Gerrard: My Autobiography (42 page)

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 still 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?

I spoke to my family and to Struan, just to see if they could throw up a clue over why Liverpool were going cold after months of being warm to me. No-one could understand it. Was it just part of their negotiating tactics? Liverpool sounded positive in public. On 19 June, Rafa was all over the papers, announcing, ‘I am not in favour of selling Steven Gerrard.’ Five days later, I picked up the papers to read Rick saying, ‘We want Steven to stay. There is no delay on his contract.’

The speculation revved up again. Real Madrid were heavily tipped to buy me. Swap deals were mentioned – me for Guti, plus money. Guti is a Real midfielder admired by Rafa, understandably so because he’s good. I read the piece. No smoke without fire. By chance, I’d met
Guti on a beach in Spain that summer. I was on holiday, saw him and strolled over to say hello out of respect. A picture was taken, it ended up in the papers, and people speculated I was off to Real. Crap. That photograph meant nothing to any intelligent football watcher. It was just two footballers saying ‘hi’.

The Real stories persisted. I considered the Boss’s links with Real Madrid, where he had been youth coach, and I began wondering. Spanish papers were crammed with stories about Real’s interest. Bernabeu’s president at the time, Florentino Perez, talked about me being Real’s new ‘galactico’. Flattering. What angered me was one story in Madrid claiming I had already told Rafa I fancied a move to the Bernabeu. Bullshit. Complete bullshit. Truth was the first casualty in the feeding frenzy among newspapers in Spain and England.

My mind went into complete meltdown when Rafa was quoted in the Spanish papers saying, ‘I don’t want star names. I want to sell.’ I snapped. I fronted up the Boss on what was being said in the Spanish press. Man to man, face to face. Come on, talk.

‘Listen, do you want to sell me?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ Rafa replied. ‘Do you want to go?’

I looked at Rafa in astonishment. How could the Boss say that after what we’d been through in Istanbul?

I walked out and called Struan. ‘Jesus, Struan, is Rafa waiting for me to push off? Does he want me to say I want to go? What the fuck are Liverpool playing at?’

Paranoia kicked in. Liverpool were broke, they needed the dosh, they wanted me out to fund Rafa’s rebuilding. I couldn’t think straight. More stories from Madrid. ‘Real
ready to swoop.’ Once again, I challenged the Boss over all the noises in the Spanish media. ‘It’s your agent leaking things,’ Rafa claimed. He blamed Struan for the pieces in the English press, but all the stories in the English media came from Spain. Someone in Liverpool was helping the Spanish papers, whose headlines were then re-run over here. Too many bloody games were going on over my future. I was livid.

Amid all the chaos, on Monday, 27 June, just over one month after Istanbul, Struan and Rick arranged to meet. At last. Surely now we’d come to an agreement. Surely now all the speculation would end. Struan walked into the meeting expecting an improved offer. After all, Liverpool had had enough time to draw up a deal. I waited at home, full of relief that the wheels were finally in motion. I gripped my mobile in my hand, poised to answer at any moment a call from a delighted Struan. I could already hear him talking me through how committed Liverpool were to me and how an agreement had been reached. Just a signature, and on we go. Bliss.

I waited and waited. When Struan finally phoned, his voice was studded with frustration. ‘There’s no deal on the table,’ Struan said. ‘Liverpool first want to know what we are after.’

Bollocks. It was up to Liverpool to make the first move.

The following day, Tuesday, Rafa called me into his office at Melwood and put a blank piece of A4 paper in front of me. ‘There you are, Steven,’ he said. ‘Write down on there what you want.’

I was shocked. A quickfire exchange took place.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Why not?’

‘You want me to say what I want? That’s why I have an agent.’

Rafa looked at me coldly. ‘I don’t like agents.’

‘But you have an agent, Boss. Did you do your own contract with Rick, or did your agent do it?’

‘My agent.’

‘With all due respect, Boss, that’s what I have got an agent for, too. I just want to concentrate on my football. I have never talked to a manager about my contract before. That’s my agent’s job.’ I felt it was unprofessional of the Boss. I was pretty steamed up. ‘You are putting me on the spot, Boss. My agent knows exactly what we are after. We thought you would have an improved offer for us.’

Rafa didn’t reply immediately. After leaving a long pause hanging heavily between us, he finally said, ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’