A Short Story About Judas

Excerpts taken from the book "My Liverpool Story" by Steven Gerrard.

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It became obvious that he wasn’t happy at Liverpool, but his departure in 2011 still hit me hard. Very hard. Every player is entitled to do what they want to do in their career. I don’t own anyone else’s career and I can’t make decisions for them. But when you love playing with someone and you have a player alongside you of Torres’s calibre, then you cannot help out feel sorry for yourself and the fans who adored him. You wonder where the club is going if the best players want to leave, but I didn’t feel let down by Liverpool.

   There was nothing they could do to prevent him from leaving for Chelsea. His mind was set, but they made it as hard as they could for the ￡50m deal to happen.

   In the days before the transfer, Torres came to see me as captain. He said he wanted to leave, but added that the club was being difficult. “Listen,” I said. “You have to understand that you are a top player and they don’t want to let you go.” It didn’t matter. He asked if I could speak to Kenny Dalglish, our manager, on his behalf. That put me in a difficult situation because I didn’t want to help Fernando. I didn’t want to help Fernando. I didn’t want to tell the manager that the star player wanted to go because, at that point, I wanted the deal to fall through. I wanted Chelsea’s interest to go away and for his enthusiasm to be rekindled. We had just signed Luis Suarez from Ajax for ￡22m. Money was available. We were trying to compete for silverware.

   Fernando had told Kenny himself, but, with the club still playing hardball, he asked me to speak as well. I just told Kenny he was unhappy and left it at that. That is the role of the captain that people don’t see and that I never want to experience again. You don’t want your best player to come to you and say, “I’ve had enough. I want to go to another club. And I want to go to one of your major rivals.”

When Fernando approached me and said he wanted out, it was like a knife to the heart.

- Steven Gerrard（My Liverpool Story）

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Agger did not want to wait to write about it in his future book.

Judas!