“I’m not 100 percent sure but I think it will probably be my last year as a player. When I come back in November I have my BT work but I am basically available for whatever is out there,” Gerrard was quoted as saying by the Independent.
“Everyone in the football world will know I am available and, hopefully, I will be 75 percent into my coaching badges and available. I’m available. Available.”The 35-year-old midfielder regrets the fact that he did not start on his coaching courses earlier in his career, adding that most of the England players of his generation face a similar predicament.
“A few things put players off coaching. The brutality of how long you get in a job or how quickly it can go wrong: that puts you off. But the coaching badges are very time consuming and they’re very tedious. Obviously, if you don’t start your badges until the end of your career when you’ve finished, have you got the hunger and motivation to start from the very bottom and go up? There (is) no cutting corners.
“I do have regrets now that I didn’t start my coaching badges at 21, 22. All that time I have wasted in hotels being an England player in the afternoon when I have been bored. I (could) be doing my pro licence now. I know many, many players who get to the end of their careers and get handed a C licence pack, which is about four inches thick, and say, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that’. (A player who) could have 70 to 80 caps and 600 career appearances and he is just going ‘nah’ when he could have had it done,” the former England star said.
“Put these coaching badges on offer at a younger age. When you are training, you finish at 1pm and you talk about boredom in hotel rooms. Have the coaching badges available in the afternoons so that when they finish their careers they are ready to become coaches straight away and they don’t need to start at the bottom and do all the tedious coaching courses that are out there.”
Gerrard, who will start play second season in Major League Soccer (MLS) with Los Angeles Galaxy, trained at his former club recently and was impressed with the tactical insights of new Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp.
“He invited me in, so there’s a discretion I’ve got to keep about what he does. But certainly, tactical situations within the 11, I found myself straight away after training wanting to keep what he said, why he did it and the point he made to individuals,” Gerrard said while talking about his impressions of Klopp’s training sessions.
“I just couldn’t get enough of what he said in the 11 vs 11 (games he set up). Seeing how he is with individual players and his tactics and how he goes about the job, I think that, given time and with a bit of patience and time to add to the XI and the squad, you can get excited.” (IANS)