WHEN Steven Gerrard stepped out on to the field at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in South Africa during the 2010 World Cup, it was undoubtedly a proud moment for most Reds. Certainly, there are those Liverpool fans that feel no affiliation with the England team and I can’t really blame them but having a local lad that has played for the club his whole life turn out at a World Cup against the USA was truly a great moment. Unfortunately, what followed was not quite so great as England crashed out of the World Cup with 1 win in 4 games; losing 4:1 to Germany in the second phase.
The fallout was ugly, to say the least. Fingers were pointed and sadly a lot of those were pointed at Gerrard as the captain. This is nothing new. You see, as a Liverpool player Steven Gerrard has been a world class midfielder for the best part of a decade. He has come on leaps and bounds since his injury-plagued early days and he has netted somewhere in the region of 145 goals for the club in that time, only failing to hit double figures once in the past 7 seasons (not counting this season, as it is still on-going). It is fair to say that he has contributed easily as many goals for his team-mates during his time too. So the problem that Eng-er-lund fans have with Gerrard is this: why can’t he do it for his country?
Well, without wanting to go against accepted convention, he can – and does – regularly. He has scored 19 goals in his England career so far, in 90 caps. Only Frank Lampard comes close, in terms of midfielders, with 23. But Lampard’s overall game adds far less and Gerrard is often expected to perform several roles and functions during a game. When he fails to utterly dominate the opposition, the hatchets and the cleavers come out and he gets slaughtered. This happens with such regularity that, over the years, I have fallen out with England myself. I have never been Gerrard’s biggest fan, in terms of his personality and certain aspects of his game still annoy me frequently (seriously, mate, practice your corners!) but no one can doubt his ability and when he play’s for England I’ve come to feel very protective, as I do whenever a Liverpool player turns out for his country.
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Which is why I believe that Scott Parker’s selection as England captain is for the best (should he be chosen long term) for both player and club. You see, Gerrard has a very fragile personality; he has always been this way. He is a player that needs an arm around the shoulder, telling him he is a quality player and that the manager and fans have the utmost faith. When he is on the pitch he is awesome at times and leads solely by example but he is quite weak mentally. This is not a slight on Gerrard, it is just a fact of life; he has always suffered this way. Just see his reactions over the years: when there were rumours of Alex Curran’s infidelities, Gerrard’s form went off badly for months on end. When he felt marginalized early in Rafa Benitez’s reign by the signing of Xabi Alonso, he went off form and suffered badly. And in particular, this can be seen during the two ‘will he/won’t he’ summers we had when he nearly moved to Chelsea, particularly the first time around when Gerrard interpreted Liverpool’s inability to sort out his contract quickly enough to mean that the club didn’t really care about keeping him and were disinterested in him personally. That is why man-management is such a huge part of the modern game: players, like the rest of us mere mortals, have different personalities and need to be handled differently and Gerrard is no different.
You see, if he was given the England captaincy he would experience an upsurge in form, almost without a doubt. However, as all things England, it will quickly go South and when England have a few bad performances or one or two defeats and England automatically become the worst team in the world and the captain and manager will take a large part of the blame, particularly if the manager is foreign and the player is Northern; these things are just a fact.
If Steven Gerrard is that captain, do we really want him to experience a dip in form due to his ill treatment at International level? Do we really need thousands of senseless Millwall and West Ham fans giving him abuse during meaningless friendlies at Wembley because he hasn’t scored in a few games? Because that will happen and it will inevitably affect Gerrard’s performances for his club too which, given that fact that he is now past 30, is not something we need. We need Steven Gerrard at the top of his game for the next few years and if he is captaining England then we can kiss that goodbye. I mean, there is a reason why Jamie Redknapp (a staunchly English Englishman) has advised his dad against taking the England job for health reasons; it really is that stressful. So let us just hope that the new England manager is influenced in the usual way and picks a London-born player for his captain so that Liverpool can look to the next few years of a stress-free (and hopefully, injury-free) club captain.
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