What makes steven gerrard a good captain

When coming into my 30s I was always looking to improve all parts of my game, and I want to continue that mentality as a manager. Gerrard made his debut for Liverpool at 18, taking the armband just five years later. It was the perfect place to work out the manager he wanted to become. I was developing myself too, so making mistakes away from the cameras was key for me, as was being able to get things wrong. When Gerrard was unveiled at Ibrox, the club was still recovering from their time in the lower leagues following years of financial mismanagement.

But despite the grey cloud that has hung over the club in recent times, the job of a Rangers boss is simple: beat Celtic. And despite playing under a number of inspirational figures at Liverpool, Gerrard knows that even the best never stop honing their skills and learning their trade. I want to continue to push the boundaries and improve and grow. It could be a different language, it could be on-pitch experience, it could be man management — there are so many different parts to being a manger.

With caps for England, Gerrard is fourth on the all-time list of players to represent his country. It is quite a burden to put upon yourself, all things considered. Many might see a trace of ego in those words, but they also reveal the responsibility Gerrard feels in his role as captain. Ken Early made precisely that point in his excellent profile of the year-old, that Gerrard has always been driven by a sense of anxiety about not letting others down, as much as the arrogance of furthering his own career.

If so, it's difficult to divorce that sense of responsibility from the player's own personal history. As a modern football captain, Gerrard is also that rare old-fashioned example of a local lad leading out the team he has always loved. The people he doesn't want to let down are the ones in the city in which he has grown up. There is a telling quote from his autobiography. And now me. It is possible that Gerrard feels the role of captain more deeply than pretty much anyone else in the modern game, precisely because he is so conscious and appreciative of the lineage he follows and the dimensions it involves.

The depth of feeling is evident when he discusses the day in October when former manager Gerard Houllier told him the armband would be passed on to him from Sami Hyypia. Houllier passed the captaincy to the player for whom it meant the most, but who also meant the most in the role. For his part, Hyypia recognised all of that, the importance of making a local lad -- and especially one with such obvious talents -- the team leader. Since then, it seems as if Gerrard has strived to live up to a timeless ideal of what exactly that armband means; an ideal collectively fostered by the feats of individual captains like Thompson and Hansen.

He desires to lead by example, and has offered so many examples of doing precisely that. In the Champions League final, most famously, Gerrard turned that game with his head. Scoring 23 goals in 53 appearances and making 13 assists along the way. Picture this. Despite this, the hammers score quickly and go up in the first half. Although, you manage to drag Liverpool back to , with you providing an assist and then scoring the equaliser. However, West Ham score again to make it And by the 90 th minute, the score remained the same.

Better luck next time, I guess. You do score a belter in the 92 nd minute, take the match to penalties, and win the whole damn thing. In the seasons that followed, Gerrard only seemed to get better. Despite losing the champions final in a rematch of the final, against AC Milan, Gerrard was about to enter his true prime.

From a personal perspective, at least. With the acquisition of Fernando Torres from Atletico Madrid, it seemed as though Liverpool were on course to mount perhaps their most fruitful title push in years.

And Torres was in ridiculous form from just about the onset of his Liverpool career. Seriously, this guy was a revelation for Liverpool.

The peak of his playing career, if you will. He scored 24 goals in 44 appearances overall, making 13 assists overall. His performances this season included a win on aggregate against Real Madrid in the Champions league, where he scored twice, and a against Manchester United, at Old Trafford.

Performances like these led several to seriously consider whether Stevie G was the best player in the world. They finished in second, only 4 points off the eventual winners, Manchester United.

At this point in his career, a year-old Gerrard had won just about every trophy that he possibly could at club level; 2 FA cups, 2 league cups, a champions league, a UEFA cup, and a horde of personal accolades. However, something was missing. The big one. Despite the fact that Liverpool managed to win the league cup in , there was little to celebrate in this time period.

At 33 years of age, Stevie G gave us all a reminder of just how good he really was. He finished the season off with 13 goals and 13 assists in 34 games in the league. However, unfortunately, history just has a way of repeating itself. This time, Liverpool missed out on the title by only two points, with Manchester City going on to lift the trophy. Gerrard only spent one more year at Liverpool before moving on to LA Galaxy in , where he eventually retired, ending his career on the 24 th of November I paid close attention to performances such as the champions league semi-final against Juventus, where he basically grabbed the game by the scruff of its neck and dragged United to victory.

And while performances like these, as well as his overall demeanour and desire for success were all impressive, it can be argued that Keane was never the best player at Manchester United in his time at the club.

Further to that, he almost exclusively had the best players in the world playing around him. All whom were not only elite in playing ability, but also in mentality.

Just maybe. Let me explain. From very early on in his career, Gerrard was the best player at Liverpool. And in my opinion, that never really changed throughout his time at Anfield. As I mentioned in the intro, Gerrard was able to handle that responsibility along with the captaincy over a very lengthy period of time. And taking that into consideration, the fact that Gerrard very nearly won everything at Liverpool is extremely impressive.

Not only that, but he played defining large roles in just about every trophy that Liverpool won during his time at the club. That, that right there. The man is nothing other than a legend of the game. Iconic Players March 22, March 22,