Name: Steven Gerrard.
Age: 35.
Appearance: Strangely low hairline.
Occupation: Legendary one-club football man, 504 appearances for Liverpool, Red through and through.
All right, all right. So what is it this time? Sex or racism? Neither. Gerrard is probably the cleanest-living of England’s recent stars. It being nine years since his last autobiography, he’s just released another one, and it is being serialised in the Mail.
How dull. Quite undull, actually. Having been sensible for most of his career, he is suddenly getting all rancorous and sharing colourful details.
Such as? “The magic of the FA Cup was bloodied on the day my penis was cut and then stitched shut on an unromantic afternoon in Bournemouth last year.”
Whoa! I know football can get rough sometimes, but another player stitched his penis shut during a match? Where was the referee while this went on? You misunderstand. The penis in question was injured while trying to block a cross. The wound was stitched shut afterwards by the team doctor. “I needed four stitches and the lads were absolutely pissing themselves,” Gerrard says.
I imagine he was too, for a while. Um, yes.
Rancour now, please. “I’ve had tons of offers to advertise products bare-chested and I’ve always said no. Maybe that’s why, unlike most leading players, I’ve never asked for an image rights deal with Liverpool … It’s disgusting for a player to ask for image rights from his club … They pay you well and you work for them.”
So the behaviour of “most leading players” is “disgusting”? I guess so. He also criticises Brendan Rodgers for not putting him in the starting 11 against Manchester United and Real Madrid. (“It did feel as if Brendan had surrendered even before kick-off.”) And then there’s Rafa Benítez, the manager with whom Gerrard won the Champions League. In spite of which: “There is no bond between us,” he says.
How come? “Frostiness”, apparently. Plus Benítez only ever referred to him by his surname. And he apparently asked Gerrard’s mother: “Does Steven like money?”
So he does use his first name! Oh yeah.
Do say: “Obviously it’s always nice to be born but the most important thing is the genes at the end of the day.”
Don’t say: “Obviously you’re going to get a hard time at a maternity unit. But on our day, with the quality we had, I knew we could go there and get a result.”
