Liverpool fans will arguably never see a better, more complete player at their club than Steven Gerrard.
Not only was Gerrard a phenomenal player, but he was also a local lad and captain of the football club. It simply does not get better than that.
Rival fans will often point to Gerrard‘s lack of a Premier League title as proof that the Scouser was not quite as good as Liverpool supporters like to make out.
But anyone who lived through and saw his career up close will know that is incorrect. He was arguably even better than conventional thinking suggests.
Those who played with him in the Liverpool academy, the first team and with the England national team all know how good he was.
One player who falls into all three of those categories is Michael Owen, who has now made a comparison between Gerrard and his former Real Madrid teammate, the legendary Zinedine Zidane.
Michael Owen would go to war with Steven Gerrard
Owen’s opinion may not be taken too seriously by Liverpool supporters after his ill-advised decision to join Manchester United in 2011.
Nevertheless, Owen’s pedigree in the game is inarguable. A Ballon d’Or winner with Liverpool, the former striker also played in a star-studded Real Madrid team in the early 2000s.
READ MORE: Liverpool youngster claims he’s ‘similar’ to Steven Gerrard as he prepares for breakout season
Zidane was part of that side, and when asked by Rio Ferdinand to pick his five-a-side team of all-time teammates, it was no surprise to hear Owen pair the Frenchman with Gerrard.
With Ferdinand wanting to know more, the pundit said that while Zidane may have been better, his former captain at Liverpool was the player he’d pick for ‘the biggest game of his life.’
“The best player I ever played with was Zidane,” Owen said. “Elegance, just a ballerina, just beautiful, incredible, everything that he did was just unbelievable. But if you said to me ‘you’re going to war now, you’re playing in the biggest game of your life tomorrow. Who do you want alongside you?’ I mean Stevie was everything.
“He was just too big, too strong, the best passer of the ball you could imagine. We all talk about [Paul] Scholes and Becks [David Beckham], great passers of the ball, Stevie’s passing was incredible. His goal scoring, his vision.”
Owen picks between Gerrard, Paul Scholes and Frank Lampard
While Gerrard and Zidane were very different types of midfielders, the former Liverpool No. 8 was much more regularly compared with England colleagues Paul Scholes and Frank Lampard.
Who you thought was better probably depended on who you supported. Liverpool fans loved Gerrard, Scholes was the Man United supporter’s pick and Lampard was the Chelsea choice.
And when asked by Ferdinand on how Gerrard stacked up against his two former England teammates, Owen sat on the fence a little.
“They all offer something different and I just wish we’d [England] played more with all three of them in midfield,” said the 45-year-old.
“I genuinely think we’d have won a World Cup. We always used to get run over in midfield.”
Receive a digest of our best Liverpool content each week direct to your mailbox
