I’m a Scouser from a council estate... I never want to lose that
‘It smacks you right in the face, the size of the job, when you have got 25 fellas staring at you, waiting for every word that is going to come out of your mouth’
BEFORE the interview has reached its end, Steven Gerrard is making plans to do this again. He wants to provide a candid insight into the differences between playing and managing — the winning and the losing — but, to do it properly, something special must happen.
‘I tell you what,’ he says. ‘We could come back to this. But what you have just asked me? I can’t answer it, not at the minute. I do hope I get the chance to one day try.’
This is the only point Gerrard is at a loss for words during 30 illuminating minutes. We have met on Merseyside on what is a rare day off for the manager of Rangers to take a step back into the past and discuss Make Us Dream, the biopic of his life, which is out in cinemas tomorrow.
The title of the film is wholly appropriate. It charts how the wiry little schoolboy became the emblem of a team and a city, Liverpool’s dream maker. The good times are chronicled in glorious technicolour but so are the bad times — and Gerrard goes into detail on some subjects like never before.
For instance, one previously untold story is about Liverpool’s title decider with Chelsea in April 2014 — the game in which his fateful slip enabled Demba Ba to score — when he needed to have an epidural in the build-up to manage the pain of a severe back problem. By rights, he could have missed the game.
‘Don’t think that is an excuse for what happened,’ he says firmly. ‘What happened was just a pure bad stroke of luck. But, when you do a book or film, especially with people on this level who have won Oscars and made films such as Amy (the biopic of the late Amy Winehouse) and
Senna, you have to be as honest and open as you can.’
Honesty has never been an issue for Gerrard. He was an open book as a player and nobody needed a degree in body language to work out when things were good and bad in his world. It was always there, carved into every crease of his face.
‘Looking back, I didn’t hide it well, did I?’ Gerrard says, smiling. ‘But that’s me, that’s real. You can see the pure ecstasy in the times when I was at the top end of the dream. But the low moments? I’m not one of those people who could put the poker face on. I never have been.’
Does he not need to be able to do so now he has become a manager? The past is the hook that has brought us together but the present and future are just as interesting and, typically, his views on how life has changed — and how he is changing with it — are compelling.
There are times as we talk — not least when he recalls ‘the horrible moment’ that his playing career ended in Los Angeles on November 24, 2016, his body no longer able to withstand the demands of professional football — when it is clear that he would love, just once more, to be in the thick of a frenzied game for club or country.
Management, however, is providing a new set of challenges, ones which he has embraced since accepting Rangers’ invitation six months ago to begin the next phase. So far, it has all been relatively smooth, with Sunday’s 7-1 thrashing of Motherwell his most emphatic success to date.
‘I have to be aware that I have to control my emotions a lot more,’ he says. ‘It’s not about me now. It was about me when I played. Now the challenge is to get a group of men as right as I can get them. It is about getting performances out of them and using my journey and experiences to help them.’
Slowly, he is finding his feet and adjusting, putting distance between himself and the players rather than being central to everything in the dressing room. He effectively stopped thinking like a player when he gave his first team-talk on the first day of pre-season training in June.
‘That was completely different to having a group of kids in front of me last year,’ says Gerrard, who spent last season guiding the fortunes of Liverpool’s Under-18 side.
‘It smacks you right in the face, the size of the job, when you have got 25 fellas staring at you, waiting for every word that is going to come out of your mouth.
‘You know the job has started then. Away from the cameras, it’s candid and raw. I’ve never had any help in terms of public speaking. The only experience I have had is myself, as Liverpool captain, doing it off the cuff. I’ve never had any advice, as I have always wanted to be authentic and real.
‘I don’t want someone to change me into this spokesman with (big) words and try to kid people on. I’m a Scouser from a council estate. I never want to lose that because it’s me. It’s the reason why I’ve gone on the journey as a player and it’s the reason that I have ended up at Rangers.’
Could he equate the feeling to the moment Gerard Houllier summoned the then callow 18-year-old and sent him on to make the first of 710 Liverpool appearances?
‘Very, very similar,’ he says, nodding. ‘In terms of the speed of the beat of your heart and the buzz and the adrenaline rush, very similar. There is pressure. It is demanding. There is responsibility. But when I stopped playing, there was a void in my life. It was only a short time but there was a void.
‘But, you know, I didn’t see myself just having an easy, comfortable life. There’s time for that further down the line. While I’m fresh and feel I can help players — and while
there are still opportunities to have that buzz — I’m game for a challenge. I will give it my best shot.’ He is not the only one. The way in which football is changing can be seen in dugouts all across Europe, with poster boys from Gerrard’s playing era — Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard, Ryan Giggs and John Terry — all pursuing coaching careers. ‘I’ve got nothing but respect for those people for going in and having a go at it,’ he says. ‘Those lads could easily have done whatever they wanted but I think they are football people. They loved their careers, like I loved mine. I’m not saying people who don’t go into it didn’t love their careers. ‘But from leaving school at 16, my life has been about football. I want to work and it has always been about preparing for that buzz at the weekend. I don’t know how this journey is going to go but I’m hoping it will be good.’
He is doing everything to make sure that will be the case. Gerrard has moved to Glasgow and is settled in an area not far from Rangers’ Hummel Training Centre. The day usually starts for him at 8am and finishes around 6pm before it is home to spend the night in front of the laptop, preparing.
Gone are the days when he would ‘go for a game of snooker, golf or table tennis’, while he has made a conscious decision to dial back on the amount of time he posts on Instagram at a time when social media use is increasing universally.
‘I want to be respectful to people and my job,’ explains Gerrard.
‘I am grateful for the following I get but, with all due respect, I am busy. I’ve got four kids, I’m busy with my job. Every minute I have is taken up. But what I am saying is that, through my career, I adapted through different situations.
‘I understand the modern-day player. I can see all the characters in my dressing room now. The younger ones are social-media driven, they can’t wait for the next new coloured boots… football is evolving. If you want to stay involved with it, you have got to get up to speed with it.
‘I’m quite open to it, as long as people keep their standards and do what they have to do.
‘I don’t mind a player wearing pink boots and having lines striped all over their hair. As long as they give me eight or nine out of ten on a Saturday, that’s fine with me. No problem. No problem at all.’
He is, clearly, enjoying it. There have been some fine moments so far, such as the longest unbeaten European run in a single season in Rangers’ history, but there have also been disappointments, not least losing the semi-final of the Betfred Cup to Aberdeen.
The question, then, is how it all compares. He loved winning and hated losing, so now he is no longer able to physically shape a contest, are his emotions more acute? What is better: playing or managing? It is here he takes a breath, gathers his thoughts and looks to the future.
‘Winning as a player is fantastic, winning as a manager now is a great buzz,’ he says. ‘Losing? There is no difference in the hurt. Winning a trophy as a player? Now that’s special, incredible. And I would love to be in a position where I experience that as a manager. I would love to. That is what I want.
‘I want to win a trophy. I want to achieve something special. So you know what? I’d like to come back to that question. I can’t answer it at the minute. I hope I get the chance to one day try.’
It’s a fitting way to finish. After years making everyone else dream, now it’s Gerrard’s turn.
Make Us Dream is released in cinemas nationwide on November 15.