Jordan Henderson has terminated his contract at Ajax with clubs in the Premier League interested, after declining an option to extend his stay for another year.
Henderson could make his return to the Premier League this summer after two seasons away, having triggered an exit from his contract at Ajax.
The former Liverpool captain agreed an initial 18-month deal with the Dutch side in January 2024 after a brief and controversial spell in Saudi Arabia with Al-Ettifaq.
That contract included an option to extend for a further year to 2026, but the Times‘ Paul Joyce reports that he has not taken up that opportunity.
Instead, Henderson will become a free agent and is attracting interest from the Premier League and elsewhere in Europe.
It is explained that “he is keen to go to the World Cup next summer and would like to join a club who offer him a platform to do so.”
This comes having been given an olive branch by new England head coach Thomas Tuchel, who has included him in both of his squads so far after Henderson was left out by Gareth Southgate for the entirety of 2024.
The clubs interested in the 35-year-old are as yet unnamed, and he “plans to wait before publicly confirming his next move out of respect for his former Liverpool team-mate Diogo Jota.”
Henderson travelled to Gondomar to attend the funeral for Jota and his brother Andre Silva last week and was also on Merseyside to pay tribute at the striker’s memorial outside Anfield.
An obvious route back to the Premier League could come with newly promoted Sunderland, Henderson’s boyhood club, having come through the academy ranks to establish himself in the first team at the Stadium of Light.
He left Sunderland for Liverpool in a £20 million deal in 2011 and spent over a decade with the Reds, inheriting the captain’s armband from Steven Gerrard and becoming the first to lift the Premier League trophy at Anfield.
His departure from Anfield in 2023 came under a cloud but it was certainly the right time for Henderson to leave on a sporting basis.
Liverpool’s midfield has undergone a transformation since Henderson, Fabinho, James Milner, Naby Keita and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain all left in the same transfer window.
Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai and Wataru Endo were brought in as immediate replacements while Curtis Jones has enjoyed an increased role and, this summer, the club have broken their transfer record to sign Florian Wirtz.
