STEVEN GERRARD – THE MAN WHO COULD DO EVERYTHING
He could do everything. He could beat men with trickery and beat men with pace. He could out muscle opponents, out run them, out think them, and intimidate them. He could head a ball with power and with deftness. He could tackle with crunching force or he could nick a ball with stealth. He became so adept at stopping players that for six or seven years when he was at his peak no one tried to get past him with the ball. They’d offload it rather than attempt to do that, often to a teammate less favourably placed than themselves. He could tear defences apart with passes tailor-made for each occasion – passes using every conceivable spin, flight and curve. The passes he hit with the outside of his boot were as beautifully judged and often as powerfully hit as if he’d put his laces through them. Only Redondo in my lifetime has used the outside of a football shoe better than him. He could shoot.
How he could he shoot!
Olympiakos, Everton, Man Utd, Middlesbrough, Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, West Brom, Man Utd, West Ham, Aston Villa, Man Utd, Real Madrid, Marseilles, Man Utd, Southampton, Leeds, Man Utd, Alaves, Man Utd, Napoli, Man Utd, Man Utd – and others too, including Man Utd. All of them, at some time or other, were forced to watch in sheer helplessness as he unloaded from 20 or 30 yards. Goalies didn’t have enough time to react to something travelling so quickly and so accurately. Even the best of them couldn’t defend the corners of the net and that’s where he liked to place his thunderbolts.
The absolute purity of his strikes were for the connoisseurs – and all true football fans are connoisseurs. The goal that won the Cup Final in Cardiff was as beautiful a shot as you could ever hope to see. It was the shot of an athlete in peak physical condition. Yet it was delivered by a man suffering from cramp and fatigue. No matter. Something fired in his brain just before he pulled his leg back and told him to ignore the pain, shake off the weariness, and invest everything he had – power, ambition, know-how, technique – into one final effort for Liverpool. What a goal. His best goal. “Only Gerrard” said a friend of mine, an Arsenal pal, the day after. “Yeah”, I thought.
“Only Gerrard” because it was about morale. He had unbreakable morale. That’s why he could never be beaten, in his own mind at least. His recovery powers were awesome. If he lost the ball he’d get it back. His stamina was frightening. His commitment was legendary. His passion for the cause unsurpassed. When he celebrated a goal it was raw and unadorned. He was as likely to prepare a ‘celebratory goal routine’ as a supporter would. He was a supporter.
He could play central midfield, both holding and ‘box to box’. He could play in the hole behind the centre forward. He could play facing forwards or with his back to goal with equal brilliance. He could play on the right wing, he could play on the left wing. He could play full back. He could play centre forward. Wherever he was on the pitch you knew Liverpool had a chance when the ball came his way. In the first European Cup Final, in Istanbul, he played in all these positions. At one point in extra time when others were fading away he appeared to be playing two or three of these positions at the same time. Milan had some great players of their own that night. Kaka, Pirlo, Maldini, Crespo, Schevchenko, Nesta, Cafu, Seedorf – all great players. But they all knew he was superior and gradually, as he moved around the pitch from midfield to attack to wing back to full back, they became deflated and undermined. He was burning too brightly that night.
He held that enormous Cup aloft and it was the greatest football moment most of us are ever likely to have. It was also the greatest European Cup Final there will ever be. That's his legacy.
He was our captain. He was thrown the band when he was young for no other reason than he was already the best player on the pitch, the supreme player, even then, at 22. At first his interpretation of the captaincy was narrow. It ran deep, but it was narrow. He led by example and by force of his personality on the pitch. Off the pitch he was diffident still and seemed a little introverted, perhaps a little too keyed up and anxious. No one doubted that he cared, but perhaps he cared a bit too much. He could cope with those falling below his standards because he was a realist, but he seemed to have only one way to deal with those falling below his expectations. He shouted at them.
But then he changed. He matured and he developed other ways of leading men. He was seen coaxing players and encouraging them, geeing them up and egging them on. He seemed to know how to get the best out of the different characters around him. Off the field he began to show more wit and more personality. He looked genuinely likeable – and not all top sportsmen do.
He was a “one-club man” and always will be now. For a long time the common accusation was that Liverpool were a “one-man team”. We resented it as being a trite and unfair description but for a brief period, towards the end of Houllier’s reign, it was true. Teammates seemed to look to him to get them out of a mess and he increasingly looked to himself. There was a game at the Hawthorns in those years where he was so commanding, and the rest were so poor, that the whole 90 minutes practically became a parody of the idea of the ‘one man team’.
These years shaped him and helped turn him into a football giant but such was the reliance that everyone else put on the young scouser that something wild and undisciplined entered his game. It took Rafa Benitez to tame this side of him, to channel it, and re-introduce him to teamwork and collective solutions to problems on the pitch. It helped, of course, that he brought Xabi Alonso to the club – a player that the skipper could look at and recognise something familiar. A different type of player to him, to be sure, but one possessing his stature and something like his command on the pitch. Under Benitez he became a better player because he was forced to think more deeply about what his own role was and how matches could be won. The old instincts remained, and in moments of crisis the rest of the team tended to look to him, but his game was becoming more sophisticated and cleverer. When Torres came he played the best football of his life. So, of course, did Torres.
He brought top-class players to Liverpool. When the likes of Alonso, Torres and Suarez signed for the Reds they knew that they’d be playing under a captain of world renown. He was a sign - perhaps the sign - that Liverpool Football Club was still at the top table of world football.
He’s going now. It’s the end of an era. It’s the end of an era not just for Liverpool FC but for English football. Let’s call it ‘the romantic era’. The players who defined the romantic era were all great footballers. Some won loads of trophies, some a few, some none at all. They were men like Finney, Matthews, Lofthouse, Liddell, Moore, Charlton, Dalglish, Scholes – men associated with one club, perhaps two. When you think about them you can only see them in one shirt.
Gerrard is probably the last of them. Good young players of the future won’t be like Gerrard. They’ll be about themselves and their agents, not the club - and certainly not us, the supporters. The Premier League has turned Gerrard into an anomaly.
We honour Steven Gerrard because he’s probably the best player most have us have ever seen at Anfield. The memories are almost too many. Too thick on the ground. There are a thousand ‘best moments’.
We also honour him because he honoured the club and because everything he did, no matter how much it added to his own status, his own value, his own personal medal collection, was chiefly done for Liverpool, his own team.
Farewell Stevie. The King of the Kop.
