Gerrard: My Autobiography (46 page)

Back in the dressing-room we continued to celebrate,
but I was gutted for Harry Kewell, who sat there, ice pressed on his damaged groin. Harry was really emotional, ripped apart with frustration after limping off in another final. I know how bad he felt in Istanbul, so my heart went out to him in Cardiff. It’s horrible seeing a team-mate I respect in bits. But the rest of the team were in party mood. ‘What a fantastic game!’ I screamed.

Everyone raved about the match. The 125th FA Cup final was called the greatest ever, even ‘The Gerrard Final’! That meant the world to me. I love the FA Cup. It has taken a few knocks over recent years, and Premiership clubs are perhaps more focused these days on the Champions League, but Liverpool and West Ham put the shine back on the trophy that day in Cardiff. Good. I never knocked the FA Cup. I never underestimated its importance to fans. When Liverpool went out embarrassingly at Burnley in 2005, I was straight in to see Rafa the next day. I was that upset.

‘What’s the idea of putting out an under-strength side?’ I asked him. I was confused, hurt. Explain! ‘Rafa, before every season I dream of winning the FA Cup. That’s one of our realistic targets every year. The Cup’s all I thought about as a kid. Going out of the Cup kills me.’

The Boss sat me down, and calmly talked me through his reasons. ‘We are in the Champions League,’ Rafa began. ‘We have too many games. Our squad is not good enough to deal with them all. Watch. I will prove to you why I have done it.’

And, of course, Liverpool won the Champions League. I won’t be knocking at the gaffer’s door ever again! Rafa’s always right.

In Cardiff, Rafa helped me fulfil my childhood dream of lifting the FA Cup. For that special moment at the Millennium, and for Istanbul, I will always revere the man. My relationship with Rafa is different to the one I had with Gérard Houllier. I was very, very close to Gérard; he was almost family, almost flesh and blood. Benitez is not cold towards me, just a little detached. Rafa doesn’t think he needs close bonds with players, even the captain. But respect flows naturally between me and Rafa: he’s the manager, I’m a player. Even when all the Chelsea mess was going on, my respect for him remained strong. When I decided to stay at Anfield, I knew me and Rafa had to make our relationship work to carry Liverpool forward. We both had to make more of an effort. Now, after Istanbul, Cardiff and the Chelsea saga, we have a good professional relationship. But it’s professional.

Everything Rafa says and does is designed to strengthen Liverpool. Twenty minutes after I lifted the FA Cup, Rafa was downstairs talking to the press and telling them Liverpool could have won it without me. ‘I don’t think we would have lost if we didn’t have Steven,’ he said, ‘because we have played a lot of games without him.’ I’d scored two good goals and banged in a penalty, which was not a bad afternoon’s work, but I understood Rafa. The gaffer was not belittling my contribution, as some people thought, he was just saying that the team is everything, that his number eight is simply a cog in the Liverpool machine. Fair enough.

I was not surprised to hear the gaffer’s comments. In fact, I’m more surprised when Rafa comes out and pays me a compliment. I know how he works now. He’s the
complete opposite to Gérard. If Liverpool win and I stick away a dead good hat-trick and do ninety-eight things right and two wrong, Rafa will pull me sharpish. ‘Steven, about those two mistakes,’ he will say, and then he’ll speak to me for ten minutes about them. Nothing about the hat-trick or the ninety-eight good things! Rafa will never, ever mention the goals, the tackles, the passes. Initially, I was gobsmacked by this. ‘Doesn’t the gaffer like me?’ I thought. ‘Has he got something against me?’ Friends ask me whether Rafa’s cold attitude pisses me off, but it honestly doesn’t. That indifference is one of the million reasons why Rafa is top man in the coaching world. He doesn’t like giving out pats on the back. Sometimes, though, I need that little bit of love, that reassurance during a bad patch. Recently, I’ve detected a slight mellowing in the boss, a willingness to think about giving a compliment. But even then it’s done in such a low-key way I almost don’t realize Rafa has made it.

After the FA Cup final, Liverpool threw a party for the players and families, and Rafa was there. I wandered across to him, buzzing with our victory. As I walked towards him, my mind was full of one hope. Go on, just say it, Rafa. Just say, ‘Well done, Steven.’ For once. Would he? No chance! Our chat once again revolved around things that went wrong on the day; it was nothing to do with how well Liverpool had done to get back into one of the greatest FA Cup finals ever. ‘Next season,’ Rafa kept saying. ‘Next season, we have to do better in the Premiership.’ Typical Rafa, always looking forward, never revelling in the moment like me and Carra. Rafa never even mentioned my two goals. Top goals, great goals,
rescue-act goals. Not a squeak! I smacked in twenty-three goals that season for Liverpool – not bad for a midfielder. Any other manager would have been all over me. Not Liverpool’s gaffer. ‘You never hit twenty-five,’ he remarked. ‘You missed the target by two!’ But, a smile! Amazing! Rafa actually smiled! Thank God. I wandered back to the lads, thinking, ‘Jesus, that was a compliment off Rafa.’

There I was, on top of the world after the FA Cup final and having scored twenty-three goals over the season, and there was Rafa bringing me back down to earth. Even his tiny compliment was an encouragement to improve. But that’s Rafa, always challenging me to push myself higher. Go for twenty-five goals. Go for thirty. Don’t relax. And Rafa has helped my performances go to another level. He’s such a hungry manager. ‘Small details, Steven, small details’ is one of his biggest shouts. Leave nothing to chance, even the tiniest detail. I’m getting to like this Spaniard more and more, and my aim is still to get a ‘well done’ off him before I retire. But then, if he gives me a ‘well done’, I might need treatment and a long lie-down. My legs would go all wobbly, like that French presenter girl who fainted at the Champions League draw when I was handing the cup back. And it wouldn’t be just me who would keel over if Rafa dished out a compliment. Every player in the Liverpool squad would need serious attention off Doc Waller if Rafa went soft on us. His hardness drives me on. I must crack it, though. I want to deliver in games to impress Rafa. I dream of that ‘well done’!

WINNING’S AN ADDICTION.
As I gently placed my FA Cup medal in the trophy room at the top of our new house in Formby, another burning ambition confronted me. Space was set aside in the room for an even more precious medal.

Three weeks after Cardiff, England landed in Germany as one of the favourites for the greatest prize on earth. This was meant to be England’s World Cup, the moment when the so-called Golden Generation ended forty years of hurt and brought the trophy home. Me and Becks, JT and Lamps, Michael and Ashley: England’s players were better than at Euro 2004, more experienced and more determined. We arrived in Germany convinced we could win. England expects.

Everything seemed in place for a successful tournament. As the coach from Baden-Baden airport wound its way up through the Black Forest hills towards our hotel, I turned to Carra and said, ‘Jesus, it’s isolated.’ The coach kept
zigzagging up these bendy roads. Soon there were no houses, no traffic. Where the hell were we going? Eventually, the bus pulled up outside a castle called Buhlerhohe, our secluded base, with magnificent views over the Rhine Valley. No-one for miles, no-one to bother us. Good. I prefer peace and quiet. Let’s leave the noise until match-days. Me and Carra walked to our rooms, which were next to each other. I went into mine and flicked on the TV. We had English telly, and the news bulletins were astonishing. Five days before the big kick-off against Paraguay in Frankfurt, our fans were already flooding into Germany in their thousands. England’s unbelievable support reminded the players how much each game means to the nation whose colours we proudly wear. But for now, up at Buhlerhohe, it was good to be away from all the clamour.

Buhlerhohe was perfect. The Football Association had done us proud. They’d even got longer beds in for lanky lads like me, Rio and Crouchy. The food was outstanding, the kit ideal. Nothing was left to chance. When we drove down to the training pitch at Mittelberg the following morning, we found a surface better than any of the World Cup pitches. Determined to give us the very best, the FA borrowed Wembley’s top groundsman, Steve Welch, to put in a fantastic new pitch. It was watered every morning, so no wonder our passing was good in training. That Tuesday, 6 June, I glanced around Mittelberg and all the players looked terrific. No excuses, no regrets. Everything was geared up for England to deliver.

We just needed Wayne Rooney fit after his metatarsal break. ‘Give us Wayne,’ I thought, ‘and we’ll give you the
World Cup.’ Manchester United’s manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, kept saying England must be careful with Wayne. But England weren’t rushing him, he was just healing quickly. I couldn’t help thinking that if Fergie had been English, he might have played it differently. Wazza and I are big mates and I talked to him all the time at Buhlerhohe. ‘I’m ready,’ he kept telling me. ‘I’m ready for Paraguay.’ Paraguay! That was our first game, on 10 June. Whenever Wayne saw Sven at Mittelberg or around Buhlerhohe, he told the coach, ‘Pick me against Paraguay. I’m flying.’ That’s what I love about Wayne: he’s always so positive. He was just desperate to get back playing.

Speculation about his return was crazy. Every day, Wayne was on the back pages. Will he? Won’t he? The saga wasn’t fair to Wayne or the other England players, but that’s the country we live in. We know what our newspapers, radio and TV are like. Mad at times. Wayne is England’s most important player so the attention was bound to be on him, but it was a distraction. Every time we went to dinner, turned on the TV or picked up a paper, there was Wayne. We did lose some of our focus.

Sven was right to take a gamble on the fitness of someone as special as Wazza. If England were to bring back the World Cup, we needed Wayne Rooney. The mistake Sven made was that he should have picked five forwards in his World Cup twenty-three – Wayne plus four others. For a tournament as big and demanding as the World Cup, every team needs five strikers. Minimum. I wanted to be landing in Germany with five forwards, not four. I wanted to be sending this message to the world: we are England,
packed with attackers, and we fear no-one. Sven talked about midfielders operating further forward, but that’s too specialized. I was gutted when I walked in the Old Trafford dressing-room before the World Cup warm-up against Hungary on 30 May and saw the number 9 shirt hanging on my peg. Number 9? Talk about pressure! That’s a recipe for me being destroyed. Get real. I’m an attacking midfielder, not an emergency striker. England required real strikers, footballers comfortable with number 9 on their back, like Wazza, Michael and Crouchy. Sven named them in the squad, but it was his fourth striking choice that stunned me. Not only were England embarking on an arduous World Cup campaign with only four forwards, one of them was Theo Walcott. I almost fell over when I heard.

Now, let’s get a few things right about Theo. He’s a really nice kid and one day he will mature into a very, very good player. Theo’s potential was obvious in training. But as the 2006 World Cup dawned, he represented England’s future, not the present. Theo Walcott had no right to be in Germany. None at all. I was gobsmacked to find him on the plane. My faith in Sven has always been strong, but to select a kid who hasn’t played any part in a Premiership game, or a competitive international, was clearly a massive gamble.

Could Sven throw him into a World Cup game? No chance. Theo was still a baby. When I was seventeen, I hadn’t even played three reserve games. Asking him to come to the World Cup was unfair on Theo. There was no possible way the kid was ready to perform on such a difficult stage. Seventeen-year-olds should never be taken
to World Cups, unless they are one-offs like Wayne Rooney or Lionel Messi.

I did warm to Theo. Difficult not to. Initially the Arsenal kid was very quiet around the senior players. That’s normal. As the World Cup wore on, though, he came out of his shell and joined in the banter a bit. He worked hard every day in training and was a top professional. But what a bloody gamble! OK, if it had been a World Cup qualifier and England had been killed by injuries to strikers, then take a gamble on a kid. But not the World Cup itself. We were not tourists in Germany, doing a spot of sight-seeing. We were there on business. Theo was not Michael Owen or Pele, teenagers who graced World Cups but had shown their class with their clubs first. Even now, as I get stuck into the new 2006/07 season and the World Cup summer fades away, my mind remains confused as to Sven’s thinking. Theo was just not ready. Even if the seven leading English strikers had been injured, it would still have been a risk to take him to the World Cup.

I felt sorry for Theo, but more so for Jermain Defoe and Darren Bent. Jermain and Darren worked hard all season to go to a World Cup, then a kid comes out of nowhere and takes the place they were after. It didn’t look right. Darren stayed at home, but at least Jermain came to Germany on stand-by, just in case Wayne didn’t recover. Defoe was unbelievable. From the moment England joined up, he was probably one of the best in training. His finishing was sharp. His attitude was spot-on. He never once mentioned any grievance over a kid like Theo being in the twenty-three. When Wayne was confirmed in the
squad after flying back for that final scan, Jermain hid his heartache well. Before heading for the airport and a flight back to England, he shook hands with all of us and wished us all the best. Top man. He must have been boiling inside. On the surface, though, he was fantastically professional. Good for him. Jermain went up massively in my estimation as a bloke and a player.

Still, I was punching the air with delight that Wazza was cleared for action. As poor Jermain was upstairs packing his bags that Wednesday, 7 June, Wazza marched back into the Buhlerhohe, stood in reception and declared, ‘The Big Man’s back!’ Typical Wazza! He wasn’t being cocky. Wayne just has so much belief in himself. Even before his scan he knew he would be all right. The overhead kicks in training were a statement of intent. The scan was simply a doctor’s note confirming what all the players and Wayne knew. He was welcomed back into training on Thursday like a returning hero. But he was still prevented from playing against Paraguay, and it almost killed him to watch it. Football is to Wayne Rooney what oxygen is to everyone else.