Steven Gerrard turned down a chance to join Bayern Munich last summer, deciding to stay at Liverpool, the only club he’s ever known, until the end of his career. Now the Red’s captain is hoping his loyalty to Liverpool will rub off on Luis Suarez.
The Liverpool midfielder decided to stay at the Merseyside club and become the club’s longest-serving captain instead of moving to Germany’s wealthiest and biggest club, reports the Liverpool Echo.
Yes, Gerrard, turned down a chance to play for the team that went on to not only win its domestic league title and domestic cup, but also went on to dominate last year’s Champions League in favor of sticking around for another rebuilding season under another new manager. That’s loyalty.
Now Gerrard is trying to pass on some of his loyalty to reportedly want-a-way forward Luis Suarez, who he believes should stick around the confines of Anfield for at least one more season or until Real Madrid or Barcelona come calling.
“I had a chance to leave last year. It was for a club in the Champions League, not a Premier League club, but I wasn’t tempted. I’ve been through that before,” Gerrard told The Liverpool Echo.
“My message for Luis is that he will get many more chances to move on. I just think a player of his calibre should wait for the big ones to come,” Gerrard continued. “He deserves to maybe play in one of the best teams in world football in Barcelona and Real Madrid, and they will come calling for him again.”
Bayern Munich isn’t only successful, it’s also the wealthiest club in the German Bundesliga, and Gerrard would have taken home a nice payday if he had decided that he wasn’t ready to go through another season without Champions League action or another restart with a new manager at Liverpool. And people might not have hated him for it. This wasn’t a proposed move to Chelsea, Manchester United or Arsenal of course. This was a chance for Gerrard to add more trophies to his name while not completely alienating himself from his hometown fans, and, instead, he decided to stick with Liverpool and fight to bring the club back to where it had been in the past, which was refreshing.
Gerrard has lifted numerous trophies for Liverpool but never been able to hold the league title. Since the Reds finished second in 2009, Liverpool has drifted further and further from contention, but that didn’t stop Gerrard from rejecting Bayern Munich and sticking around for another go, which is admirable in an era where players so often leave a team for greener pastures when times get tough.
It’s rare in modern sports that a player plays for just a single team in their career. The likes of Jamie Carragher, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Gerrard just don’t come around that often anymore. They’re a dying breed of one-club players. But it’s even rarer that these kinds of athletes stick to a team and feel so heavily connected to a club that they turn down a chance to move to arguably one of the best teams in the world before the season starts.
Now the Liverpool captain can only hope Suarez shows one once of the same kind of loyalty to Liverpool because without the Uruguayan forward, Gerrard’s fight to bring Liverpool back to the Champions League before he retires seems almost impossible.