‘The mood would change’: Adam Lallana says he was ‘scared’ of one player when he was at Liverpool

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Speaking on The Big Interview with Graham Hunter, Adam Lallana has been discussing some of the best players he’s ever shared a football pitch with and his time at Liverpool alongside Steven Gerrard.

The midfielder was Gerrard’s teammate at Liverpool for one year, and while Lallana absolutely loves Gerrard as a player, he seemingly didn’t enjoy sharing a pitch with the Liverpool legend.

Indeed, Lallana says that he was so in awe of Gerrard that he was often scared of him, stating that he would worry about playing a bad pass to his captain at the time and that he and his teammates would often stop talking and the mood would change whenever Gerrard would enter a room.

Lallana feared Gerrard

The midfielder spoke about playing with Gerrard.

“I’m going to have to pick Steven Gerrard. He was a hero growing up and I was lucky enough to play with him for a year at Liverpool,” Lallana said.

“For the first six months I was scared of being on the pitch with him, of making a mistake, of giving him a bad pass. He would hate that if he knew that. He messaged me only at the weekend saying keep doing well and stuff this and that’s Stevie G.

“He’s just a normal person and he would hate knowing I felt like that, but that’s how big and good he was. He would walk into a treatment room and the mood would change, people would stop talking. He wouldn’t like that and maybe that was on us to change around him.”

“His aura is a different aura to Pochettino’s or Jurgen’s or Roberto’s there was a part of me that feared being on the same pitch as him. I had to adapt to working with him because he was not just mine, but so many other people’s idols.”

Tough balance to strike

It’s a very tough balance to strike when you’re in a position like this as a leader.

On one hand, Gerrard had to command respect as a captain and having his teammates in awe of him in this way was probably a good thing from that standpoint.

However, a captain also has to be a part of a team, and if he’s somewhat isolated because everyone is putting him on a pedestal, that’s not good.

Perhaps that’s why Gerrard struggled at Aston Villa as a manager. He’s so well-known as a legend of the game, it’s hard to really become a part of the group in the same way other gaffers can.