When Jordan Henderson will face Roberto Firmino & Fabinho in 2023/24 Saudi Pro League season

In the space of one summer, Liverpool have lost three starters from their Champions League final triumph against Tottenham in 2019.

Four short years after the trio of Roberto Firmino, Jordan Henderson and Fabinho won the club’s sixth European Cup – the most of any British side – all three are preparing for life in the Saudi Pro League.

Firmino had confirmed his Merseyside departure in May but Fabinho’s exit caught Jurgen Klopp by surprise and Henderson’s move to a nation with a widely criticised human rights record has been mired in controversy.

The trio may no longer share the Anfield turf but here’s when they will reunite on opposite sides in unfamiliar surroundings next term.

Henderson led the chant of ‘Si Senor’ to serenade Firmino at his emotional farewell last May. At the time, there was no inkling of Liverpool’s captain joining the departing goalscorer in Saudi Arabia.

The pair won’t have long to wait before they reconvene as Firmino’s Al Ahli host Henderson’s new employers at the end of September.

Al Ettifaq’s manager Steven Gerrard left Liverpool in the same summer Firmino joined the club. The pair didn’t overlap at Anfield but will likely face off when Al Ahli travel to Gerrard and Henderson’s new home in Damman on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia in early April.

Henderson played together with Firmino for Liverpool on 240 different occasions which represents the most-frequent partnership of his entire senior career. The pair have never been opponents before.

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Al Ettifaq finished six places below Saudi Pro League champions Al Ittihad last season while collecting almost half as many points. Fabinho will slot into Nuno Espirito Santo’s table toppers alongside N’Golo Kante and behind Karim Benzema. Henderson, by comparison, joined Al Ettifaq on the same day as Scottish centre-back Jack Hendry and former Lyon striker Moussa Dembele.

Henderson and Fabinho will battle for midfield supremacy when the two clubs of differing quality first face off at the end of November. The pair go up against one another again in the final month of the season with a gap between the teams in the table likely to be sizeable once more.

Fabinho’s Al Ittihad and Firmino’s Al Ahli, unlike Henderson’s Al Ettifaq, are both owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). Some would argue that this arrangement may create a conflict of interest when the clubs meet on the pitch but the entire division has effectively operated as a single organism during this historic summer.

No club was allowed to compete for the same player’s signature as the league’s chairman Saad Al Lazeez strove for collective thinking. This camaraderie is unlikely to be transposed onto the pitch but there will always be a strong link between Fabinho and Firmino.

The duo were not only teammates for Liverpool but shared the same dressing room at international level as well; Firmino was on the bench when Fabinho made his senior debut for Brazil in 2015, joining the midfielder for the final half-hour.

When it became clear that Firmino was leaving Liverpool – despite Fabinho’s best attempts to convince him to stay at the club he didn’t envisage leaving either – the midfielder admitted: “It was an emotional week for all of us and the only thing is I wish the very best for him and his family.”

Perhaps those best wishes won’t extend to the two weekends in October and April when their new clubs meet.

On this week’s edition of Talking Transfers, part of the 90min podcast network, Toby Cudworth is joined by Graeme Bailey to discuss the next steps in Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane hunt, Brighton rejecting another Chelsea bid for Moises Caicedo, who has had the most impressive transfer window so far & more!

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