April 27, 2014 is a date that will live in infamy in the hearts and minds of Liverpool fans, and Steven Gerrard remembers it like it was yesterday.
Gerrard spoke to BT Sports on Wednesday about that fateful day, in which Liverpool lost to Chelsea 2-0 at Anfield and suffered an ultimately fatal blow to its hopes of winning its first domestic title since 1990.
Gerrard’s first-half slip allowed Chelsea striker Demba Ba to pick up a loose ball in the midfield and score the game-winning goal. Gerrard said he thinks about that slip every day.
“The slip happened at a bad time, it was cruel for me personally,” Gerrard told BT Sports, according to the Guardian. “There is not a day that goes by when I do not think about it and wonder what if it hadn’t happened. Would things have been different? Would it have turned out different? Maybe it might have, I do not know.”
Gerrard said Liverpool was teeming with self-belief going into the game, but Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho stonewalled the Reds’ momentum with a tactically conservative approach. The loss ended Liverpool’s 11-game winning streak and gave Manchester City the impetus it needed to win the 2013-14 Premier League title.
“Going into the Chelsea game, I think because we were on a good run and in good form — and no fault to (Liverpool manager) Brendan Rodgers at all — we sort of went in with the same tactics,” Gerrard said. “We heard Chelsea were possibly making a few changes, and we actually had the confidence that we could blow them away, but we underestimated the power of Mourinho.
“He came and he spoilt the game. He ruined it. He made them very hard to beat. He even said after, he was quoted, ‘We came to spoil the party.’ ”
Gerrard officially will leave Liverpool for Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy next week, ending his 17-plus year career in the Reds’ first team and a 25-plus-year tenure at his boyhood club. Liverpool never managed to win a title during Gerrard’s Anfield career, as the 2014 loss to Chelsea was the closest it came with him on the field.
