Steven Gerrard: My Liverpool Story (3 page)

Steve Heighway was happy for me to go and try other places, test the water, but he’d always have a message for Dad before I went anywhere. ‘Don’t do anything stupid because we want Steven,’ he’d say. ‘And we want him for a long time.’

“Melwood? The place where Liverpool’s first team train? Me?”

DREAMING OF ANFIELD

I trained at Liverpool a couple of times a week when
I was first starting out. It was the club I supported, but I didn’t appreciate what Liverpool meant back then. I didn’t understand how big the club was, how it had thousands of people in the city under its spell, and millions more across the world, and I probably didn’t understand how lucky I was.

I was just bothered about football and at that stage it didn’t matter who it was for. Whether it was for Liverpool, my school, Cardinal Heenan School, or Whiston Juniors didn’t bother me at that time. I just wanted to play.

Every day I practised in the street. While I was waiting for my dad to take me to Melwood, I’d be juggling a ball by the car. If we were getting the bus, I’d dribble the ball to the stop. Every morning I’d check my school bag to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything that I would need that day. Making sure I had a ball for break, lunchtime and after school, was my first priority and after that my books.

I did dream about Liverpool though. A lot. From being the eight-year-old who didn’t know how good he was, I remember the first time I started to think I might have a chance of making it was when Michael Owen and me were asked to go with Liverpool U18s for a tournament in Spain. We were 11 at the time. From the first moment I saw Michael in those early games at the Vernon Sangster, I knew he was brilliant. He scored for fun when we were kids. Ice cold in front of goal even at that age.

There were between 10 and 14 players in our age group at Liverpool, but only Michael and I were invited to San Sebastian. We didn’t play, it was just for experience, but privately I figured that for us to be the only ones invited meant the coaches thought we had a good chance. I don’t know whether they rated me as highly as Michael, but just being on that trip to sunny Spain helped me focus.

With progress comes responsibility. I wasn’t really one for school, I didn’t like doing homework for starters, but there was no way that my dad would allow me to misbehave. It was about respect. There were times when I would get above my station with the PE teachers and try and act the big shot because I was training at Liverpool, but if they had ever told my dad he would have come down heavy on me.

Liverpool stressed, too, that the invites to Melwood would stop for anyone going off the rails at school and causing trouble. I didn’t fancy testing things to see if Steve Heighway was making an empty threat or a promise.

At the age of 14, another mini-milestone arrived. Liverpool offered me two years’ schoolboy forms, an apprenticeship and then a three-year professional contract when I turned 17. They did rate me, and highly.

While most of my mates at school had trouble scraping together a few quid, I had it written down in black and white on Liverpool-headed notepaper in a draw in my house how much I would be earning until I was 20. When I turned professional, I would be on £700-a-week rather than a month. The next year £800-a-week and then £900-a-week.

The sums were mind-boggling really. My life was being mapped out in front of me, but it was never, ever about money for me. It was just about football.

I think everyone who is at a Centre of Excellence or on schoolboy forms believes they will make it. At the end of the day, you are at Liverpool for a reason. But there were times when I realised it wasn’t going to be all plain sailing, which is a route that my career has followed ever since. Every time I would step up in an age group, it dawned on me just how hard it was going to be to eventually pull on the red shirt. I was still tiny and everyone else was stronger, bigger and faster than me. In those circumstances, I am sure there have been good players who have slipped through the net and not been given the opportunity to fulfil their potential. There was no way that was going to happen to me and, fortunately, I was able to make up for those disadvantages in other areas. Team-mates and rivals used to tower over me, but football-wise I was head and shoulders above them. I saw things differently on the pitch, spotted the pass quicker than many of them and then delivered it better.

There was a game at Melwood when I was in the final year of secondary school and Liverpool had asked me to play for the B-team. I ended up being substitute for the A-team, however, and came on in the final 20 minutes of a match against Blackburn. I did well, won tackles, sprayed some passes around, and as I walked off afterwards I heard a voice next to me: ‘You’ll walk into Liverpool’s first team.’ It was Jamie Redknapp. He had been watching the game and pulled me aside after the final whistle. That was a huge moment for me. Jamie wasn’t just a member of the first team, he was my hero. He was the boy back then. The one I looked up to probably because I played in the same position as him – central midfield – and he had everything I wanted.

‘Thanks,’ I said nervously. I didn’t say much else. I was in awe.

Afterwards, I was walking on air. I rushed home to tell my mum and dad and brother, Paul, but no one else. I kept things to myself in lots of ways and those who didn’t need to know didn’t find out. Many people said I was good at that stage of my career, but this was Jamie Redknapp. England’s Jamie Redknapp. He knew his football and I thought to myself he’s not going to waste his words on someone he doesn’t think merits them, he obviously believed it. It was the first time I had any real contact with Jamie, but he was hugely important to me in those early years at Liverpool. If I needed advice he was there for me and he still is.

Going full-time as a professional is one of the greatest feelings I have had in football, besides the medals I’ve won and the big nights I’ve enjoyed, but the best days of my career were when I was an apprentice without a shadow of doubt.

I had my own standards and wanted to play well every week just like now, but there wasn’t the pressure. At that stage there aren’t a dozen newspapers pouring over your performances, half-a-dozen TV channels dissecting whether you have played well or not, or loads of magazines predicting how you will do. You basically had Steve Heighway, Hughie McAuley and Dave Shannon guiding you, and 30 of your mates with you every day. For two years, we had a laugh and played on brilliant football pitches. We were all together and we were changing from boys into men. Passing our driving tests together, getting cars (I used to drive my mum’s Nissan Bluebird before splashing out on an N-reg red Golf) and lending each other fivers and tenners. I can remember putting a few extra miles on my expenses to try and squeeze some extra pounds out of Steve Heighway.

Initially, there wasn’t the same pressure for me because I had the promise of turning professional, but that soon changed. Michael Owen changed everything for me. As soon as he went full-time, he was away. Playing for the reserves, scoring the goals that helped Liverpool win the FA Youth Cup in 1996 against a West Ham team containing Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard, and then into the first team.

That was when I felt the pressure creeping in – and jealousy, too, because I wanted to get to where he was as quickly as he had done it. His status changed. I wasn’t just going to watch Redknapp, Fowler and McManaman at Anfield any more. I was watching them and Michael and Jamie Carragher, too, who I had been sharing a dressing room with only a few months earlier. A bit of frustration crept into me as a footballer for the first time because I wanted it to happen as quickly for me as it had for Michael. Physically, he was ready. I wasn’t and had to be more patient.

But Michael was certainly a big influence in terms of driving me forward. Seeing what he was doing, the highs he was enjoying, gave me the incentive to push on.

“Every time I would step up in an age group, it dawned on me just how hard it was going to be to eventually pull on the red shirt.”

NOVEMBER 29, 1998

I can remember every minute and every hour as if it
was yesterday. Arriving at the ground, getting changed, warming up and then standing on the touchline, nervous as hell, waiting to come on for my Liverpool debut at Anfield against Blackburn Rovers.

The fourth official held up Vegard Heggem’s number and I bounded on for the final three minutes, including injury time, of a 2–0 win that had earlier been sealed by goals from Paul Ince and Michael Owen.

This was it, everything I had dreamed about. There was a huge adrenaline buzz. Being clapped on by thousands of people, creating a wall of noise, sends a tingle through your body, but the biggest emotion I felt was relief. I was playing for Liverpool’s first team. No one could take that away from me now. I had realised a dream. My dad said as much to me on the way home afterwards and then paused before adding: ‘But that has to be the start. You’ve done nothing. Don’t rest on that.’

It was good advice, but I knew myself I wanted to taste more. It was another life-changing experience. This wasn’t playing in front of 200 people for the reserves. There was a crowd of almost 42,000 inside Anfield and, for a moment, as I prepared to come on their focus was drawn to me. To be honest, most of the supporters probably thought: ‘Who’s this skinny little lad?’ I had only played four games for the reserves. Our FA Youth Cup team was knocked out of that competition in the early rounds, so it wasn’t like it had been with Michael who everyone sat up and took notice of straight away.

People thought I might have been a decent player, but that was as far as it went. Looking back that helped me in some respects. The youngsters at Liverpool don’t have that luxury now. The U18s’ and reserves’ matches are all live on the club’s TV channel, LFC TV, and that can be counterproductive. Look at someone like Raheem Sterling. He has got a big reputation for himself because everyone has seen him terrorising defences on the club channel. There is an expectation that comes with that which makes life difficult. Thankfully from what I see of Raheem, I think he is someone who is taking it all in his stride and he has a good chance of forging a successful career for himself in red. He is a level-headed kid and I see similarities with how I was at 17. Raheem is quiet, but he comes alive in training and on the pitch.

For me, those very first sessions I had with the first team were so important not only in my development, but in also ensuring I was accepted by players I had previously idolised. Liverpool’s academy was just getting up and running in Kirkby, but Gerard Houllier, the Liverpool manager, called up myself and Stephen Wright to Melwood rather than letting us go there. Immediately my progress snowballed.

I knew I had to make an impression. If I trained well, I knew people would sit up and take notice of me. I made it my mission, from the very first session in which I was involved, to catch the eye.

But it was intimidating at the same time. Ince, Berger, Redknapp, Fowler, McManaman, Babb and Staunton were not just Liverpool players but proven internationals as well. I was scared to talk to them and terrified to give the ball away. From the moment I started training with Liverpool, there was another change I had to get used to.

I may have been 18, but those players don’t see a young lad standing before them. If I was good enough to be their team mate, then I was good enough to be judged as an equal. It was sink or swim. Give the ball away and you get told about it. Paul Ince wasn’t going to cut me any slack. That was clear when I made my full debut against Tottenham, the weekend after my cameo against Blackburn. I was playing out of position at right-back and found myself up against David Ginola, one of the best players in the Premier League, but that didn’t matter to Incey. He was on my back for the majority of the 57 minutes I was on the pitch. Where Robbie Fowler was really supportive, Incey was shouting at me, telling me to sort myself out and keep track of the French winger who was giving me the run around.