Gerrard: My Autobiography

by Steven Gerrard

  Everyone was so happy and smiling, even Rafa, who is 24/7 serious and dedicated to football. He even stopped picking holes in that first-half display and had a couple of glasses of wine. Amazing! The room was packed. It seemed every Liverpool supporter had blagged their way past security. I didn’t want to talk to people because I was that drained, but I did. I stayed on and talked and drank beer until it was light outside. I was one of the last out of the party. As I stumbled out towards my room, I looked back and saw my new best mate, the European Cup, just standing there on a table. There were people in the room I didn’t know, and even in my pissed state I thought, ‘That’s not going missing.’ I grabbed the cup and we headed off upstairs together.

  Two hours later, I awoke with a start. Where the hell am I? My eyes struggled to deal with the daylight streaming in through the window. Gradually, the outline of something large came into focus at the end of the bed. Fuck me, it’s the European Cup! It was just me and the European Cup. My room-mate, Xabi, had his missus staying over so he had gone off to catch up with her. Me and the European Cup were alone together. I never slept with the European Cup. I never had my legs wrapped round it or anything. It never got into bed with me. It just stood there, on one of those tables with a mirror where the missus does her make-up. The European Cup was reflected in the mirror. I was seeing double. ‘Morning,’ I said to the cup. I could not remember bringing it back to the room, but then I couldn’t remember getting myself back to the room. As soon as I hit the pillow I was bang asleep.

  I gazed at the cup, and memories of the previous night came flooding back. For twenty minutes I lay there, just staring at the European Cup. Just the two of us. Then, shit! No-one will know where this cup is! Liverpool had waited twenty-one years to get their hands back on the cup and now it had gone. I’d better get down to breakfast.

  I staggered into the meal-room.

  ‘Where’s the cup?’ Carra shouted.

  Everyone was there, looking concerned, as if they were about to scramble a search party.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ I laughed. ‘It’s in my room. Come and have a look if you want!’

  So all the boys piled upstairs and saw the cup again. Then we brought it down, had a team picture taken with it and the hotel staff, and said goodbye to Istanbul.

  I hate flying, but the whole trip was heaven. The second we landed at John Lennon International, it all went crazy again. Press and fans, questions and autographs. More pictures. Back at Melwood, we boarded an open-top bus and headed back into town. We had to do the parade that Thursday because all the foreign lads were flying off for internationals. On the bus, champagne open, good drink, good laugh. Brilliant. All the players took it in turns to lift the trophy, showing it to the fans, milking the moment, and deservedly so. The foreign lads were gobsmacked. They hadn’t realized we had so many supporters. Only as the bus snaked slowly through the streets did they appreciate how big a club Liverpool is. I’d experienced it before with the Treble, all the passionate support lining the side of the road, but the European Cup tour was even better.

  Carra and I were at the back of the bus, sorting out the night’s entertainment, enjoying the look of amazement on the foreign lads’ faces and waving at the hundreds of thousands of fans. It was a scrum on the pavement, people often spilling off into the road. ‘Someone could get seriously hurt,’ I said to Carra. And the crush was worrying at certain points on the route. Police horses kept crashing into the side of the bus; fans were getting thrown back. People were a hundred feet up in the air, hanging off lamp-posts, out of trees and buildings. Merseyside Police did a super job controlling all those people because really it was mission impossible. When we got into town, the bus didn’t move for forty-five minutes. I kept catching sight of friends, waving, smiling, punching the air. The European Cup was home. Everyone on Merseyside seemed to have come out to watch, even a few Evertonians, who weren’t really too happy. I could tell them a mile off!

  ‘These are the best two days of my life,’ I told Carra. He smiled back. A great night in Istanbul followed by this unbelievable reception back home.

  The tour lasted so much longer than anticipated that Carra and I had to reschedule our evening plans! I caught up, though. The week that followed was a blur of parties, bars and nightclubs. The miracle of Istanbul deserved to be celebrated in style.

  In the months to come, everyone wondered why I never got an MBE off the Queen for bringing home the European Cup, particularly when all the cricketers got them for the Ashes. That never bothered me. I know it would be a Big-Hat day for Alex at the Palace, but it’s not something I’m preoccupied with. Honestly. The only honours I want are handed out in football grounds – like in Istanbul.

  18

  Feeling Blue Again

  IN CLIMBING TO the peak of my club career in 2004/05, I endured moments of doubt. The thought of joining Chelsea still ate away at me. Liverpool may have won the Champions League, but the Premiership belonged to Chelsea.

  Because honesty is a quality I prize so highly, I was always straight with Liverpool. In a press conference before the Champions League tie with Olympiakos, I was asked, ‘What are you going to do if Liverpool don’t get Champions League football next season?’ I didn’t flinch. ‘I am going to have to consider my future,’ I replied. No choice. So the crazy whirl of rumours intensified because I didn’t come out and say, ‘I’m not going to Chelsea or Real Madrid.’ I didn’t want to lie, or claim everything was all sweetness and light at Liverpool. I wanted to wait and see how the season panned out. Ideally, Liverpool would finish first or second, and I could announce, ‘I don’t have to move.’ Sadly, we were soon fighting it out for fourth or fifth again. The fear of the UEFA Cup loomed large.

  On 10 December 2004, Rick Parry tried to calm the speculation by insisting Liverpool had ‘no intention’ of letting me go. ‘If we can deliver top honours, I am convinced Steven will remain at Liverpool,’ he said. More stories about me appeared during the winter transfer window. ‘Is Gerrard Staying?’ ‘Is Stevie G-oing?’ Headline after headline, more fuel on the fire. Again Rick emphasized how highly the club rated me. ‘Steven is above money,’ Rick told the press. ‘He is the future of Liverpool. Even if it’s thirty, forty or fifty million, we won’t accept offers.’ Privately, Rick also came to me twice during the season and said, ‘We want you to extend your contract. We want you to stay.’

  But I was confused. If they wanted me so bad, why didn’t they put a contract on the table? Show me the deal. Show me you really want me. Rafa was also on at me to commit myself. But how could I without seeing what Liverpool proposed? They never contacted Struan, who sorts out all my deals. I didn’t understand Liverpool’s game-plan. Did they want to keep me? If they did, Rick and Rafa were certainly going about it in a strange way. ‘I want to keep you,’ Rafa told me one day at Melwood. ‘We want to keep you,’ Rick told me. But it seemed to me that Liverpool wanted to keep me on their terms. Liverpool’s approach was, ‘Sign when we say, and if you agree, we’ll tell you how much the deal is worth.’ As captain of Liverpool Football Club and someone who had run myself into the ground for the team, I deserved to be treated with more respect. Contract negotiations with top players do not work the way Liverpool were operating. I was not some spotty kid just up from the Academy.

  The impasse led to further speculation in the press. Chelsea, Chelsea, Real, Real. Non-stop. It was becoming a soap opera. Before our League Cup semi-final with Watford in January 2005, Benitez pulled me and said, ‘Listen, you can put a stop to all this stuff in the papers by signing a new deal.’ But there was no deal there! Frustration at the situation did my head in.

  ‘You know where my agent is,’ I told Rafa. ‘Talk to him. He represents me with deals.’

  The first time Rafa and Rick cornered me, I said, ‘Look, how can I seriously sign a four-or five-year contract now when we are fighting for fourth or fifth place in the Premiership?’ I was dead serious, too. I needed to know what Liverpool were offering me fi
nancially, but most importantly I wanted Rafa and Rick to guarantee progress. No more pissing about in fifth place. I looked Benitez in the eye and said, ‘If I sign and I am playing UEFA Cup football next year, what do I do then? What happens if I fall out of the England fold?’

  Rafa stared back and said, ‘You are just going to have to trust me.’

  I like and trust the Boss. Always have done, always will. But there was too much uncertainty around Liverpool at that time.

  ‘Can’t we just wait until the end of the season and find out if we are in the Champions League?’ I asked. ‘Let’s see how we do from now until the summer, and then I will sign a deal. If this club goes forward and you bring success, I’ll stay. You will have to trust me.’

  My comments about ‘trust’ did not satisfy Rafa and Rick. Three times in nine weeks during the middle of the season, they came to me. Soon after that first exchange, they were back again. I was amazed. I sat there, listening to two men I respect going on about signing a deal, and thinking to myself, ‘Why are you coming a second time? You know you’ll get the same answer.’ I told them, ‘I’m not going to commit myself to Liverpool until I know whether there is going to be Champions League football at the end of the season.’ I felt like a stuck record, repeating myself again and again. Crazy. I resented Liverpool trying to pressurize me into signing. Rafa and Rick should have respected my decision about not being able to give an answer until the end of the season. Maybe they were nervous about Liverpool not qualifying for the Champions League, because we were hardly setting the Premiership alight. Maybe they felt I would leave if they didn’t tie me down to a longer contract. Maybe they didn’t want me. Maybe they wanted to sell me and use the money to rebuild the team. Liverpool kept talking about a new deal, but I never saw any paperwork or figures. I constantly felt like screaming at them, ‘If you want me, show me a proper contract. If you want to talk in the summer, fine.’

  My feelings towards Liverpool, and particularly some of the fans, darkened because of events during the Carling Cup final against Chelsea on Sunday, 27 February 2005. A day that began so full of hope ended in a mess. It was only the League Cup, but it felt special because it was the first time I had led Liverpool out in a cup final. The night before, I dreamed of lifting the trophy. Me. First with my hands on the cup. Holding it up. Liverpool fans going crazy. The reality, however, brought only misery. We were so close to winning, leading through Riise’s early goal. But then I scored an own-goal, Chelsea won it in extra time, and the nightmare kicked in. I was torn apart emotionally. I’d let everyone down – the club, the fans, the players. Gifting a goal to Chelsea made it even more of a disaster because of all the speculation. People made a big deal of Jose Mourinho coming over to console me, but he had a quiet word with all the Liverpool lads. Mourinho was very gracious in victory. I admired that, because I was a wreck. Devastated. Down. Lifeless. Even now, when I see pictures of that final, the hurt comes flooding back. The image of the Chelsea boys collecting their winner’s medals is always there in my mind, a reminder of my failure that day in Cardiff.

  After dragging my shattered body onto the team bus, I switched on my phone and went through texts from mates, trying to lift my spirits. Dad called. ‘Keep your chin up,’ he said. ‘Forget about it.’ The phone rang again. It was Ian Dunbavin, who had travelled down to Cardiff with my mum. ‘Stevie, your mum’s really upset. Don’t phone her yet, she’s too upset. Give her a couple of hours.’ I texted Mum: ‘Give me a call when you want to talk.’ I settled back for the journey, and eventually Mum rang. She was distraught. After my own-goal, Liverpool fans sitting near where she was in the family area screamed abuse about me, and about Alex. ‘That prick done it on purpose. He wants to play for Chelsea. He’s going for the money. Him and his fucking missus want to be down there where all the shops are. They are going for the money. Gerrard’s a traitor.’ On and on it went, sickening comment after sickening comment. ‘Your missus is a slut, Gerrard! She’s a slag!’ Coming from Mum, I knew there were no lies or exaggeration. She told it how it was. Poor Mum. She couldn’t live with it. None of those Liverpool fans knew she was my mother. She kept quiet. No choice. How do you reason with nutters? Until now, no-one knew that Liverpool fans slaughtered me and Alex at the Carling Cup final. Unfortunately there is a minority of Liverpool fans who let themselves down from time to time. I don’t know who these people were, but they wore red shirts, red scarves and red badges, sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and abused me in front of my mum. For me, they are not real Liverpool fans. Mum went to the Millennium to watch her lad. She was sitting there all proud, and then she had to listen to that poison. They are cowards. They would never repeat their jibes to my face.

  I can take criticism on the chin if it’s constructive. I made an honest mistake in a cup final when I was sweating blood for Liverpool, so I didn’t deserve that abuse. Being labelled a traitor and having my mum on the phone in buckets of tears I also didn’t deserve. Some people might have quit the club there and then, disgusted at the sick behaviour of some fans. Why should my mum put up with that? Why should I? I can’t put every Liverpool fan in the bracket of this minority, of course. Liverpool supporters are the best in the world, and the majority have been brilliant to me from day one, but a spiteful few turned against me during all the Chelsea speculation. They believed certain rumours and vented their anger. They should have thought before abusing me. These idiots should just have imagined how their mothers would have felt. I won’t forgive them, and I won’t forget them. I’m a big boy and I can take the heat for mistakes, but I couldn’t sleep at night because of the abuse my mum suffered.

  Mum has been back to football since. She loves me, and wants to watch me. But I wouldn’t let her go to a game while speculation continued over me and Chelsea. No chance. Why should she sit through more abuse? Alex goes to the big matches, but I always warn her over things she might hear. ‘Not everyone is going to be shouting that Steven Gerrard is a hero,’ I tell her. She does hear derogatory shouts about me. If I make a mistake, a fan who’s paid good money to come and watch me is going to have a go. But that abuse in Cardiff went way over the top. Missing the 2002 World Cup was a low, but hearing Mum crying down the phone because her lad scored an own-goal and his fans were slaughtering him made me feel even lower.

  I was fed up with the whole messy saga. I love Liverpool, and it hurt having my powerful bonds to the club strained by the speculation. When we beat Chelsea in the Champions League semis to reach the final in Istanbul, I couldn’t hold back. ‘All I wanted was to see the club going in the right direction, and this victory shows we are,’ I said. That proved my heart lay at Anfield. And once we won that glorious final, I let rip again, pouring out emotions that had been building for a long time. ‘How can I leave after a night like this, and all the nights I’ve experienced?’ I said at the press conference in Istanbul, gazing at the European Cup and listening to our brilliant fans partying outside. Surely that showed my love for Liverpool Football Club? ‘I’m signing for Liverpool Football Club for four or five years,’ I told the world. Christ, if that wasn’t a gesture of deep commitment, what was? I’d been dying to get to this point, to blow away all the clouds of speculation and reveal my passion for Liverpool Football Club. I was with Rick, and I said, ‘Come on, let’s get it done. There has been that much shit, that much speculation. Come on, Rick, let’s get it done.’ I would have signed a new deal there and then, with sweat still pouring off my forehead, with a hand that had just lifted the European Cup for Liverpool Football Club. Now. Stop wasting time. Too much talk. Give me the pen. Let’s sign. Adrenalin rushed through me in Istanbul, but my mind was completely clear, totally cold in its analysis. I can’t walk away. I want to stay. Let me sign. Please.

  Silence. I was stunned. There was a contract offer on the table which I didn’t consider good enough; I felt I was being taken for granted. Now, I thought Liverpool would be sprinting to me with a proper contract and a pen while the cheers of Istanbul st
ill rang in our ears. Talk about perfect timing. The European Cup was coming back to Anfield, a fifth one that we got for keeps. Stevie G was coming back for keeps as well. The moment was there. Let’s seize the opportunity like I seized the European Cup

  – with both hands. Let’s walk on together. But there was only silence. Why didn’t Liverpool act quickly? After Istanbul, he thought that because we’d won the Champions League it didn’t matter when my deal got signed. No hurry, no fuss. But it bloody mattered to me. It was such a contrast with what happened with Thierry Henry and Arsenal after the 2006 European Cup final: he signed a new deal thirty-six hours later. Arsenal moved quickly. Liverpool never truly realized how desperate I was to get it signed. I admire Rick Parry, who has been a fantastic chief executive for Liverpool Football Club, always acting with the club’s best interests at heart. But he didn’t seem to understand how battered my head had been over my future ever since Euro 2004.

  A wave of doubt rolled through me again. All season, Rick had been saying that Liverpool wanted to keep me. Three times they approached me. I was a symbol of Liverpool Football Club, a hungry lad from Huyton, raised at Melwood and Anfield. Surely they wanted their homegrown captain to stick around? Didi signed a contract the day after Istanbul. Not me. Rafa asked for meetings with three or four players to sort out their futures. Not me. ‘Steven, I’ll see you when you come back after the summer,’ Rafa said after Istanbul. Christ, what the hell was going on?