he man who puts the music together, the “Voice of Anfield” George Sephton, had begun the long goodbye with a playlist especially designed for the subject of all those flashing camera bulbs. Heroes, by David Bowie, was an early song. No More Heroes, by the Stranglers, was slightly damning about the players Steven Gerrard will be leaving behind but not entirely unfair considering the way they subsequently played. Breakfast in America, by Supertramp, was playing when Gerrard came out and the other tracks all formed part of the same narrative. Come Back by the Mighty Wah! then Nothing Lasts Forever by Echo & the Bunnymen. The records played and the crowd tried to imagine what it might be like when he is no longer there to return their acclaim.
Those supporters might have been forgiven if they had allowed a little insecurity to creep in. “This player, this man, is unique,” were the words that ushered Gerrard on to the Anfield pitch for the final time as a Liverpool player. The banners fluttered. The mosaic went up and the Kop formed a kaleidoscope of different colours. Gerrard entered through a guard of honour and, briefly, it almost slipped the mind there was a football match to play. Liverpool then sleepwalked through most of what followed.
It certainly wasn’t the end Gerrard must have craved when he came out into the sunlight with his daughters, Lilly-Ella, Lexie and Lourdes, and a man of his competitive instincts will be dismayed that he could not go out with a more fitting performance. The whole day, he said, had felt “very strange”.
Ultimately, though, there is only one reason why Liverpool 1 Crystal Palace 3 on 16 May 2015 will be remembered in these parts and the clue is this: there were photographs of we-all-know-who on 34 separate pages of the programme. The front cover showed him in typical pose – fists clenched, roaring to the skies, celebrating one of his 185 goals for the club – and there is artwork at the Tate gallery on Albert Dock that has taken less time to put together than the tribute the supporters created for his send-off.
Liverpool ended up putting out an appeal for volunteers to lay out all those different pieces of coloured card. One side of the ground spelt it out in red and white: “Captain.” In the Kop, his initials were formed in gold, his shirt number in white. Yet Palace refused to let him leave in the way he would have wished and, from the away end, there were further attempts to sabotage the love-in.
“Have you ever seen Gerrard win the league?” they sang. Someone wondered whether Born Slippy might have been on the playlist and Gerrard certainly did not play in a way that made you think Liverpool should examine his contract with LA Galaxy for previously unnoticed escape clauses. There were none of those surging runs of old. No big tackles, no match-defining moments and only one occasion when he took aim and actually hit the target.
A free-kick late on was curled over and his final attempt at a heroic act was miscued horribly. “What the fucking hell was that?” the Kop inquired en masse and Gerrard, with a thumbs-up, showed he did at least appreciate their humour.
Mostly, he looked what he was: an ageing great, grateful for the adulation but unable to shape matches in the way that once came so naturally. He has had an awful lot to think about over the last few days and when the game was done and he was ushered back out, with one final pat of the “This is Anfield” sign, it was tempting to wonder whether his mind went back at any stage to that first appearance against Blackburn Rovers in 1998 and the different kind of emotions he felt back then, at the age of 18.
His contribution that day was restricted to an 89th-minute substitute’s appearance in place of Vegard Heggem and, by his own admission, the truth is the occasion got to him. Paul Ince played him in on the right. “It was set up perfectly,” Gerrard later recollected. “With 41,000 eyes burning into me, I overhit the cross disastrously. The ball went 20 yards over the defender’s head and almost cleared the Centenary Stand. I could see the doubts on the fans’ faces as they watched me warm up. I could almost hear them say to each other: ‘Who’s this skinny little twat?’”
Since then, there have been another 353 games at Anfield. In total, this was his 709th appearance, including a record number, 472, as captain.
“Liverpool were made for me and I was made for Liverpool,” read one banner, borrowing one of his quotes. Another one was held up by fans from the Middle East. “All the way from Kuwait, just to say thank you.”
What he could not do was revive memories of better times, when he would never have let Liverpool buckle this meekly.
More songs were played at half-time. Nothing Compares 2 U, by Sinead O’Connor, then Please Don’t Go, by KWS. And then the end arrived and the Kop turned up the volume again. “I’ve been dreading this moment,” Gerrard said, taking the microphone. “I’m absolutely devastated I won’t play in front of these supporters again.”
On that first day against Blackburn, the teenage Gerrard was a bag of nerves, desperate to hear the final whistle. Seventeen years on, when it came here it was a sound he had never wanted to hear.
