In 2015, Steven Gerrard announced with a heavy heart that his time at his boyhood club would be coming to an end.
After 710 games - 472 of those as captain - and 186 goals, Gerrard left behind a life at Liverpool that had been all he had known since the age of nine.
It goes without saying that for a player of his calibre, the Reds' No.8 could have accumulated a greater haul of trophies during his playing days if his indisputable loyalty to Liverpool wasn't authentic. But instead of selling himself out for an eye-watering weekly wage to some of Europe's finest clubs, Gerrard instead received acknowledgement banknotes can't buy.
An untouchable status in his home city.
But for all of Gerrard's instinctive loyalty towards his club and the city, like with any relationship, there were sizeable tests for both he and Liverpool to overcome during his 17-year stint in the first team. Most of those problems had been orchestrated in the early noughties by Chelsea Football Club, who had recently found themselves bankrolled by Roman Abramovich.
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Appointing FC Porto coach Jose Mourinho at the helm, the Londoners were desperate for the Liverpool captain to slot into their midfield alongside Claudio Makelele and Frank Lampard as they looked to guarantee an era of dominance in the English game.
However, Chelsea's red carpet treatment, led by Abramovich, to woo the Reds skipper failed to materialise and it was on this day 18 years ago that a press conference was called at Anfield for Gerrard to announce he was staying.
Sitting alongside then chief executive Rick Parry, Gerrard affirmed his love for his boyhood club and offered renewed commitment ahead of newly-appointed Rafa Benitez's first season at Anfield.
"The last three or four weeks have been really confusing for me. I have been in a big tournament, that's why I have been really quiet about my future," said Gerrard. "I have not been happy with the progression of the club over the last two years and for the first time in my career I have really thought about the possibility of moving on to a different club.
"But after coming back from Euro 2004, after sitting down with my friends and family and after my fourth meeting with Rick Parry in the last two months, I have decided I am staying at Liverpool Football Club."
The then 24-year-old continued: "I am 100 per cent committed to the football club. There have been a lot of things going through my head in the last few weeks and I will admit that the possibility of leaving was one of them.
"But I have gone with the decision that is in my heart, which is I love the club, I love the supporters and that's what it boils down to at the end of the day."
Gerrard had been in Portugal for the 2004 European Championships as part of Sven-Göran Eriksson's England squad and it had been expected that the Chelsea players also in the ranks - John Terry, Lampard, Joe Cole and Wayne Bridge - would use fine persuasive tactics to 'tap up' the Liverpool talisman.
Whatever tactics were implemented by those at Stamford Bridge appeared to somewhat turn Gerrard's head as an eagerness to seal a move to the capital meant Liverpool's newly-appointed manager, Benitez, was forced to visit the England training camp in Portugal in a bid to defuse the fire that had been stoked during the few weeks the midfielder had spent away from Anfield.
In 2020, Parry, who had held decisive talks with Gerrard upon his return from England's quarter-final defeat to Portugal, finally lifted the lid on how proceedings unfolded from his perspective.
"Literally, the first day that Rafa [Benitez] arrived, I had to tell him that Steven Gerrard had decided he wanted to go," he said while speaking on the BBC's The 30-Year Wait documentary. "I think during the Euros, Steven pretty much decided he wanted to go to Chelsea. The mistake Chelsea made was letting Steven come back to Liverpool after the Euros. They should have kept him on Abramovich’s boat."
The failed attempt to lure the Reds' skipper by Chelsea marked the begging of an unforgiving domestic and European rivalry between the two clubs, with the vitriol so strong that the remaining fragments of it still fuels a rivalry between the sets of supporters nearly two decades later.
And it would be Benitez who boasted the most outstanding victory later that season when he eliminated Mourinho's men from the Champions League semi-final in controversial circumstances, as Luis Garcia's trickling effort gave the Reds a 1-0 aggregate win and place in the showpiece final in Istanbul.
It would also avenge the pain Liverpool had suffered three months before in the League Cup final at the Millennium Stadium, with Chelsea winning 3-2 after extra-time after an own goal from Gerrard had brought them level.
Gerrard would go even closer to joining Chelsea one year later, after Istanbul, only to see the error of his ways and commit his future just a day after declaring his intention to leave, with his eye never wandering again.
There would be another Champions League semi-final between the sides in 2007 and Liverpool once again conquered the Blues, this time thanks to Dirk Kuyt's composed spot-kick after 210 minutes of action across the two legs wasn't enough to separate the sides.
Yes, Chelsea would boast domestic supremacy during the height of the pair's rivalry, but it was Gerrard who was first to get his hands on the most coveted trophy in European football and the admiration he had for the club that he captained to the triumph would have made it a priceless feeling during that one night in Istanbul.
A version of this article was originally published in June, 2022.
