Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson has responded to claims he’s a completely different person on the pitch to the one he is off it.
It’s Raheem Sterling who has made the claim, stating the midfielder is “one of the meanest guys” on match-days, but “the nicest guy” after the full-time whistle is blown.
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Henderson duly accepted the assessment, saying those who have played against him probably have the wrong idea, if they don’t know him personally.
“To be honest, I can imagine not too many people like [me] on the pitch,” the Liverpool star told The Lion’s Den on YouTube.
“Or players that have played against [me]. They probably think I am a totally different person. So, I am not sure whether or not I am one of the nicest off it, definitely not.
“But I suppose, I am very different off the pitch to what I am like on the pitch. So, if you know [me] as a person then I would be very different to what people would imagine.”
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An adage in football is that you leave everything on the pitch – meaning players don’t react to any physical or verbal altercations during games once the full-time whistle has blown.
In a contact sport, it’s important to set boundaries like that, and it sounds as if Henderson is perhaps an embodiment of that old principle.