As a young boy Steven Gerrard wore an England shirt with Paul Gascoigne’s name emblazoned on the back and “imagined it was the winning goal in the World Cup final” when scoring between two bins on the streets of Huyton. His daydreams would evolve into 114 England caps – only two men have won more – yet his retirement from international football is cause for appreciation and regret. No player encapsulates the torment of England’s recent history more than the departing captain.

The news that Gerrard has called it a day with England, after 14 dutiful years, was widely expected. Brendan Rodgers, who as Liverpool manager has most to gain from the 34-year-old’s decision with Champions League back on the agenda at Anfield next season, predicted it would happen nine months ago. The manner of England’s embarrassing exit from Brazil under Roy Hodgson, and Gerrard’s part in the Luis Suárez double that pointed the way home from the World Cup, made retirement almost an inevitability but it took almost four weeks for the midfielder to announce the end following the team’s elimination. England “obsessed me from my earliest days”, states Gerrard in his autobiography, and the decision to call time on international football was not taken lightly.

England have lost an outstanding servant, vast experience and a captain of stature, plus genuine influence behind the scenes. That much is reflected in the Football Association’s offer of a prominent ambassadorial role to Gerrard, one he has accepted. As the England manager said in tribute on Monday: “He is not only a player to bring crowds to their feet with moments of brilliance; he was a tremendous captain and an exceptional role model for everyone who was fortunate to come into contact with him. We shall miss his leadership qualities as we look ahead to the qualification campaign with a youthful group of players.”

There is something about that “moments of brilliance” line from Hodgson that does not quite fit in an England context. Of course there have been many, including the goal in the 5-1 defeat of Germany in a World Cup qualifier in Munich, the individual effort against Hungary at Wembley and the performance that single-handedly spared Steve McClaren and England from utter humiliation against Andorra in 2007. But they have not arrived with the regularity or precision timing of his Liverpool career. Nor have a succession of England managers settled on a way to maximise Gerrard’s gifts in the way that Gérard Houllier, Rafael Benítez and latterly Rodgers have done at Anfield. Gerrard is, by his own admission, a home bird and it is in the confines of Liverpool where he has truly excelled.

Before winning his 100th England cap against Sweden in November 2012 the midfielder was asked to rate his international career out of 10. Gerrard settled for “six or seven” after a lengthy pause. Only eight players have won more than 100 caps for England – a list that reads from the top Peter Shilton, David Beckham, Gerrard, Bobby Moore, Ashley Cole, Bobby Charlton, Frank Lampard and Billy Wright – but the Liverpool captain dismissed suggestions that figure provided automatic entry to an elite club. “In football the hero and legend status is given out far too easily for my liking,” he added before that Sweden game. “As far as playing for England goes, there are only 11 real heroes over history. The rest haven’t really delivered, for me.” Brazil proved him right more brutally than he could possibly have imagined.

Gerrard was not considered good enough for the under-15 intake at Lilleshall and spent his formative teenage years with an obsessive point to prove to the FA. He emphatically proved the organisation wrong by appearing in six international tournaments but his competition experiences read like a litany of personal ordeals. Gerrard has stomached a lot to stay on the England scene for 14 years and finally to earn recognition as captain.

Euro 2000, the midfielder’s tournament debut, brought an eye-catching substitute’s display in the win over Germany but also a calf injury that kept him out of the decisive defeat by Romania and a serious bout of homesickness that left Gerrard questioning his involvement. “Homesickness is a part of me that will never go away,” he wrote. “I still feel homesick at times. I endured a bad couple of days at Euro 2004 in Portugal.”

That next European Championship in 2004, Gerrard’s second tournament having missed out on the 2002 World Cup through injury, left the midfielder feeling “so wretched I thought I would be physically sick” after his injury-time back-pass allowed Zinedine Zidane to seal a dramatic win for France. It also marked a more significant development in Gerrard’s international career – Sven-Goran Eriksson’s unfathomable decision to shift Paul Scholes to left midfield in order to accommodate the Liverpool captain and Frank Lampard in the centre, thereby ending Scholes’ international career and starting the endless debate over his replacement’s compatibility in the process. A decade later what proved to be Gerrard’s final England appearance, the goalless World Cup draw against the group winners Costa Rica, would see Gerrard and Lampard reunited yet again.

There was a missed penalty in the World Cup quarter-final defeat by Portugal in 2006, a clear sense that Fabio Capello did not value him as England captain at the dispiriting 2010 World Cup, a moment of personal reward when named in the team of the tournament at Euro 2012 and, finally, the torment of Suárez and Uruguay in São Paulo.

Gerrard never hid, not on the field nor off it, and his retirement leaves a huge void for Hodgson to fill for the 2016 European Championship qualifiers, yet there is an unmistakable sense that the reality never lived up to those Huyton dreams for one of England’s most dedicated captains.