‘As a leader and a man, he is incomparable to anyone I have ever worked with.’ Obviously quite some guy, that: John Hunt of Everest? Nelson Mandela? The All Blacks’ all-conquering Richie McCaw? No, it’s Brendan Rogers on Steven Gerrard. The Liverpool manager insists that, although the word ‘legend’ is all right for Thierry Henry or John Terry, it is woefully inadequate for Gerrard. The extravagantly coiffed Robbie Savage, who is now the BBC’s default commentator, has declared the departing club captain the best Liverpool player ever.
Actually there’s a good argument that he wasn’t even the best Liverpool midfielder ever. Would he have got into the side when Souness and Kennedy were at full throttle? Didn’t Phil Neal win about ten times as many trophies, including several league titles? Gerrard isn’t even Liverpool’s most capped player. That’s Jamie Carragher. As for his goal-scoring record, it isn’t a patch on, say, Frank Lampard’s. His trademark, frankly, was digging Liverpool out of deep holes that he had played no small part in excavating. He normally did this with a last-gasp belt from 30 yards. Gerrard managed to bang a couple in against Wimbledon of League Two earlier this week in an FA Cup match, which just about saved Liverpool’s face. Say what you like about Liverpool, they did manage to give Wimbledon a fright! The rush to acclaim Gerrard is a product partly of an ever-present sentimentality regarding Liverpool, and partly the modern, Sky-driven insistence that football wasn’t worth bothering with before the Premier League. Anyway, only saying.
Still, Gerrard had a pretty good disciplinary record on the field, an exemplary private life, and when not dishing out a few straight rights in nightclubs, seems like an all-round good bloke.
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