Our six year old son, Ezra, only pretends to watch Liverpool games with me. It is his way of indulging his father – or, more precisely, his father’s lifelong love for Liverpool Football Club (FC). For ten minutes, anyway, Ezra will sit next to me and make vague noises; for his troubles, Ezra already has an impressive array of number 8 Liverpool FC shirts. However, when it comes to Stevie Gerrard, Ezra knows that something of consequence is at stake. At the very least, this is what he has picked up from me. It is a source of tremendous pride to me, then, that when I say “Stevie,” Ezra has, since he was 3, been able to complete the trinity of proper nouns. “George Gerrard,” Ezra intones, looking earnestly for Stevie on the pitch, although Ezra’s favorite number is 10. “Steven George Gerrard,” my son knows what he means.

And this is what makes the announcement of his impending departure, most probably to the LA Galaxy of the US’s Major League Soccer the source of such profound difficulty for me. I must, of course, but I cannot, I (absolutely) will not, conceive of a Liverpool FC team without Stevie. It is possible to rationalize his decision to leave. The time is probably right; better for him to leave now than cut a lonely figure on the bench; the greats never do well on the sidelines, they do not like witnessing their own passing. It would be difficult, but not unbearable (given his love for Liverpool), for Stevie to watch the young bucks, Phil Coutinho (22; he wears Ezra’s favorite shirt), Raheem Sterling (20), Adam Lallana (admittedly, at 26 not young in the same way as Coutinho and Sterling, but Stevie is at least a generation Lallana’s senior) make the team in their image. Lazar Markovič (20), will form the final member of this new quartet of skill players led upfront by Daniel Sturridge (when he returns from injury) and marshaled in midfield by Jordan Henderson.

I have dubbed Coutinho, Sterling and Lallana, physically small players all, the “Little Three,” and I expect a few special things from them, technically gifted as they all are. And Marko is showing signs of coming into his own. Liverpool’s future is entrusted to these players. Add to them big Emre Can (pronounced “John”), who has been brave enough to take Scouser legend Jamie Carragher’s number 23, so I don’t think the Turkish German lad will wilt. And Martin Škrtel, as has for these many seasons, will soldier on is his own indomitable way; and Alberto Morreno may turn out to be a player yet. And . . . there may be others.

Still, Liverpool sans Stevie . . . how can that even be?