It happened. Steven Gerrard, who has for 17 years been a symbol of unwavering, Premier League permanence, revealed himself at last as impermanent on Saturday, stepping out at Anfield for what will almost certainly be the last time as a Liverpool player before moving to Major League Soccer this summer.
A week before the big goodbye, Chelsea fans had offered a glimpse of what was to come with a standing ovation at Stamford Bridge, albeit the man himself didn’t exactly embrace the gesture.
This time, the teaser run gave way to the real thing: a string of ovations at Anfield, an on-pitch speech and a mass of deferential, celebratory, yet still slightly sombre coverage around the edges of it all. Everyone knew what was coming, and it came: a mass outpouring of emotion, unrestrained and unashamed; all available to watch on the TV, too.
Steven Gerrard: You’ll Never Walk Alone: It was a very emotional Saturday as Steven Gerrard played his last game for Liverpool at Anfield. Check out Sportsnet’s in-depth coverage of Gerrard’s fond farewell by, CLICKING HERE.
And, you know what? For once, that’s probably all okay, isn’t it? Because while there are a million reasons to be cynical about this broad, celebrity spectacle—with that awkward tendency towards sycophancy and affected feeling that comes with all of these kind of things—perhaps, for once, there can be a pass. Maybe, for once, those inclined to do so should just be allowed to recognise a player and a person whose sporting company they have enjoyed from a distance for the last 17 years.
Clearly it is possible to discuss Gerrard’s exit in practical terms and, for instance, say that he’s not an effective player for Liverpool anymore and is a tactical and psychological burden on the manager and the club. But that would be leaving no room for sentiment in football; no room for anything outside of the numbers. It would be reducing the game to a cold calculation—and, also, even on those pared-down terms would be a little unfair on someone with such huge talent, even now lacking in legs.
Obviously, one could also make fun of Liverpool fans for investing so deeply in a person they don’t know, but then one is required to ask: are they not allowed to savour a player they can relate to? A player who cares about them back, in the context of players such as Raheem Sterling, who so clearly (and in some ways justifiably) do not?
And of course there will be those who pull Gerrard apart for the slip last season and take a lot of joy from that, even this weekend. But if you’re doing that even now, then surely you risk saying that you can’t even empathise with another person for one, one-off day. And who wants to be the one saying that?
Not me.
Each of these angles is a genuine enough response to Gerrard’s end-point in English football. After all, artificially-imposed consensus is rarely healthy and pretending that Gerrard’s career was only imbued with positive energy would be massively selling him short (as well as, you know, “pretending”). It’s just that, on balance, after almost 20 years of bringing joy to tons of people—both fans and rivals—I think it’d be more than a little harsh not to say “yeah, good for him.” Just this once.
At some point, such as this one, there has to be room to recognise that Gerrard’s loss will matter to English football, whether you liked him or rated him or didn’t. For a start, the Premier League is losing one its best story-states.
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With Gerrard there’s never been a middle ground: his currency is highs and lows, nothing in between. He’s all drama; no tedium, for better and worse. He’s also been a never-ending underdog story, spending 17 years fighting against an inexorable tide to keep Liverpool competitive when it never really should have been (financially speaking). And then, with Frank Lampard going at the same time, one of the all-time great conversation starters leaves forever too: can the two of them play in central midfield together for England? And who’s better?
These stories aren’t readily replaced. High-powered squad rotation and players constantly moving between clubs and behind press officers have had a diluting effect. We now tend to get fragments of players—the rest is all hidden away or never existed in the first place. Whereas with Gerrard it was all out there, in full—the best and worst; the goals and the slips; the formation of the myth and then the late-career buying-into his own myth. Even the ending was played out in public, in front of the fans.
So he won’t just be gone, he’ll be missed. He won’t just disappear, he’ll be lacking. And while that absence can absolutely be described with functional, well-rehearsed cynicism, it’s got to be absolutely understandable that it wouldn’t be. And maybe, for once, this weekend’s big goodbye doesn’t have to be pulled apart and made fun of, however tempting that might be.
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter