by SouthCoastShankly » Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:40 am
Matt Dickinson - The Times
Harry Redknapp’s first task will be to find the perfect role for Steven Gerrard
What a waste. On Wednesday night, Steven Gerrard won his 90th cap for England. But how many has he enjoyed? How many have we enjoyed?
His international career spans 13 seasons and yet he could retire from international football this summer with no sense that we ever came close to making the best use of him.
This is the heroic captain of Liverpool, a Champions League winner, coveted by Manchester United and targeted twice by José Mourinho at Chelsea. A player whom international team-mates do not hesitate to elevate, alongside Wayne Rooney, into the world-class category.
But output for England? David Beckham never won an international trophy but there was a sense of a player who had given his all and felt enriched by the experience. Have we seen even ten games when fretful, frowning Gerrard pulled on that white shirt and performed like bold, majestic Stevie G?
Against Holland on Wednesday night, we saw Gerrard’s international career in microcosm. Even before the game he was overlooked for the captaincy, a decision that is known to have riled him, not least in how the news was delivered by Stuart Pearce.
So he felt undervalued, as he has so many times for England. In 2008, he famously complained that he had been used only five times in 68 games in his favourite position of central midfield. In his mind, the number of times he has been properly deployed will still be short of double figures.
He was given an ill-defined role as No 10 and never looked at ease, spraying a few failed “Hollywood” passes before limping off after 32 minutes. Wearyingly familiar.
How depressing it is to think that Gerrard’s album of England highlights is so thin. He scored the best goal of the night in the famous 5-1 victory over Germany in 2001 but never made the 2002 World Cup finals because of injury.
He was top scorer for England in the 2006 finals with, er, two goals but against Portugal in that quarter-final shoot-out went jellylegged over his penalty.
He was voted by the fans as England’s player of the year only once, in 2007, but that was the most disastrous year in recent memory. On Merseyside, they point to mis-management and it is part of the story. Sven-Göran Eriksson tried to cram his best players into one midfield and, in the awkward partnership with Frank Lampard, it was generally Gerrard who felt like the misfit.
What if Nicky Butt or Owen Hargreaves had been picked instead, releasing Gerrard? What if, indeed.
Capello used him at inside left at the 2010 World Cup finals and, again, we saw the shadow of the player who reluctantly accepted being shunted around with Liverpool but has never really shed a dislike of it in England’s misfiring teams. “My game suffers when my position is changed,” he once said. “I’m a central midfielder and in the big games, I want to play in the middle.”
He has so rarely been given that role, but Gerrard also has to take responsibility. Rafael Benítez was not the first observer to believe that Gerrard epitomised a classic English trait, of wanting to do too much. The desire to be the rampaging, box-to-box hero may be admirable but it is also naive.
It is a sorry story — for him and for England — so it is probably unrealistic to hope for a happy ending.
At 31, Gerrard is openly speculating about international retirement. “It’s something I am going to have to sit down and think about after the Euros,” he told one newspaper last week.
Can Harry Redknapp coax one last, upbeat hurrah? While the England manager-elect is a great admirer of Scott Parker, the expectation is that Redknapp would make Gerrard his captain, unlike the past four managers.
You wonder why Gerrard might want it, given that spells of leadership coincided with the disastrous defeats in Euro 2008 qualification and the dismal World Cup in South Africa but anything, it seems, to make him happy.
More important is whether Redknapp can fit Gerrard into a balanced midfield. He is no sitting player and England need one, while Jack Wilshere, if fit, is a must on the teamsheet. Gerrard would be best suited at right midfield in a 4-3-3 system, but, like everyone else, he must see what team shape arrives with the new regime. Given everything that has gone before, it is hard to think that Gerrard waits with optimism. The first challenge to Redknapp, then, is to unlock the rare talent of Stevie G before it disappears.
.
do. What a knob that Pierce. Why play him after the game on the weekend?
by