Gerrard’s leaving of Liverpool marks end of sterling career

WHAT exactly Steven Gerrard makes of Raheem Sterling this week we will probably never know, but it doesn’t take a genius or a Liverpool FC supporter to take a fairly educated guess.

On Saturday Gerrard took his final leave of Anfield as a Liverpool player, ending a love affair with his hometown club that began when he was an eight-year old in 1988.

On Tuesday we learned of Raheem Sterling’s plans to inform the same club of his intention not to sign a new contract with them, having declined a new offer of £100,000 per week earlier in the season.

Perhaps it is wrong to compare the two men and their situations this week, and reduce it to money and loyalty. Liverpool FC has made Gerrard a very rich man, and it’s probably not unreasonable to suggest that had the club not put such vast wages into Gerrard’s bank account every week over the last decade and more, then he may well have been saying his farewell to English football this week from another Premier League ground.

It is, therefore, not entirely impossible to at least understand - if not sympathise with - Sterling’s stance this week and his obvious grab for a bigger share of the money pie that is Premier League football.

Whether, at his age and with his talent, Sterling is entitled to even more than the £100,000 weekly wage on offer to him from Liverpool is, perhaps, another argument and one that will play out to one conclusion or another between club and player over the next few weeks.

If nothing else, the confluence of the two story lines this week merely reinforces the fact that Gerrard is leaving Liverpool and with him goes the last vestiges of any sort of club loyalty in English football.

Football has made Gerrard a millionaire many times over but for all the unimaginable wealth the game has bestowed on him it is still not hard to believe that Gerrard would have handed the majority of it back to have won just one League title with Liverpool.

The reality is that Gerrard - whose competitive drive and desire to be a winner every day cannot be understated - could have won a Premier League medal, and would have done so had he moved to Chelsea a decade ago when Jose Mourinho made more than one move to bring him to London.

A La Liga title and a Scudetto were also within his reach had he moved to Spain or Italy when the opportunity arose, but for all advances made by Mourinho and others to tempt Gerrard away from Anfield with a far greater chance of winning league titles, something held him back. That something was the Whiston boy’s utter love for his boyhood football club.

It’s perhaps easier for GAA people to appreciate Gerrard’s unequivocal love for his football club and his almost paralysing attachment to his birth place and its team. But there is one crucial difference between the GAA and professional soccer: gaelic footballers and hurlers are, for the most part, tied to their club by parish rules and the absence of a transfer market in the soccer sense. Steven Gerrard - signed contracts notwithstanding - could have walked away from Liverpool FC whenever he wanted.

Instead, an almost unnatural bond to his club - devotion and loyalty - kept him Anfield through years when Liverpool were finishing seasons closer in points to the relegated clubs than to the champions of England. Even now, after the player has seen out his career at the one club - and despite having won every major honour in the game except for that league title - is seems scarcely believable that Gerrard committed himself to a team that really only meaningfully challenged for the title three times in his 17 seasons at Anfield.

That he was Liverpool’s best player for two generations is indisputable; that he was one of the best, most consistent and most influential players in the Premier League for the last decade and a half is also without question. That his leadership and skill and passion dragged Liverpool to more victories than they might have deserved down the years is also impossible to argue against.

If 2005 was the zenith of his career in the famed red jersey - from his game-saving goal against Olympiakos right through to his game-changing header against AC Milan in the Champions League final, the nadir came last season with his slip against Chelsea that allowed Demba Ba score a defining goal in the title race that Liverpool had threatened, briefly, to win.

Whether Liverpool would have won the title without that slip is a moot point now, but in so many ways it summed up Gerrard at Liverpool: always involved, always central to everything that happened on the pitch.

Had Liverpool won the title last season, or in any other of Gerrard’s 13 seasons as club captain, it would have been hugely fitting that a local lad, a true Scouser, lifted the League trophy. The loyalty, and more than that, the devotion, he held for the club, would have deserved that.

It’s still likely that a North London man will lift the League trophy for a North London club, or a Mancunian will do likewise at United or City, but it’s highly unlikely - improbable - that they will have been at the club since they were eight years of age and made over 700 senior appearances. That kind of allegiance belongs to a bygone era now, and Gerrard is the last of that truly unique breed.

There are few who would have denied Gerrard a move to a more successful club when he was in his real prime, and sore as it would have been to lose him to Chelsea a decade ago, Gerrard’s place among Kop’s idols was already assured. The last ten years of service merely ensures he goes from beatification to deification: Saint Steven to God Gerrard.

Raheem Sterling may well move to Manchester City or Chelsea this summer or next and he may well win the League titles that eluded Gerrard. He may also earn vaster sums of money that Gerrard ever did, and he will, undoubtedly, kiss the badge of his new club and profess his love of and loyalty to them. And good luck to him if he does move.

But we know who is the richer man for staying put. More importantly, Steven Gerrard knows too.