What happened to Steven Gerrard yesterday was unfortunate. He clearly deserved his red card and his petulant stamp on Ander Herrera was an absurd retaliation from someone who has played in this league and that fixture for as long as he has. Still, though, it created an awkward, unwanted bookend to his Premier League history
Ideally, legacies should always be neat and as a consequence that kind of incident has an irritating quality to it. Steven Gerrard and Zinedine Zidane are not the same calibre of player, but there were similarities yesterday with the former French international’s moment of madness in the 2006 World Cup.
Because, in each case, the actions didn’t accurately represent the player, his personality, or what he meant to his side, there’s a lingering sense of injustice – not in respect to the arbitration of the incident, but because it happened at all. The fan feels robbed of his or her flawless perception of an idol.
Even so, the reaction to Gerrard’s dismissal yesterday has been strange. Post-game, he put himself in front of the television cameras and offered an apology to his teammates and supporters. It was the right thing to do, of course, but the praise he’s received as a result has been exaggerated way out of context.
That’s not about Gerrard, Liverpool or anything to do with yesterday’s game, instead it seems to be a symptom of how low this profession has sunk. In that situation, the public seem to expect a convoluted excuse from a player or for a manager to defend him blindly with some preposterous rhetoric.
That’s the default now.
When confronted with honesty, though, the praise is absurdly disproportionate. This morning, Gerrard is being acclaimed for his ‘character’ and his willingness to ‘front up’ as much as he’s being castigated for his obvious, game-defining recklessness.
“Football player doesn’t try to defend the indefensible.”
That’s quite an odd thing to applaud.
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