“In his glittering Liverpool career, Steven Gerrard has won nearly every trophy there is to win.” – Some random telly sports reporter the other day.

Note the telling use of the word ‘nearly’. That’s because after 17 years of titles, trophies and awards, there was one major cup that eluded him all the way. The one unfulfilled dream that will linger in disappointment as he rides off into the LA sunset.

Gerrard’s last minute screamer in the 2006 FA Cup final was one of the greatest Cup Final goals ever witnessed. A thundering equaliser on the verge of defeat, they’d go on to win the game on penalties. He’s won the UEFA Cup, he’s won the League Cup three times, the Community Shield, the UEFA Super Cup and another FA Cup. He’s scored brilliant goals all through his career and has been the spiritual leader of this Liverpool side for a decade now. Plus, of course, that magical/mythical game in Istanbul. That incomparable comeback… it doesn’t happen without Gerrard on the field. It was his finest hour, the ultimate achievement in a career full of them. He almost single-handedly willed that team on towards victory in one of the most indomitable performances in Champions League history.

But he never won the Premier League.

That wouldn’t matter so much to us if it didn’t seem to matter so much to him. Look at last season, it was his final chance and he knew it. Top of the table with three games remaining, carried by the goals of Suarez and the drive and focus of Gerrard. ‘This does not slip!’ he declared.

But it did, and he did. And so tragically so for a player as heart-on-the-sleeve as Steven Gerrard, to see the look in his eyes as he flailed to the ground, Demba Ba running clear, the dream slipping away at the fault of the man who wanted it the most.

Maybe if he’d made that fabled move to Chelsea back in the early days of Mourinho’s first tenure, then he’d have plenty of Premier League winners’ medals by now. It’s not often mentioned just how close that whole thing came to fruition either. Six weeks after the 2005 Champions League Final, Gerrard rejected a new contract and handed in a formal transfer request. The club had just had perhaps its finest ever European triumph, yet they finished 37 points behind domestic leaders Chelsea. They didn’t even qualify to try defend the Champions League that they’d just won, it took a special UEFA dispensation for that to happen. Liverpool were slacking in the league, while Chelsea were soaring under a flamboyant young Portuguese mastermind. The Blues came knocking with an initial £32m bid for LFC’s 25 year old captain that was promptly rejected amidst fan protests outside Anfield and general media madness. Real Madrid were interested. But then late that same evening, Gerrard withdrew his request and a new deal was sorted within days. He later said it was a bargaining tool to frighten the club into a little love and ambition, but he didn’t have the heart to see it through. In this game of Russian Roulette, it was Stevie G that backed down, laid the gun on the table, and walked away.

Imagine that team though! He’d have joined a side with the likes of John Terry, Didier Drogba, Arjen Robben, Frank Lampard, Petr Cech, Michael Essien, Hernan Crespo and Carlton Cole. Ok, forget the last one. It was a team that even without Gerrard won its first 9 games of the next season, leading the league from post to post. (It would’ve been a great get for England too, let Jose figure out how to play Gerrard & Lampard together and just copy the blueprint.)

The thing is, though, as Jamie Carragher once put it: "The satisfaction of one title with Liverpool, no matter how long it took, would always eclipse three or four at Stamford Bridge". That one title never came but it was Gerrard’s choice to chase it with the local club that he’d been at since he was nine years old and he knew the risks. Winning with Liverpool meant more than winning alone. It was the same conscious decision that Alan Shearer made in the 90s by spurning Manchester United for Newcastle, the only difference is that Gerrard’s boyhood team was Liverpool Football Club. A team with – when he withdrew that transfer request – an English record 18 domestic titles and 5 European Cups. They were supposed to be winning things too.

Gerrard’s accounts of this time seem pretty unreliable. It’s hard to believe that he never seriously considered leaving. There’s a story in his autobiography of a trial he had as a fourteen year old with Manchester United. He said it was a play to get Liverpool to offer him a youth training scheme contract, which wreaks of a man going back over his past to touch up a few blemishes and doubts. Of course he was thinking of leaving. Wayne Rooney did the same thing (twice). Frank Lampard would have too under different circumstances. Arsenal players do it all the time. The point is not that he wanted to leave, the point is that ultimately he stayed.

His last game at Anfield was typically ceremonious and disappointing. With all the heart-warming tributes to what has undoubtedly been a legendary Premier League career, it wasn’t even surprising that they then went and lost 3-1 to Crystal Palace. And how tragic that the game had to be against the opposition that effectively ended any last hope of that title last season with their three-goal comeback in the second-to-last game (albeit at Selhurst Park). This game had the limp and lazy feel of an exhibition from the hosts as Gerrard charged around trying to recapture the essence of his past self. It’s that same sad phase of so many great players’ careers where they seem to be the last ones to realise that they can no longer do what once came so naturally to them. Maybe it’s a denial, maybe it’s a matter of circumstances. Gerrard was definitely caught in a situation where enamoured teammates still expected him to lead them by example. For so long he had been the heart and soul of this club. For him there could be no slow descent, no Scholes/Lampard-esque transition into lesser roles.

Gerrard’s performances this season have not been great. It’s been a season of great effort for weak results, summarised best by his 38 second red card against Manchester United. Yet you have to admire the commitment to his firebrand style of football, still full of determination, still full of expectation in himself and his teammates. He may have burnt out but he would never allow himself to fade away.

At his best, Steven Gerrard was like no other player. Gut-busting runs from the midfield, inch perfect passes and violently accurate shots from distance. He was just the third man, after Ryan Giggs and Jamie Carragher, to play 500 Premier League games for one club. A captain of club and country, he was capped 114 times by England and the game against Stoke this weekend – his final one for Liverpool – will be his 710th for the Reds in all competitions. Only Carragher and Ian Callaghan have more. Was he the best English player of his time? It’s impossible to say. But no player took on more responsibility, both on the field and off it, both physically and mentally, than Steven Gerrard. Gerrard was Liverpool, and for 17 years Liverpool was Gerrard. Yes, his farewell was far grander than other contemporaneous legends, but then none of those other players - not Scholes, not Lampard, not Keane, not Henry, not Viera - meant quite as much to the entire culture of their club as Stevie G did to LFC. It’s eerie to wonder what comes next.

A sporting retirement is like a death - certainly his last game at Anfield felt funereal - and when an icon dies, we immediately forget how they lived the last years of their life. They are freed from the boundaries of time and with no corporeal anchor, suddenly they become an amalgamation of all the many selves that they presented. Call it Michael Jackson Syndrome. He was a punchline the day before he died and a martyr the day after. Steven Gerrard’s last game, his last season, was unbefitting of his magnificence. But Liverpool fans will always have Istanbul.