LONDON — For “Steven Gerrard”, the flight to a new life in California cannot come soon enough. He is as much an icon in “Liverpool”, his hometown, as the Beatles were, but he needs a new field.
Right now age, and rage, are consuming him.
He is almost 35, and England’s Premier League moves too fast for a man who still wants to be the enforcer, the swashbuckling leader of the team he grew up with. On Sunday, his 703rd appearance in a Liverpool shirt lasted precisely 38 seconds.
In that time, he rushed into a tackle that cleaned out both the ball and Manchester United’s Juan Mata. It was a bone-shaking, borderline tackle that was inches away from illegality. Seconds later, when United’s Ander Herrera took a retaliatory lunge toward Gerrard, the Liverpool skipper stomped on the outstretched leg of Herrera.
Gerrard was instantly red-carded. Even he admits that there is no place in the sport for such a potentially leg-breaking use of force. The referee was completely right in showing him a straight red.
Liverpool lost the game to two fine goals from Mata. The first, before Gerrard entered the field as a substitute at halftime, was a work of precise movement and passing along the ground by Marouane Fellaini, Herrera and Mata. The second, after Gerrard had departed, was beauty itself as Ángel Di María returned the ball to Mata, who leaped and, with his body horizontal to the ground, scissors-kicked the ball inside Liverpool’s far post.
It was the perfect finish to put before the man they called the king of soccer. Pelé, now 74, was at Anfield stadium to witness Mata’s leap, and though he scored a thousand times in Brazil and the United States, not even he could have improved on the perfection of that second goal.
Liverpool, beaten by beauty and a man short, rallied to score once. But the game, a most important one between teams vying for a place in next season’s Champions League, was already won by the exquisiteness of Mata and lost by the rashness of Gerrard.
By the time of the final whistle, Gerrard, already showered and suited, was requesting the opportunity to apologize on television. The decision was right, he said of his expulsion. I’ve let my teammates, the manager and the supporters down today. It was a reaction to the initial challenge. I take full responsibility.
His mea culpa was manly, but it could not change the result. Gerrard faces a three-match ban, meaning that he has, at best, six games remaining as a Liverpool player before he flies out to join the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer.
He goes there with his wife and young daughters, and being the person he is, Gerrard will give every part of himself — responsibility, knowledge and desire — until he can run no more.
There lies the crux of his problems at home.
He is trying to deny the dying of his light. In his heart, he is still the same marauding Liverpudlian who in Istanbul in 2005 led his beloved Reds to come from three goals down at halftime in the Champions League final to tie A.C. Milan, 3-3, and then win the penalty shootout after extra time.
Gerrard headed the first goal that game, was brought down for a penalty that led to another and scored the first penalty kick in the shootout. In more than 40 years observing games in stadiums around the world, I have never seen a more stirring example of leadership than that.
But time marches on. A year ago, Gerrard made a slip that allowed Chelsea to score at Anfield, effectively ending the best chance Liverpool had in Gerrard’s time of winning the Premier League title. Then, at the World Cup, a mistimed jump for a header led to the score that knocked England out of the World Cup.
How cruel is fate? Gerrard has given everything he could for club and country throughout his career, but a slip, a failed header and a rash foul have been catalysts for defeats — and undone all that he has strived for.
Gerrard, the leader of Liverpool for more than a decade and England’s national team captain at the last World Cup, might seem to be luckless — or a liability to the causes he strives for.
The critics all have their theories. Jamie Carragher is one of the best and the most honest of the former Liverpool players that now are TV analysts. He had been Gerrard’s close friend with the Reds and his second-in-command before retiring in 2013, but Carragher had to call it as he saw it during Sunday’s game.
Steven Gerrard is an emotional player, and he’s taken Liverpool to some unbelievable heights, Carragher said on Sky Sports. This was a moment of madness.
Carragher’s informed opinion was that Gerrard was frustrated at being left on the bench after missing games because of that nemesis of the aging player, the strained hamstring. He watched his team being submissive, barely putting in a tackle, and allowing Manchester United — Liverpool’s greatest rival — to run the show at Anfield on Sunday.
Previously, Steven had always been the main man, continued Carragher. Whenever Steven has come back from injury before, he has gone straight back into the side. I think that has played its part — it was a moment of madness.
Carragher was speaking from experience. His own Liverpool career, like Gerrard’s, was studded by expulsions for hot-headed tackles in highly charged contests. In the aftermath to Sunday’s game, one thinks of Gerrard’s puzzlement when a previous England national team coach, Fabio Capello, seemed reluctant to trust him with the captain’s armband.
Capello may not have told him directly why, but the Italian suspected that Gerrard led with his heart. He valued Gerrard’s never-say-die personality but wanted a more cerebral leader.
Gerrard’s strength, his unquenchable spirit, could at crucial times also be his weakness. A captain is the last man you need sidelined through indiscretion.