Steven Gerrard rattles off the first question in the interview and it is an unsurprising one. "How are things back home?" he enquires.


Night has fallen on Merseyside to a backdrop of relentless rain. Drivers have been warned over high winds, and sightings of light blue skies are as rare as a convincing Liverpool victory in recent weeks. Meanwhile, it is mid-afternoon in Los Angeles and the sun is a fierce yellow inferno.


The frenzy over Super Bowl 50, contested in the San Fransisco Bay Area and won by the Denver Broncos at the start of the week, is still fresh. The beaches need no Instagram filters or captions and pastel shades of ice cream are prominent. It is - quite literally - night and day between Liverpool and LA, but Gerrard immediately suggests that "it doesn't matter how far you go and how nice it is, there's no place like home".


It is 406 days since the 35-year-old announced that he would be exiting his city of birth and his boyhood club in what he described as "the toughest decision of my life". Over a year has passed but the emotional ties have proved hard to loosen. "It's still taking time to settle and sink in that I'm not a Liverpool player any more," he tells Goal. "It wasn't as if, the day after my last game, I could just let go and say that's that.