By admin 
On the occasion of Trevor Steven’s 60th birthday, ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley salutes his achievements.
Evertonian Ste Kelly nailed it on Twitter on Trevor Steven’s 60th birthday, declaring, “Of all the 7s around this club, Tricky was, is, and always will be the most important in the Blues’ history.”
Steven, who initially arrived at Goodison Park as a teenager in a £300,000 move from Burnley in 1983, is now three score years old. The Berwick-upon-Tweed native was instrumental in some of Everton’s most memorable moments, scoring 60 goals in 299 games.
He not only scored the third goal against Bayern Munich to cap the Blues’ victory on what is widely regarded as Goodison Park’s greatest-ever night – the 3-1 comeback in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup semi-final second leg in 1985 – but he also scored the second goal in the 3-1 win over Rapid Vienna in the final in Rotterdam as Howard Kendall’s side collected the club’s only continental trophy to date.
The Bayern game has of course taken on almost mythical status with Blues fans and Kendall’s half-time rallying cry to his players when they trailed 1-0 that the Gwladys Street would suck the ball into German side’s net and the complaints over Everton’s physical approach from visiting boss Udo Lattek of: “Mr Kendall, this is not football!” – met with an X-rated response from the home dugout – have become engrained in the fabric of the club’s heritage.
But the brilliance of that Blues team was how they outthought as well as outfought opponents, and the move for the critical third goal four minutes from the end was pure ‘School of Science’ stuff. “That wonderful move,” remembered former ECHO Head of Sport David Prentice. Kevin Sheedy passed it to Andy Gray, who passed it to Trevor Steven.
“If you wanted a man going clean through on goal, your money would be on Steven; there was never any doubt that he’d clip the ball past Pfaff.”
Kendall’s son Simon disclosed to the ECHO in 2020, on the fifth anniversary of his father’s death, that he missed that wonderful Goodison moment in front of the famed end of the ground that would later bear his father’s name.
“It was by far the best atmosphere I’ve ever experienced in any football stadium,” he remarked. That night, the crowd was our 12th guy, much more so than Gwladys Street.
“As a 10-year-old boy, I knew I had no chance of seeing what was about to happen when Trevor Steven was put through for the third and the whole crowd rose in expectation, so I remember sitting down with my head in my hands waiting for the roar!”
When Kendall’s side defeated Watford 2-0 in the FA Cup final the year before for their first silverware in 14 years, it was Steven’s cross that found Gray for the Blues’ second goal, and he bookended that glorious era for the club by finishing as Everton’s top scorer in Division One with 14 goals as they won their ninth League Championship. Indeed, lifting titles was a fantastic habit that Steven mastered.
After helping his first team, Burnley, win the Third Division in 1981/82, Steven went on to win the domestic title no less than ten times. His brace for the Blues was followed by seven Scottish Premier Division titles with Rangers, as well as a Ligue 1 title.
Ivan Ponting wrote in his book Everton Player by Player: “Trevor Steven was a captivating combination of excitement and consistency, equally capable of destroying a defence with a moment of scintillating touchline brilliance or toiling dutifully as a competent cog in the Blues’ midfield machine.” When an out-of-contract Steven opted to transfer to Ibrox in 1989, Everton demanded for a then-British record cost of £2.5 million for his services, only to have a tribunal find they should have received nearly £1 million less.
Goodison Park executives may have felt vindicated two years later when Marseille, creating a super-team under Bernard Tapie before the fines were imposed, paid £5.5 million for Steven’s services, making him the joint most-expensive British player in history.
Two years later, Goodison Park executives may have felt vindicated in their valuation when Marseille, building a super-team under Bernard Tapie before the sanctions were imposed, paid £5.5 million for Steven’s services, making him the joint most-expensive British player in history at the time, along with David Platt, who had moved from Aston Villa to Italian club Bari for the same sum a month earlier. Ponting further claims that when the mega-rich French club was looking for new talent, they consulted another Merseyside football legend, Kenny Dalglish, who was momentarily out of job between managerial spells at Liverpool and Blackburn Rovers, about who to sign…
Lothar Matthaus, the Scot’s first pick, was apparently unavailable, so Steven was the next best thing.