Gerrard’s final bow an emotional moment for English football

It will be a miracle if Steven Gerrard holds it together on Saturday on Merseyside. This, his last outing at Anfield for Liverpool, is probably the first time he will truly accept he is never going to win a league title with Liverpool.

It is both a tribute to Gerrard and an indictment of English football that the closing phases of Gerrard’s flickeringly brilliant career have evoked more public emotion and interest than the actual winning of that league. Chelsea have stomped with unerring authority towards their fourth league title, third under José Mourinho, and last Sunday at Stamford Bridge, the Blues fans amused themselves by goading and taunting Gerrard when Liverpool visited their ground before breaking into an unexpected standing ovation when he was substituted with 12 minutes remaining.

The gesture was generally dismissed as being hypocritical. But it wasn’t that. In their own way, Chelsea fans have had an intense and prolonged relationship with Gerrard. By turning down Mourinho’s overtures a decade ago, Gerrard spurned Chelsea – and with it his best chance to win the league. He rejected newly omnipotent Chelsea and his decision not to leave Liverpool must have contributed to the increasingly bitter edge that characterised matches between the clubs.

The sale of Fernando Torres to Chelsea in January 2011 was further proof of the fact everyone was for sale. Except Gerrard. Nothing could prize him away from the familial and city ties of Liverpool. Mourinho can be petulant when he doesn't get his way but there was always the sense he respected Gerrard's decision to stay with Liverpool even if he may privately believe it slightly insane.

Netherworld

Liverpool is a strange sporting institution: a football club perpetually caught in a netherworld between the fabulousness of the past and the complex demands of its future. In its way, Liverpool FC has remained both as period-specific and as timeless as the music of the Beatles.

Gerrard stayed because he decided it would break his heart to leave, no matter how many medals he might win. And he has been amply rewarded, financially, with cup medals, individual awards and as much adoration and respect as any one human being could hope to handle.

There was a peculiar truth in Mourinho’s observation on that curious salute by the Chelsea fans. Even the taunts and songs and the relentless glee with which they celebrated that notorious slip – late last season when Chelsea ended Liverpool’s best chance at winning the league in a quarter of a century – originate from a form of grudging respect.

They singled Gerrard out every time they saw him play simply because he figured so prominently on the field. He was the permanent face of Liverpool.

The emotions of any sporting crowd can be spectacularly volatile: anger can change to delirium within seconds. So when Gerrard took his leave at Stamford Bridge last week, there was an instant and sudden comprehension among the Chelsea crowd of what he had meant to them, of how much they had loved hating him and taunting him and seeing him fail.

Of course, many of them also watched Gerrard as an England player. The loathing and the sneering directed towards him over the years evaporated as soon as his number was called. The mood changed from spiteful to some rare manifestation of chivalry. The ovation was recognition of the fact they were witnessing the passing of a major figure in their period of devoting themselves to football.

Of course, Gerrard couldn’t give it to them in his interview afterwards. Always the consummate professional, he couldn’t resist being slightly bitter on this occasion. He was right – it was his chance to cock two fingers, to have the final word, to remind them that Chelsea have never really figured, that it was always about Liverpool for him.

The turning point in Gerrard’s life as a potential winner of titles came in the summer of 2005, not long after the evening in Istanbul when he improbably – and temporarily – revitalised his club as a European powerhouse. Chelsea won the league that season, finishing on 95 points. Liverpool were fifth but managed just 58 points: there was no real “race”.

In 1998, Gerrard’s first season with the club, they finished in third place and some 13 points behind the champions of that year, Arsenal. Of Gerrard’s 17 seasons at Liverpool, there were only three seasons during which they could be spoken of as genuine title contenders. And last year’s dreamy run, for all the thrills and beauty, carried with it the slightly uneasy air of a classic dark fairytale.

Too good to be true

The Liverpool supporters old enough to recall how to behave when they habitually won the league title, did their best to reclaim that sense of know-how. But they were waiting for the monster to show up. They were waiting for things to go wrong. They knew what they were watching was too good to be true.

Maybe deep down, even Gerrard knew that. The closer he got to football heaven, the more fretful he became. The failure to win a league title with Liverpool means there will always be a sense of unfulfillment about Gerrard’s career. He was Liverpool’s leader for most of those seasons and maybe for all of his attributes as a player – the irrepressible athleticism and pile-driving goals and the out-and-out aggression, maybe he didn’t have the meanness of spirit to bully the many team-mates who came and went into sharing his mad passion for the club.

Maybe he didn’t have the right materials on any one season to make it count – too many dilettantes, too many big-money flops, too many journeymen. Or maybe he simply wasn’t the man to boss them all. That is academic. In terms of the bright shining moments, Gerrard’s Liverpool years were more thin than thick.

But the disappointments must be tempered by his enduring individual excellence – even in this vaguely haunted and interrupted season he could finish as top scorer – and his raging loyalty.

The big fear for Liverpool supporters is that when a figure so meaningful disappears then the games and club and ritual cannot mean as much again.

You could argue all night about whether he was over-rated, about whether his longevity made him a media darling, whether he ever “did it” in an England shirt. Maybe all of those criticisms are valid. But even so . . . he played his heart out. He showed up, year after year. And he knew where he was from.

So if he holds it together at Anfield, in that sentimental city, sometime around five o’clock on his last Saturday, he will be in the minority.

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