Jordan Henderson criticises Brendan Rodgers Liverpool stunt for making him ‘too emotional’ after dad’s illness

Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson has shared the heartbreaking story of his father's cancer battle and the moment Brendan Rodgers made a failed attempt to leverage his emotion and motivation.

The midfielder opened up when speaking to Jake Humphrey on the High Performance Podcast this week, which tours the UK this year, on which he relived the key moments of his life and career.

A major talking topic was Henderson's father Brian who fought throat cancer during the 2013/14 season - an illness he would go on to defeat. The 32-year-old shared the toll that health battle took on his mental health and added motivation to win on the pitch.

Henderson said: "It was the 2013/14 season, that year we came close to winning the league. Halfway through that season, my dad took ill with throat cancer. He literally came down to the house, and told me and my wife that he'd been taken ill and had to go through surgery, chemotherapy and everything.

"He didn't want to see us, the only time he was going to see me was on the telly playing and the thing that will help us get through it the most is if you're playing well and performing well and the team doing well.

"That's quite a lot of pressure to think, I need to play well so my dad can get better. That was my mentality at the time."

At this point in recent history, Brendan Rodgers was in the middle of his three-year tenure at Anfield and oversaw a firing Liverpool led by Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge.

One tactic Rodgers was known to use behind the scenes was to ask the families of players to write him a motivational letter to read before each fixture.

Podcast host Humphrey asked Henderson about that and the Liverpool captain admitted it was his poorly father who wrote his letter that season that was read before meeting Fulham in February 2014.

Liverpool won that match 3-2 thanks to a last-gasp Steven Gerrard goal, but Henderson struggled in the game, picking up a yellow card in the second half.

The midfielder admitted that hearing the words from his father, read by Rodgers, proved too much for him to take before the fixture.

He said: "At this period I was quite emotional anyway. My dad had written a letter to Brendan and Brendan read it out in front of everyone before we went to the stadium to play.

"My dad was saying how proud he was of the team and me, I was sitting there in bits thinking just stop reading. We went and played the game and actually, I probably got too emotional off that, I didn't really perform particularly well.

"We ended up winning, I think Stevie got a last-minute winner, which was great but I can remember that was the only game where the emotion probably got the better of me."