For years, Liverpool fans had been pretending the day would never come. Like the death of an ageing relative — increasingly near yet thoroughly incomprehensible — Steven Gerrard’s impending departure from the club which has run through his veins since he was a boy will invoke a spectrum of emotions amongst the adoring fans who have watched him develop from the scrawny teenager making his debut in 1998 into the local hero of today.

Pages and pages could be written about Gerrard’s adeptness on the pitch and the wealth of crucial goals he has scored, many of them securing major trophies. He will leave a void, however, not just because of what he means to the team, but because of what he means to the club and to its people.

On 15th April 1989, a young Gerrard was just eight years old and already attracting the attention of the club’s scouts when his bond with Liverpool was cemented in the most tragic of circumstances. The Hillsborough Tragedy sent shockwaves around the footballing world and for Gerrard, like so many others in the city, it hit even closer to home with the youngest of the 96 victims being his ten-year-old cousin, Jon-Paul Gilhooley.

One of the first talking points following his announcement was whether he or “King” Kenny Dalglish holds the accolade of being Liverpool’s greatest ever player. For Gerrard, Hillsborough was the beginning; for Dalglish, it was the beginning of the end. Greatness at Anfield is measured not just in talent, goals and performances. Important as these elements may be, both of those cult icons have, in different ways, done much for those families pained with the perennial search for closure.

Liverpool needs its heroes; both the city and its people. Unjustly maligned and similarly stereotyped, Liverpool remains a largely working-class city whose national image comes not from its own misgivings, but from a divide which, for many years, has denied it along with many other great northern cities the prosperity of their southern counterparts. Put eloquently by John Aldridge and Steve McMahon in the ‘Anfield Rap’ of 1988: “he [John Barnes] gives us stick about the north/south divide ‘cos they got the jobs, yeah but we got the side!”.

The Hillsborough disaster represents the ‘little man’ versus the establishment. The crushing of the working-class who, faced with a corrupt and cowardly police force, stood little chance of reaching justice, the battle for which is sadly still raging today, almost 26 years later. In the face of such pain and despair, Gerrard, in his unwavering loyalty, honesty and through his unique bond with the Anfield faithful, has helped define a people who rightly still feel aggrieved. Liverpool Football Club will be lucky to have a player like him ever again. It will be even luckier to have a man like him.