armband because he personifies the values we want to have here.
“On the pitch, we don’t discover anything (new), even if he is now playing in a bit of a different position to what he was playing in Liverpool. His contribution is great. What he is bringing to the pitch, honestly, is really, really positive.
“Off the pitch, he is a fantastic person and a top professional. An example.”
Appreciation of Henderson has broadened over the season, mushrooming across four days at the end of October as his year turned again. A sceptical Dutch technical critique of his football was eroded as Ajax won 2-0 at Feyenoord, where they had suffered that 6-0 loss in April, then defeated PSV 3-2.
“Henderson was the best player on the pitch in those two games,” journalist Lentin Goodijk says. “It changed opinion here.”
Henderson’s leadership has won over Ajax fans (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
Goodijk covers Ajax home and away for the Netherlands’ oldest soccer publication, Voetbal International. He stresses the bigger picture.
“I don’t think everybody in Europe remembers how difficult it was at Ajax last year,” Goodijk says. “There was a really big leadership problem leading to horrible results — being last in the league, getting knocked out of the cup by an amateur team. It was a really big mess. They got in Henderson to fix the leadership problem, really.
“The culture at the club, wanting to get better every day, there were players in charge in the dressing room who weren’t really used to that.
“When Jordan came in, he was shaking up the team, correcting fellow players on the pitch — in a positive way. Then he took them to the gym. A lot of young players have spoken about how he asked them to join him in the sauna or swimming pool after games. It made them more conscious of their recovery after games, made them think.”
Symbolism was seen in a moment after Henderson’s debut in February when he asked Ajax’s performance coach Sam Feringa for “the keys to De Toekomst” — the training ground — so that he could begin his post-match physical recuperation.
De Toekomst translates as The Future, but Ajax’s professional drift from winning the Eredivisie title under Erik ten Hag in 2022 is alarming. Simply asking for an ice bath or swim after a match was to challenge a slackened culture.
Details like that shape local perception and Henderson is now viewed as more than a No 6. The opinion is confirmed down the road from the stadium, outside Brasserie Hoekenrode, by Joris, Aron and Frank, three Ajax season-ticket holders.
“Henderson? His passes are boring, but good,” says Joris. “Solid. Some people say he doesn’t bring enough for the money Ajax pay him, he doesn’t score goals, is too safe — he doesn’t have a wow factor. But we don’t need excitement, we need stability.”
So Henderson’s ‘wow factor’ is stability?
“Exactly! The dumb fans don’t understand his value, the smart ones do,” says Frank. “Ajax have needed that badly and a year from now, it will be better again. Farioli and Henderson, they’re part of this. It’s way better than a year ago.”
In the main stand, supporters Cees and Jon are equally complimentary. Henderson, both say, “is exactly what Ajax needed. It was a mess and we needed a leader. He’s carried Ajax a little bit. Maybe he isn’t the best footballer any more but, honestly, the players around him were not as good. You kind of felt embarrassed for him.
“When you look on Ajax’s Instagram and other social media, you will see him at Toekomst watching the youth teams in his free time. You see he has a heart for Ajax. It’s nice to see. We can speak for every Ajax supporter when we say he is a positive.”
Is the club affecting Henderson similarly? When Farioli is asked the question, he replies: “Massively, massively.”
Whether this means Henderson’s 2025 will be a continuation at Ajax, however, is unclear. He signed for two and a half years last January on an annual salary reported in the Netherlands to be between €3million and €4m (£2.5m; $3.1m) — a huge sum in Dutch domestic football.
Henderson’s face is front and centre at Ajax (Michael Walker/The Athletic)
But Ajax’s economic situation can be ascertained from the decision not to have a sunshine training camp abroad during their winter break, which starts today. Last January, the squad went to Cadiz in Spain. Now they will stay at home. Budgets are being cut.
There has been hazy speculation about a return to Wearside — Henderson’s first step up as a teenager at Sunderland was in a 2008 pre-season friendly against Ajax — and a week ago, he said of them: “It’s my club, ever since I was a boy of six or seven years old.”
He added, though: “But I just hope I stay here. I really like it here. I want to help the club to grow further.”
And the reality of Sunderland’s budget is €4million would cover half a dozen players’ salaries; the squad flew by budget airline to the recent away game against Swansea City in south Wales. There’s a different football world out there from Liverpool, the Premier League or, indeed, the Saudi Pro League. So he is in the shop window, yet not.
Henderson has been back to Liverpool, visiting the training ground in October. He was welcomed enthusiastically as a former team-mate. He may have felt a small personal irony in their new head coach Slot’s nationality. Henderson could have been part of this Dutch Liverpool.
But of course, the elephant in the room means Henderson was not just any returning player.
An inescapable fact is that his jolting move to Saudi Arabia removed the possibility of cool analysis of his playing career and a co-incidence the day of Ajax-Utrecht was English football digesting Manchester United defender Noussair Mazraoui’s refusal to endorse the Premier League’s Rainbow Laces campaign. Ipswich Town’s Sam Morsy and Marc Guehi of Crystal Palace were reluctant to embrace a gesture Henderson was once known for supporting.
Any return to play in England would entail Henderson confronting the subject again. It’s his English context now.
Yesterday, as Liverpool eased themselves four points clear with their 6-3 win at Tottenham, in his Ajax context, Henderson played out his year undramatically in plain sight away to Sparta Rotterdam. Ajax won 2-0, both goals coming late on. They will still be second in the Eredivisie when the Christmas tinsel is taken down and are still in the KNVB Cup, the Dutch equivalent of the FA Cup, following a 2-0 victory over second-division Telstar on Thursday. No Hercules this December.
Ajax are improving, albeit from a low base and with expectations reduced.
It is the club’s 125th anniversary in March. They would like to mark the date with silverware, and maybe a Henderson trophy-lift shuffle.
They may both have to accept the modesty of quiet stability.
(Top photo: Henderson celebrates in Ajax’s win over Sparta Rotterdam; ANP via Getty Images)
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