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cathal kelly

The last truly great moment for the English in English soccer came more than a decade ago – the so-called Miracle of Istanbul.

Down 3-0 at the half in the Champions League final, Liverpool pulled itself back into it, winning on penalties. Afterward, it became one of only five teams permanently awarded the winner's trophy.

Steven Gerrard made that happen. He and David Beckham were the last native sons who occupied the global imagination. Every once in a while, the country that created the game will throw up a starlet, but it's never the sort of player that any huge Italian or Spanish club would pursue wholeheartedly.

Instead, English soccer produces an occasional talent – usually erratic, overrated knuckleheads in the style of Wayne Rooney. It doesn't turn out real men any more, which is how they judge you on the continent.

Gerrard was the last of them. On Sunday, after 15 seasons in the top flight, he played his final game for Liverpool.

There was very little to the end of the Premiership season that was keeping anyone interested. Newcastle managed to save itself on the final day. Hull did not. Chelsea had already won the league in a walk.

It was that sort of year – desultory and sluggish. The Premiership may be the best league in the world, but too often it's not the best league to watch.

With nothing to worry about, neutral fans turned their attention to Gerrard's long goodbye.

He's still going to be playing soccer, but in Los Angeles. To these people, that's not a real job. It's a postretirement hobby.

Former Chelsea star Frank Lampard – Gerrard's equal in talent, but lagging behind in mythic aura – is also leaving, and also for the States. But he's spent so long standing on the ship's deck waving goodbye, no one really cares any more. In Gerrard's case, it was a thematically consistent farewell.

Liverpool sent its captain off with a Viking funeral. Well, sort of. There was no wooden boat or crossed swords. But it did light him on fire.

Facing a comme ci, comme ça Stoke team with nothing to lose or gain on the last day, Liverpool gave up five first-half goals. That's a lot of goals. For a team that's spent $400-million (U.S.) on player acquisitions over three years, it's infinity goals.

Liverpool lost 6-1. The hometown paper seriously suggested it might be the worst man-by-man performance in the team's history. The team has been around nearly 125 years.

Gerrard scored – a nice touch if you're anything but a Liverpool fan.

He's still only 34 years old. The reason he's leaving is that it was made clear to him that he would not be guaranteed a starting position beyond this season. Rather than go to some lesser English club, he preferred to leave the country.

On a humiliating final day, Gerrard was the only player who looked as though he cared. He was still the team's leading scorer this year.

And they decided to shove him out the door why, exactly? Now that we're able to start looking back on the season, nothing about this makes sense.

Even the final Gerrard goal seems sketchy. It came in the 70th minute. Gerrard split the Stoke back line, sprinting on to a ball hoofed up toward him. He still had to dink it by the keeper, but there was no pursuit. Once he'd got to the ball, two trailing Stoke defenders as good as stopped in their tracks and watched him rush in on the net. Knowing the result was beyond doubt, did they let Gerrard score?

They'd have insulted him less if they'd punched him in the throat as he ran by. This is not how Steven Gerrard should go out – being pandered to and felt sorry for.

It's an example of how far things have fallen for Liverpool, and for an entire generation of English players more generally.

The most exciting young player in the world right now is Martin Odegaard, a 16-year-old from Norway. He's like a Shetland pony in remarkably dexterous human form. Odegaard became the youngest player to ever feature for Real Madrid on the weekend.

What does England have?

The closest thing to a genuine but still unformed talent is probably Gerrard's Liverpool teammate Raheem Sterling.

This should have been the moment Gerrard was handing over some sort of mantle to the younger man, first at Liverpool and then for England. Instead, Sterling spent Sunday on the bench, being ruthlessly jeered by his own supporters.

In a very English display of shortsightedness, the 20-year-old has tangled himself in an ugly dispute with Liverpool about his pay packet and the team's lack of Champions League Football (so, in reality, just the pay packet). Other, bigger English clubs are circling.

Notably, no continental teams have any rumoured interest. Sterling's good, but he's nowhere close to an Odegaard, either in terms of talent, temperament or seeming good sense. Why take the chance?

Sterling has come this far this fast because he plays for one of European soccer's untarnishable brands. Winning or losing, Liverpool is still Liverpool. The crest has a way of turning competitive tin into seeming gold.

Now you get the strong feeling that Sterling is the next Scott Sinclair or Shaun Wright-Phillips – a promising English-born player you half-remember who once got paid a lot of money to sit on the bench of a very big club. And then disappeared entirely.

Beyond the level, the thing that makes the Premier League so consistently fascinating is its ruthlessness. The weak do not survive. On Sunday, West Ham announced it had fired manager Sam Allardyce less than 60 seconds after its season ended.

You can just imagine someone with their finger on a button, their eyes on a screen, waiting to snuff out someone's professional life.

That's what the English-born game is beginning to feel like in the wake of Gerrard – a desert of true talent, leaning hard on stories about the sort of player they used to field.

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