Jordan Henderson has explained he regrets his and the club’s actions in 2011, for the manner in which we reacted to the Luis Suarez racism incident.
In a game against Manchester United, Suarez had been accused of racially abusing Patrice Evra, but the reaction from both sides was very partisan based on which team you supported, rather than what had actually happened – which was wrong.
It’s something that still goes on very fervently in this country based on whether you’re on the right or the left of political spectrum, in fact.
Henderson accepts his our mistakes and has issued a classy message while speaking on Anton Ferdinand’s BBC documentary Football, Racism and Me.
‘You learn a lot from experiences. I was a young player at the time so it was something I’d never really experienced before,’ he said.
‘Looking back on it now, I am not sure the club or everybody deal with it in the best way.
‘From a player point of view, our mindset was on Luis and how to protect him, but really we didn’t really think about Patrice.
‘I think that’s where we got it wrong from top to bottom. If people want to point me out then I’ll take full responsibility as well as a player.
‘People will say, ‘That’s a bit late’, but I suppose it’s better late than never.’
Suarez’s excuse at the time was that he used common slang from Uruguay that in his homeland, doesn’t have racist connotations – but as Henderson suggests – this completely ignores the impact the words still had on the victim.
We hope that if another incident involving a Liverpool player ever happened like that in the future, the club, and actually the fans, would deal with it very differently.