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Gerrard’s career: Greatness sprinkled with tragedy

By on May 19, 2015

No single player is bigger than a club, but few came closer than Steven Gerrard during his Liverpool career, where he at the very least fully embodied the spirit of the club in a way that is increasingly rare in modern football. As Gerrard prepares to leave Liverpool this weekend after twenty-eight years at the club and seventeen years in the first team, Liverpool have entered an understandable state of mourning.

Reminiscing on Gerrard’s career can be bittersweet, however. While he has made over five-hundred appearances for his boyhood club and led them to a Champions League title, three League Cups and two FA Cups, his trophy cabinet still painfully lacks a Premier League title. Last year, Liverpool came all too close, with Gerrard’s infamous slip against Chelsea only intensifying the bitter taste at the end of Gerrard’s Premier League career. Such a man, one who has done so much for the club, deserved more.

For all Gerrard’s success, one wonders whether the only thing that stopped him from taking Liverpool to bigger heights was the squad around him. They always say that Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo could never be the sole factor driving a club’s success, that teams rely, no matter how good one star player is, on those around him. Nobody can single-handedly make a club the best in the world, and this may have been where Gerrard met his end. Place a Xavi or Iniesta from Barcelona’s golden generation into Gerrard’s shoes at Liverpool and they’d potentially have been stuck in the same boat.

Of course Barcelona is a rare exception as a club that yielded a generation of one-club stars. Xavi, Iniesta, Victor Valdes, Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets, and others not only embody the spirit of Barcelona, but together they extended it. They essentially had a group of five Gerrards, and the chemistry binding a world-class team.

The same applies to Manchester United’s Class of ’92. Nicky Butt or Paul Scholes — or any of the aforementioned players, for that matter — couldn’t have alone been thrown in at Manchester City and created an EPL dynasty, but alongside David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville and Phil Neville, United’s identity grew ever-larger.

But alone, even the biggest fish cannot enlarge its own pond. It would be a shame for Liverpool if therein lies the reason Raheem Sterling seems to be pushing for an exit from Anfield, drawing from Gerrard’s experiences; outgrowing the pond such that the farmer is forced to move him to a bigger pool. Arguably, Liverpool have been a one-man club just as much as Gerrard has been a one-club man; a lonely flag-bearer for what Liverpool aspire to be.

Obviously, the club had eras of squad excellence (Alonso, Torres, et. al. and then last year’s Suarez, Sturridge goalfest) that could have produced more league success — in other words there were definitely opportunities missed. Yet through it all, Gerrard was the de facto leader. The Englishman has understandably been past his prime for the past couple of years, losing his centrality to the squad, as one-club men inevitably do (witness Xavi at Barcelona and Iker Casillas at Real Madrid). In Barcelona’s case, the club has successfully backfilled talent to stay at the top, a tall order for any side.

Liverpool tried to build a team around Gerrard since the beginning of his career, keeping to the youth-and-goodness philosophy, but despite the cup wins, the results have been mixed. Without a larger generation of greats, the goal was always going to be harder to achieve without the deep pockets of Chelsea and Manchester City. But by adopting a Chelsea-esque spend and spend approach to the transfer market, Liverpool would’ve strayed from the very philosophy Gerrard represented. In a sense, Liverpool have been stuck halfway in between. Gerrard’s greatness lacked companions for all but fleeting moments of his career, moments where league titles fell just out of reach.

Homepage photo credit: Jon Candy on Flickr

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.