How shall I lead thee? Let me count the ways. I lead thee by stepping up and being vocal, around the dressing room, setting standards in training. I lead thee quietly by example, you know, the not-much-of-a-shouter‑and-a-screamer-but-when-he-speaks-people-listen kind. I lead thee by having been there, done that, won everything in the game. I lead thee by never backing down from a challenge. I lead thee by sheer gravitas.
By any of these measures, Jordan Henderson is a leader. He was a leader for Liverpool, raising standards and setting the tone for 12 golden years. He was a leader for the NHS and the LGBTQ+ community off the field. He was still a leader when he left Liverpool and moved to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to create – in his words – “positive change” in the country for his beloved LGBTQ+ constituents.
Somehow he was still also a leader when he walked out on Al-Ettifaq after six months, because leaders own their mistakes and front up when things go wrong. And at the age of 34 he continues to be a leader for Ajax, where this season in the Eredivisie he has started 58% of their games, played 57% of their available minutes and ranks 35th for pass success rate across the league.
And the point of all of this is not to malign Henderson, making a heartwarming return to the England setup under the new head coach, Thomas Tuchel. People err … People deserve to be forgiven. Pretty much anyone who has worked with Henderson describes him as a genuinely inspirational figure. “He embodies everything,” Tuchel said last week. “Leadership, character, energy and personality.”
Henderson’s selection, then, appears to owe as much to intangible factors as anything he has done on a pitch this season. England, so goes the prevailing thinking, lack leadership. Henderson embodies leadership. But what is it? And – more pertinently – who is it? Because while pretty much everything on a football pitch can be measured and weighed, leadership remains stubbornly tough to quantify, a pure belief system couched in the language of empirical judgment.
So – at least in the popular imagination – Henderson is a leader. Harry Kane is a leader. Declan Rice is a leader. Harry Maguire is a leader. Jordan Pickford and John Stones are leaders. Good guys to have around the dressing room. Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford, for whatever reason, are not. Nor is Cole Palmer. Trent Alexander-Arnold, forget it. Why might this be?
You have to be pretty careful writing about this stuff these days. The world is going in a certain direction. Former allies are leaping overboard like rats. Real world shit is happening in a way that renders debates over language and unconscious bias quaintly arcane. White privilege: so 2017, darling. And so we need to be clear at this juncture – if only to avoid triggering the X algorithm – that this is not an inculpation of any individual. Relax, hun! Nobody is calling you a racist. You are perfect as you are.
With that in mind, let’s linger a little longer on this nebulous concept of leadership. Which is of course innately tied to the corporate world, to capitalism and boss culture, with all its intrinsic cultural and structural biases. Leadership is loud. Leadership is quiet. Leadership is words. Leadership is deeds. Leadership is some innate personal elixir that anoints a chosen few as born to rule. Leadership is also – by happy coincidence – something you can buy via this self-help book, this podcast, this six-part seminar.
Above all there is an idea that leadership is something proactive, something performed, the idea of stepping up rather than shrinking away, speaking rather than staying silent. “He is a character, he is a winner, he don’t stop talking,” the bloke on TalkSport says of Henderson. “Kane seldom fails to front up in public when required,” reads an article in the Daily Mail.
On these terms, it is hard to think of a bolder or more audacious act of leadership than the school meals campaign launched by Rashford in 2020 and 2021. In so doing Rashford took on not only the government but the right-wing press and a significant portion of public opinion, the very idea of what a modern superstar footballer could be or achieve.
How was Rashford treated as a result of this? He was vilified and dismantled in the press and on social media, judged not just for his performances but for his salary, his social engagements, his property purchases, his professionalism. An inevitable dip in form and fitness was used as a pretext to bury him for ever. What sort of message do you think that sends to other young Black players tempted to exhibit the traits of leadership? Tempted to step up, be vocal, visibly set standards, in a dominant culture that tells them to sit down and be quiet?
Henderson is a great English leader. But he has also enjoyed the privilege of being encouraged and applauded for the very same acts of leadership for which minority ethnic players are castigated and stigmatised. Jude Bellingham is a great English leader and a world-class talent. But a good deal of discourse at the European Championship last year was centred around his arrogance and attitude.
Jack Grealish goes to the pub, buys everyone a drink, and the next day the coverage is – rightly – on his relatable generosity. But can you remotely imagine Rashford or Saka getting the same reception for the same behaviour? Meanwhile Henderson gets a squad place he barely deserves on merit. But nobody is advocating bringing along Raheem Sterling for the trophy-winning nous, or Danny Welbeck for the good vibes, or Ashley Young for the professionalism, the leadership, the ability to set standards.
In this sense it is possible to see Henderson’s selection as a kind of anti-diversity hire, the Rooney Rule in reverse, a place reserved for a mediocre white midfielder who might otherwise not get the chance. This would be unfair. Tuchel is not the problem here. Tuchel also namechecked as potential leaders Saka and Marc Guéhi (who, like Reece James, captains his club), although he also bizarrely threw in Dan Burn, a player he had never worked with before.
But singling out individuals is beside the point. The point, backed up by a wealth of academic literature, is that leadership discourse is very often based on a double standard, informed by traditional hierarchies of influence, age, performed masculinity and – yes – whiteness. The problem arises when we start to regard leadership as a function of character, a game in which the goalposts can always be moved. Be loud. But not like that. Be quiet. But not like that.
I am confident; he is arrogant. I lead by example; he needs to play more for the team. I set standards; he harangues teammates in shocking X-rated rant. As ever these are issues to be negotiated delicately, considerately, in good faith. We can all benefit from reflecting a little on the way we use language, on the unspoken assumptions that go into it. Are we really glimpsing the unmistakable hallmarks of a born leader? Or are we simply seeing the thing we already wanted to see?