Remember the stock line about England World Cup winner Martin Peters? He was, they said, “ahead of his time”. This for the way he would ghost into the opposition penalty area unremarked.
Steven Gerrard always struck me as the opposite: a player “behind his time”; a throwback.
This is not just because he is, to all intents and purposes, a one-club man, a rare but not unique phenomenon in modern football. Nor is it because you feel that as such a dominant figure at Liverpool over so many years, he somehow deserved to be part of the club’s many glory days in the latter part of the last century.
For me, it is more a question of the stupendously ambitious, theatrical, all-consuming way he has played the game. That unsparing box-to-box ethos, those Hollywood passes, those kitchen sink last-ditch interceptions and tackles. They all smack of those slightly more haphazard times two or three decades ago before the data revolution and the conservatism that comes with Big Money conspired to erode the autonomy of the men on the pitch.
All the most characteristic facets of his game, the long balls, the rasping shots from deep, the uncompromising tackles, brand him a risk-taker. This, plus his evident determination to be at the heart of everything of significance taking part on the field could all too easily, I would think, put him at odds with modern systems that seek to maximise efficiency, retain possession, play the percentages.
Of course, in taking those risks, he delivered the spectacular as reliably as out-and-out flair players such as Matt Le Tissier and Dennis Bergkamp. This plus his manifest, day-in-day-out commitment to the cause meant that fans, and usually neutrals, adored him, in spite of the mistakes that his style made inevitable.
At his astounding physical peak, the positives would far, far outweigh the negatives. And when Plan A didn’t work, as in that European Cup final, his drive and character were capable of retrieving seemingly lost causes in magnificent style, as when his stunning last-minute howitzer forced extra-time in the 2006 FA Cup final against West Ham, won ultimately by Liverpool on penalties.
But when I think who I would compare him to, no-one comes closer than Bryan Robson, Manchester United’s box-to-box Captain Marvel of the 1980s – perhaps, in those almost injudicious, sinew-straining challenges, with a dash of the young Emlyn Hughes thrown in.
Come to think of it, the balls that he would spray so routinely into the paths of Luís Suárez and Daniel Sturridge last season during a sublime swansong that came within a José Mourinho tactical masterclass of carrying Liverpool to a wholly unexpected title, had something of the old Michel Platini-Zbig Boniek double-act about them.
Platini once confessed to me that he did not know if he would have liked to play today. That was in 2006. “Football today is different,” he said, lamenting the number of what he called “corridor” players. “There is practically no longer an organiser,” he argued. “For 100 years it was the Number 10 who organised the game.”
How I think Gerrard would have relished playing in Platini’s day, when players pulled the strings on the pitch rather than off it. And how well it would have suited him.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.