(Reuters) – At his best a midfield marauder who inspired team-mates and scored goals in equal measure, Steven Gerrard yesterday retired from England duty as the country’s third most-capped player after an international career that promised more than it delivered.
His relatively disappointing tally of 21 goals in 114 appearances, including several important and some spectacular strikes, reflected one truth about the Liverpool skipper – that, for all his glorious talents, he was ultimately an unfulfilled, if natural and respected, leader for England.
He and his many admirers will hope that his well-struck opening goal in England’s 5-1 victory against Germany in Munich in the qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup finals lasts longer in the collective memory than the misplaced header that led to Luis Suarez’s second goal in Uruguay’s 2-1 win over England at the 2014 finals in Brazil.
That mistake may, however, have proved to be a decisive factor in the decision to end his international career, aged 34, and not risk a prolonged decline in the qualifiers for Euro 2016.
No longer the explosive force of his youth, he had become a pedestrian midfield playmaker who struggled for the pace and space needed to exploit the range of his right-foot passing or shooting.
As one of a group of promising players dubbed ‘the golden generation’ by the British media, much was expected of the passionate Liverpudlian, born in Whiston on Merseyside on May 30, 1980.
Tall and athletic, he combined power with technique and an insatiable competitive instinct. Gerrard could play anywhere on the right side of the pitch from full-back to forward, his right-foot shot and passing always catching the eye more than his positional sense, though that improved sufficiently for him to become, in his thirties, a deep-lying holding player.
Having established himself as a midfield powerhouse for Liverpool, his only club, he was given his England debut one day after his 20th birthday when another former Liverpool icon, Kevin Keegan, selected him to face Ukraine on May 31.
