Gary Neville has revealed Steven Gerrard turned down the opportunity to join Manchester United in 2004 for family reasons.
The Merseyside-born midfielder joined the Liverpool academy aged nine in 1989, and after making his first-team debut in 1998, he would remain a fixture in the Reds’ starting lineup for the best part of the next two decades.
In total, Gerrard went on to play 710 games for his boyhood club – the third-most in club history – and cemented his legacy as one of the greatest players to ever ply their trade at Anfield by inspiring Liverpool to UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup, FA Cup, EFL Cup and UEFA Super Cup triumphs.
One trophy the legendary midfielder never got his hands on, however, was the Premier League title – coming closest in 2014 when his infamous slip occurred late in the season.
While winning the league wasn’t possible at Liverpool, Gerrard did have opportunities to join the two most dominant teams of the 2000s in the Premier League during his playing career: Man Utd and Chelsea.
Speaking about a potential transfer to Man Utd in 2004 on The Overlap, ex-club captain Gary Neville revealed that Sir Alex Ferguson asked him to float a potential move to Old Trafford to Gerrard during a pre-European Championships training camp.
“Stevie told this in his book, where I went into his room with England and asked him to sign for Manchester United,” Neville said.
“I was meeting up with England for the Euros, and he [Ferguson] rang me and said it’s ambitious, but his words were, ‘Tell him I’ll go and fetch him, and I’ll walk him back down the East Lancs’.
“I went to see Stevie, and he quite categorically [rejected it] pretty quickly. He said he would never get out of Liverpool and his family would never get out of Liverpool.”
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