Richard Jolly
There will be a guard of honour at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Not for Steven Gerrard, but featuring him. Liverpool’s captain will have to salute the new champions. Thereafter, in the final two games of the season, the tributes should be to him.
Because this month, finally, marks the end for England’s golden generation, who justified their billing for their various clubs, if not their country.
Like Gerrard, Frank Lampard will cross the Atlantic, hoping his skills will prove timeless in Major League Soccer.
Rio Ferdinand will retire, joining David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Michael Owen and Sol Campbell among the core of the 2002 World Cup team who are now ex-players.
Ashley Cole is in exile in Italy. He may never take the field in England again.
Nor, for other reasons, may Ferdinand. Queens Park Rangers’s relegation could be rubber-stamped at Manchester City on Sunday.
Rather than proving a reunion with Lampard, a West Ham United colleague as both began their first-team careers almost two decades ago in the 1995-96 campaign, the death of the centre-back’s wife, Rebecca, from breast cancer last Saturday means there is no guarantee he will take the football field again.
Football is understandably obscured, but a career should be celebrated. Lampard, Ferdinand and Gerrard are the last three Englishmen to captain Uefs Champions League-winning teams; indeed, the only ones since Aston Villa’s Dennis Mortimer in 1982.
RELATED:
Poll: Who will win the Premier League clash between Chelsea and Liverpool?
Predictions: Manchester United back to winning ways, Chelsea end Liverpool's top four hopes
Comment: Speed, goals and hard work: All you need to know about Man United signing Memphis Depay
It is hard to envisage three English skippers enjoying such success in the near future. Each, too, led his country on occasions. They amassed a combined 301 caps.
Lampard was runner-up in the voting for the Ballon d’Or in 2005, Gerrard third and Uefa’s Footballer of that Year.
Individual honours are altogether rarer for defenders, but it remains a mystery that Ferdinand was not named in the team of the 2002 World Cup. He compensated by forming a central defensive partnership for Manchester United with Nemanja Vidic that was, at their peak, surely the finest in world football.
Ferdinand was the natural athlete who was so gifted he seemed laid-back. “Graceful, balanced, first touch like a centreforward,” noted Sir Alex Ferguson, in his initial appraisal of the defender as a teenager. Harry Redknapp called him a “Rolls-Royce” as a youngster, providing an accurate image of smooth class.
“He would glide along in second or third gear, then take off like a sports car,” marvelled Ferguson in his autobiography. Ferdinand possessed the rare ability to make elite-level football look easy.
Lampard made it look efficient. He was the ultimate self-made player, the teenager his critics argued was only in the West Ham team because his uncle, Redknapp, was manager and his father the assistant.
He transformed himself into the most relentlessly ruthless, formidably fit goalscoring midfielder of his generation; perhaps of any in English football.
“He trains harder than anyone I’ve ever seen by a million miles,” Redknapp recalled. It was often a solitary pursuit after others had gone home.
“Shooting. Every single day. Without fail,” Redknapp added.
Practice made perfect. Lampard has scored 287 goals for club and country from a midfield role. It is an astonishing statistic.
Then there was Gerrard, the driven dynamo whose best was better than almost anyone else’s, whose individual inspiration transformed the Champions League final in Istanbul.
“My mate. My hero,” said Xabi Alonso simply, a World Cup winner lost in admiration for his former colleague.
Zinedine Zidane, who called Gerrard the world’s best player in 2009, twice tried to persuade Real Madrid to sign him. Chelsea made two attempts, too.
Instead, Gerrard was the supreme loyalist to Liverpool, giving a quarter of a century of service.
Ferdinand and Lampard have already severed connections with the clubs where they reached their greatest heights, United and Chelsea, last year.
Long goodbyes have already begun. They can induce feelings of nostalgia before they are even gone. But it is understandable.
They rank among the greats of the Premier League era. They belong among the best England has ever produced.
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @NatSportUAE
