It is an image that is supposed to set Steven Gerrard apart.
Rewind to the excruciating tension of Anfield on the evening of December 8, 2004. Liverpool are four minutes away from the ignominy of failing to emerge from their Champions League group when Neil Mellor lays the ball off and, from 20 yards out, Gerrard thunders unchecked into the picture to drag his team, however improbably, kicking and screaming toward immortality.
The half-volley that ripped beyond Antonis Nikopolidis that night was ferocious, a shot pummelled with the force of destiny. In that split second, Gerrard altered the course of history at his boyhood club, setting Liverpool upon a path that would lead to the Ataturk stadium, one of the most cherished finals of the modern era and, ultimately, European glory.
And yet, at the precise point the midfielder was veering off with arms pumping frenziedly after conjuring a flash of brilliance the likes of which few could even contemplate, Gerrard had never been closer to the hordes on the Kop. Rather than setting him apart from those erupting in wild celebration, it was a moment that brought club and captain together.
“That is just me as a supporter in a Liverpool kit whose dreams have basically come true on the pitch,” he says of the goal that effectively set in motion the chain of events that established him as an icon on Merseyside.
“They are the moments I dreamed of. Growing up, I watched tapes of Liverpool players who have become heroes and grasped those sort of moments themselves. Times that have changed them and changed their careers. Those are the moments I dreamed of—and they came true for me.”
It is clear how that December night changed Liverpool. Having stared down elimination in the competition, they would revel six months later in the glory of Istanbul. A decade on, the freakish power of that implausible comeback in the 2005 Champions League final against AC Milan still resonates.
Liverpool regained a sense of pride that night against the Rossoneri, when a 3-0 deficit was overturned courtesy of their skipper’s sheer refusal to wilt. A club who had felt second best for years refused to lie down. Impossible is nothing.
Gerrard had sampled highs before. He had scored in UEFA Cup and League Cup finals and in a European Championship for England.
But, in many ways, it is the low moments he has endured that have truly shaped him.
The common strand running through his standout feats in a Liverpool shirt—think Olympiakos, Istanbul and the FA Cup final against West Ham in 2006—is that, on each occasion, his club had teetered on the brink. But each time, the captain wrested back the initiative.
For an insight into how Gerrard has developed from the 18-year-old who made his debut as a late replacement for Vegard Heggem against Blackburn Rovers in November 1998, look no further than that willingness to accept responsibility and force the issue.
Back then, the teenager had simply wanted to ensure his passes did not go astray. Yet his willingness to take chances and put his reputation on the line has come to define him.
“As soon as the goal against Olympiakos went in, I knew how big it was,” says Gerrard. “We were chasing the game, time was running out. You just think that, hopefully, one of the lads, or you yourself, will get the opportunity to score that all-important goal. It was that stage of the game where you have the chance to become a hero.
“Every time I have been in that situation in my career, I have tried to grasp it. I will take risks rather than play safe. I will sometimes go against what a manager wants from me to try to grab that bit of glory in an important moment for the team.
“At the level we play at, if you are not prepared to be bold and take that risk and push on, then…well, certainly, I wouldn’t have had the moments I’ve had or the performances that have changed me.”
Gerrard says he doesn’t reflect on Istanbul unless somebody brings it up—that it was a decade ago and he’d rather focus on the present than the past.
“But whenever it comes up in conversation, I just get good memories,” he says. “There is not one specific moment. I just reflect on the whole week really: the buildup, the actual game itself, the aftermath and the tour of the city.”
He says it felt more like an event than a game.
“But Istanbul is what it is because of what we got out of it,” he says. “I am sure the game would have been forgotten pretty quickly if we hadn’t recovered and won it. The FA Cup final as well.
“You get a trophy and a major piece of silverware at the end. That’s what makes it special.”
The temptation to reminisce will be irresistible as the clock ticks down to Gerrard’s last game at Anfield. Crystal Palace visit on Saturday for what should prove his penultimate match in a Liverpool jersey—and his 354th in front of the Kop as a Liverpool player—before a summer move to the Los Angeles Galaxy.
He will not be consumed by nerves, but there will be a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach as he contemplates leaving the life he has known the past 19 years for a new challenge.
This is the end of an era.
It is rare for Gerrard to set foot in Liverpool city centre these days. At 34 years old, he prefers to retreat after training to his family home on the outskirts of the city limits, where spending time with his three young daughters offers a release.
This is partly due to his age, but he has long since reconciled the fact that the trappings of fame and fortune come with pitfalls as well. Gerrard’s career has been about making sacrifices. On the pitch, the focus tends to fall on the moves that never were, the transfers rejected in order to stay loyal: to Chelsea in 2004 and 2005; to Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan and Real Madrid; to the might of Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga.
But while those aborted moves hogged the limelight, his status as a symbol of hope and inspiration for Liverpool has brought its own weighty expectation. The sense of responsibility he feels dictates his day-to-day regime.
It was a message Gerard Houllier, a father figure when Gerrard broke into Liverpool’s first team 17 years ago, would hammer home to all the academy graduates as he sought to reinstil a sense of professionalism at a club that had lost its way prior to the Frenchman’s arrival.
“I remember saying to the young players: ‘If you stay out of the nightclubs, then, when you finish playing, you can own one,’” says Houllier, chuckling as he recalls the sermon regularly imparted to those hoping to make their mark on the professional game.
“It is true. There are a lot of temptations. I cannot tell you, but there are a few moments in his life where, maybe, Stevie needed someone to talk to and I was there.
“His father helped a lot as well. He is very close to his mum and dad. He was an excellent boy. You can see that. I always like his loyalty to the people, to his family. I always appreciate that.”
And yet that bright young talent developed in a goldfish bowl of a city. One of the appeals of Los Angeles is the anonymity it brings and the chance to lead something akin to a more normal life.
On Merseyside, every set of traffic lights provides a potential problem.
Depending on the team’s result at the weekend, Liverpool supporters can either flag him down to offer congratulations or demand explanations for a poor performance. Everton fans will always try to provoke a reaction, even if that can be taken as a back-handed compliment for a player who has proved their nemesis over the years.
Gerrard has hardly courted the limelight. His face does not adorn billboards on every street corner and, if you blink, you’ll miss him grimacing through a sit-up in the latest Lucozade advert, one of his few commercial tie-ups away from kit and boot deals.
If he stares out from the front of a magazine cover, it is almost certainly because his deeds out on the pitch have thrust him into the glare of the spotlight.
That focus increased in 2003 when Houllier relinquished the armband from Sami Hyypia and, instead, appointed Gerrard as his captain.
“He earned it so quickly because, firstly, he had personality,” says Houllier, who will be at Anfield for the Palace game. “He was an intelligent boy, he had leadership skills and qualities, and that is why I made him captain at 23. Not many people are captain at that age.
“Also, remember that happened after Basel [relations had briefly became strained when Houllier criticised Gerrard after a Champions League game in 2002, suggesting the youngster was guilty of believing his own publicity].
“Apart from the skill, you need to have the intelligence and desire, and he had that about him.
“The pressure is different when you are captain of Liverpool. Some players, when they have the captaincy, they shrink. He blossomed. I could see that. I felt it would be important for his development, but also for the club and the team.
“And it proved right when you see the role he played in Istanbul and Cardiff.”
Few are better qualified to offer an insight into the burden with which Gerrard has been saddled with than Jamie Carragher. The centre-half had just established himself in the senior squad when Gerrard made the step up from the junior setup, fulfilling the prophecies laid down by those who had previously noted his rise through the ranks.
“You feel greater responsibility,” says Carragher. “That’s how it changed him and probably did me as well. It forces you to mature.
“When you are a local lad and you get into the Liverpool team for the first time, you are still a kid. You are learning about the game but, off the pitch, you are also still growing up. I have no doubt that, when you are seen as a representative of the club, that forces you to grow up.
“But that sense of responsibility can also weigh heavy. Maybe it has done at times on Stevie because he was seen, even more than myself, as the go-to man.
“If things weren’t going right, the feeling was he could always fix it. There has probably never been more responsibility on any footballer in our club’s history.
“No one has had that thrust on them, and at such a young age too. It wasn’t all success, and it’s been a burden for him to carry. We had some great times, but there have been others when it wasn’t so good, and those are the times when we all looked to Steven Gerrard.
“I’m not just talking about the supporters here, but the players as well. And he has dealt with that magnificently.”
Gerrard’s bond is, of course, strengthened further by family ties. On Wednesday this week the inquest into the Hillsborough tragedy of 1989 heard evidence over the death of the disaster’s youngest victim, 10-year-old Jon-Paul Gilhooley. He was Gerrard’s cousin.
That assumption, that Captain Fantastic will always save the day, has contributed heavily to the pressure still placed on Gerrard as time ticked down in his career. In his later years at Liverpool, he has still been judged as the 25-year-old who should be smashing in 20 goals every season, even though he is no longer that same, effervescent player.
Joe Allen could quietly keep a game ticking over, passing safely without risk, and there will be a rush to comment on how well he has done. Should Gerrard do the same and the performance will be viewed as merely mediocre.
Where are the explosive rewards? The mind-boggling passes? The dramatic late interventions or brutish energy to whip team-mates up into a frenzy? Different players have different standards to maintain. Those who give their entire careers to one clubs are often judged more harshly than most. Little wonder Gerrard is, sadly, among the last of a dying breed.
That comes with the territory. It was the same for Ryan Giggs, who would endure catcalls cascading down from the stands at Old Trafford, those who once adored him casting him as a has-been long before he finally hung up his boots. It is an unfortunate symptom of the modern game. But it does explain why, to this day, Gerrard regards his time as an apprentice as the happiest of his career.
“Initially I was very quiet, very shy, very respectful to all the staff,” says Gerrard. “I was always trying to gain any little advantage I could, and always trying to impress the coaching staff.
“But I loved those days. I was in a group of young lads, having a laugh, mopping floors, blowing up balls and then going out to train for two years. We grew up together: we passed our driving tests and borrowed money off each other. There wasn’t the scrutiny. Everyone has a camera now. Every day now I try to impress, but when you are young you are searching and desperate for little ways of catching the eye. And then there is pressure to try to grab whichever opportunity comes your way.”
Hughie McAuley, who along with Dave Shannon was one of Gerrard’s first coaches at Liverpool, remembers it slightly differently. He can picture the reserved eight-year-old who, “never gave much away off the pitch,” but it was the transformation when Gerrard swaggered onto the field of play that, even at such a young age, fired the imagination.
“Steven certainly showed his personality and character then,” says McAuley, who was an apprentice under Bill Shankly but never quite fulfilled his own dreams.
“Once training started he was a different machine. He showed his competitive instincts then and gradually he gained more confidence around the club as a whole. But he was never big headed with it. He knew he was the best player in his age group, but that did not come across in how he acted.
“The only time there was any real concern was at 13-14-15 when, as coaches, we were a bit worried that he was overly competitive in terms of some of his tackling. He was attempting tackles that maybe he had no right to win, but he got over that soon enough because he was a good listener and he trusted us.
“To me, he has gone on to epitomise what Liverpool is about: discipline; expectation; enjoying success at the highest level. He has done all that.”
McAuley maintains that there was never any doubt that Gerrard would make the grade. When he was 14, Liverpool took both Gerrard and Michael Owen to a prestigious under-18s tournament in Spain, which pitted them against the likes of Real Madrid. He was not there to play, but to gain experience of travelling abroad and to recognise what it means to represent Liverpool in another country. The youngster had soaked up the messages relayed to the playing squad and recognised their significance.
As an apprentice, he had always known a three-year professional contract was waiting for him. But, had the unthinkable happened and the injuries that restricted his training suddenly stymied his development, Gerrard knows his life would have turned out radically different.
“I would have moved to a different club and tried to make it work there, but I don’t think my relationship would have been the same with any other set of supporters,” acknowledges Gerrard.
“This is a very unique relationship because of where I am from and because I am a fan. It is different. I do feel it more after a defeat than other players, and I do enjoy it more after a win than other players. It is very rare that a player captains his hometown club, the club he has supported, and with whom he has been for such a long time. It is very rare nowadays.”
To the role of captain can be added that of ambassador. The Steven Gerrard Foundation helps fund worthy causes not just on his own doorstep across Merseyside, but also nationwide, raising millions of pounds to help those less fortunate than himself.
“He is flying the flag,” says McAuley. “A lot of money has been raised through things he has done, his testimonial for example, and a lot of children and families have benefited as a result.”
Life is now about giving something back to his family, and enjoying the final chapter of an illustrious career while playing with a smile on his face. The shoulders will droop should LA Galaxy and Gerrard struggle to live up to the billing when his new adventure begins, but the feeling in defeat will not gnaw at him in quite the same way.
“What I would always say is, when you are a local player, the emotional attachment that you have for the club means you feel wins and defeats greater than the other players,” explains Carragher. “You get lower when the times are not going well and you get even higher when it’s going great.
“There will be a contrast with how he finds LA. That is a completely different set of circumstances. He will go there and enjoy himself, playing for the team, but he obviously won’t feel the results as much as he feels them for Liverpool. That may be a good thing for him.”
The pain of last season’s title implosion, when his infamous slip against Chelsea effectively marked the end of the team’s unlikely challenge, still lingers. He will be constantly reminded that the Premier League proved elusive throughout his career on Merseyside, enduring the taunts that echoed around Stamford Bridge on Sunday—for all that, the locals did afford him a standing ovation upon his substitution 11 minutes from time.
He is not running from that disappointment. Indeed, his time in the United States will not provide a total escape.
Gerrard has spent periods this season at Liverpool’s Kirkby academy, about five miles from the first-team base, coaching youngsters as he works toward his UEFA B licence. As one dream dies, his aspirations to secure the Premier League long since dashed, so another homes into view.
“Even when I go to America, I am still going to follow the games,” he continues. “I still have a lot of family and friends who will be going to the games, and I will still be talking a lot about Liverpool. I am very keen to see how all the individual players and the club do over the next few years. But, for me, I am still going to be working on things when I am away that might help me in a certain role if, one day, I come back.”
When Gerrard confirmed his decision to leave back on January 1, one of the questions thrust into the public sphere centred upon whether Liverpool had done enough to keep him. How could they treat a legend like this? If only they had made the offer of a contract sooner and eked out one more year, one last opportunity, one further season to fulfil those ambitions that remained.
Yet it feels like Gerrard is going at the right time.
The countdown to his farewell has been punctuated by injuries and suspensions, his appearances embellished with as many cruel and crushing disappointments as stunning last-minute winning goals.
As with his entire career, the highs and lows have been maintained right to the end. Yet his goals against Crystal Palace and Chelsea are a reminder of that refusal to let matters fizzle out.
That Liverpool supporters will want a little more from him actually feels like the ideal scenario. There will be no groans reverberating around Anfield on Saturday that might accompany a player who had overstayed his welcome seeking to get on the ball. There is no debt to be paid here, even if the suspicion lingers that Liverpool have needed Gerrard more in recent seasons than he has needed them.
“When you are a Liverpool player, there is a big pressure on you to help deliver what other top players and top teams have produced before you,” adds Gerrard. “And now, sitting here at this age, I just feel really proud that I have added more history to this great club. But now it is other people’s responsibility to do that and to try to follow suit.
“I think it has been a match made in heaven really. I have contributed really well to the club and given Liverpool a big chunk of my life. They have been a great support for me. I don’t think the club owes me anything, and I don’t think I owe the club anything. We have dreamt together, chased those dreams together and achieved most of them together.
“If you had said to me when I was a young boy that I would have contributed to this club’s history, then that is all I would have wanted. That can’t be changed. The club has helped make me.”
Steven Gerrard can leave for LA content in the knowledge that he, too, has helped make the modern-day Liverpool.
Paul Joyce covers Liverpool for the Express and worked with Steven Gerrard on his 2007 autobiography. All quotes were gathered firsthand for this piece.
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