Steven Gerrard has revealed the moment when he felt he should leave Liverpool.
Speaking to former England teammate Rio Ferdinand in a BT Sport documentary to air tonight at 10pm, the midfielder said he was “devastated” when Brendan Rodgers dropped him for last November’s game away to Real Madrid.
Rodgers decided to name a weakened team for the Champions League fixture, with a Premier League game against Chelsea in mind the following Saturday. Liverpool lost both games, and Gerrard found it very difficult to sit on the bench at the Bernabeu.
“This was round about the time when I was doing a lot of thinking about what’s next for me,” Gerrard tells Ferdinand.
“I’d had a couple of initial chats with Brendan saying to me ‘I’m going to start managing your games and I have to look after you and I want you to be fresh and I don’t want you to be playing three games in a week because you may be tired’ and stuff like that.”
“But this situation was a bit unique because it was Real Madrid and I wanted to play, and when I was told I wasn’t playing, for the sake of the team and the squad and my relationship with Brendan, I took it and I accepted it.”
“But I sat on that bench devastated because I wanted to play so, it is one of those situations.”
“It sort of pushed me making a decision to move on and try something different.”
In a wide ranging interview, Gerrard also speaks about his infamous slip against Chelsea, saying he’s still haunted by the game in April 2014. “There’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t think about ‘what if that didn’t happen?’ Would things have been different? Would it have turned out different?”
The soon to be LA Galaxy midfielder also says how Liverpool underestimated Jose Mourinho’s ability to spoil a game and how replacing Luis Suarez was always going to be impossible for the club.
H/T The Liverpool Echo.
