What do you want from your heroes? 1. Victory in the face of insurmountable odds , carrying the weight of the defeated and urging them onto victory and 2. Flaws.
Steven Gerrard is more than a football player, he's more than a hero, his very nature and career is a reflection of the plain reality of life. He's the greatest because he wasn't the greatest. He's a metaphor for life and us and Liverpool and I don't care how pretentious that sounds.
Heroic? lets look at it.
1. Victory in the face of insurmountable odds, and carrying the ordinary onto great things.
Certainly for us as Liverpool fans, perhaps all football fans, the last minute screamer, the winning, stunning goal at the very death, when all is lost, gives us the goosebumps, the elation, the throat wrenching roar, far more often that the 4-0, the 5-0. The Olympiakos 3-1 win in 2005 is a greater game than the 4-0 win over Madrid when looked at in the safety of retrospective emotional comfort. I'd argue that goal against West Ham moves me more than his Istanbul header. Perhaps merely because of when it came in the game.Think of St Etienne and Davey F, history retold a thousand times. No-one talks of the Grasshopper 6-1 aggregate win that campaign, but everyone knows of the carrot topped mental moment. Like Olympiakos, when all was seemingly lost, up Gerrard pops and does the business. The never -say -die, the pushing on, the playing to the very last second, he expected it and engendered that philosophy in the dressing room. You saw teams looking when he came on, you felt the lift he gave us, never mind the wonder goals, it was a tackle, a moment, a feeling and presence that he had that emanated across the green. Here was a big player and now you had to deal with it.
My favourite personal last gasp saving moment is the West Ham goal. We were beaten and a bit shite and tired and he was cramped and knackered and it was injury time. Everything Hollywood wants for the glorious moment of last minute redemption. The goal was a fuck you goal. Fuck you, we're not getting beaten. West Ham lost the cup that very second.
Hamann says he things Gerrard had more impact on the Liverpool team than even Dalglish when playing. Certainly Gerrard played in more mediocre teams than Kenny did. And certainly I've always though strikers were too selfish to be part of a wider team, to let their energy flow to the other players. Stevie on the other hand encouraged, urged, cajoled, shouted and bollocked and demonstrated exactly what he expected and wanted. Let me remind you, Djimi Traore won a Champions League medal with us. Igor Biscan played that campaign. Need I go on? (Igor kill!)
Gerrard is a hero because he lived by his exacting standards on the pitch and took by elemental force, the rest of the team with him. He is a political animal off the field, in interviews and so on, but on the pitch, he dragged us over the line so many times. So many.
2. Flaws.
Seriously, Messi, and Pele, don't they sound a little, well, bland? Brilliant and I wish we'd had them, but Liverpool fans want their players to be real. To be part of them, one of them. There's something not quite right about the superhero who has no chink in his armour. Superman (an alien admittedly but lets not get hung up about this) has his kryptonite, Batman his demons, they all, at times, fall. They fail, they succeed sure eventually but the climb up the hill boys is not without stumble.
Gerrard is more the man and the hero to me because of his slip, because he gets sent off, because you think it'll all work out right but then at the last moment reality and life butts in. Look at the Crystal Palace game, his last at Anfield, beaten by the better side we were that day. No Disney send off. Last season's emotional ending, so hard its still raw with me. It hurts. He was so close and the slip and what followed must have really cut him to the bone. But you know what? It makes his successes and talent all the more astonishing, real, and hard fought and hard won. Gerrard wanted things so badly he would never be a pushover, ask anyone in a club wanting different music on the jukey. You felt his pain. He was a kid from the streets who made it big and just when we thought he would let us down and leave Liverpool, he stayed. Largely because of his dad. Compare that to I don't know, pick a footballer at random like Raheem Sterling. Utter. Worlds. Apart.
The metaphor for life is real. Just when you think it'll be a perfectly happy ending, just when you think everything is in place and all avenues for potential fuck ups have been explored and ruled out, something you don't expect pops up and knees you in the balls.
By anyone's calculation, Gerrard's honours are lengthy and massive. And even if we had taken the league title, I'd have still written the same thing. He was the kind of player who reminds us, its a working class lads game at heart. Its about a club and its fans. Feelings, not facts. And in these days of completely the opposite, sanitised FIFA sponsored blandness and billionaires buying leagues, we need to cling onto that. How does the song go about being the best fans in the world but if we lose? Gerrard's all that and more. He is a reminder of what Liverpool is, of what it ought to be and what life is really like. He was one of us, only a lot fucking better at football.
We will miss the hero for more reasons than on the field skill alone.
