Steven Gerrard will say goodbye to Anfield at the end of the season and Liverpool will not forget him.
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Soon it will only be John Terry left. The news this week that Steven Gerrard was leaving Liverpool at the end of the campaign saw yet another of an increasingly rare breed, the one-club man, fly off into the sunset.
Gerrard is Liverpool, and has been for well over 10 years.
His tenacity in the tackle, his sense of urgency with the ball at his feet, the rollickings he passed on to slacking teammates, and his desperate, desperate pursuit for a league gong, embody everything that Liverpudlians are. You can see that spirit in that other scouse, too, Wayne Rooney.
Gerrard always brought the red half of the city together at their place of worship, Anfield, where “Stevie lad”, one of their own, led the sermon.
Choruses were devoted to him, monuments and giant murals unravelled in his unflinching honour.
I saw it for myself once, felt the Gerrard goose-bumps take me hostage. Gerrard had just rescued his side from the brink of the Champions League extinction, with a last-gasp winner against Olympiakos, on a wild Wednesday night.
The goal alone was special, but the moment, the timing, the sheer surge of inspiration, was pure, unfiltered Steven Gerrard. If that full house could have, they would have carried him, in his muddy kit, to Buckingham Palace, to demand a knighthood there and then, for services to little boys around the world who dared to dream.
Gerrard was that little kid once, the kind who kick manky balls around even mankier council estates, wondering if they may get lucky and kick their way out of their situations.
Gerrard did, and grew up to be the hero, living out the glorious fairy tale all over England, and around the world.
What’s more, in Liverpool, they detest tall poppies. There’s always a smart arse ready to bring you down to size with sharp wit, and layabouts scoffing at pros over the top cars, joking that the wheels will be stolen if a footballer leaves his car outside for a night.
In Liverpool, where football royalty is born out of some of the roughest streets in England, big time Charlies don’t last.
It is why Scots and the Irish always seem to be Reds supporters. They are also simple folk, with no pretence, who would far sooner settle for humble stew and a pint at the pub, than oysters and champagne at a Michelin-star eatery.
Which is why they loathe anything to do with Manchester United, or Chelsea, or anyone else who waves brash new money at them before history and heritage. They would far rather keep their Carraghers, their Thompsons and, of course, their Gerrards, because they know what they will get from them.
Everything.
Gerrard didn’t quite win everything as a player, but when he looks back on a career decorated with incredible highs and depressing lows – none lower than when he watched Demba Ba sprint away from him to put a dagger through his title dreams last season – he will know that he stayed the course.
Of course, the highs were quite immense, too.
I remember thinking that the whole of Liverpool had skipped work when more than a million people turned up to greet Gerrard and his men after the Miracle of Istanbul.
Few footballers get to have an FA Cup final named after them, however, the 2006 showpiece in Cardiff is Gerrard’s own.
Liverpool’s ghastly Armani suits before their 1994 loss to United stick in the memory like a last-minute own goal in front of the Kop, but Gerrard’s day was pure Roy of the Rovers stuff.
Gerrard devoted his life to Liverpool. There will surely be statues of him erected at Anfield one day, and he may yet return in a suit – not Armani, of course – calling the shots from the touchline as he did from the heart of midfield.
And every player will take his word as gospel.
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