Steven Gerrard, former England and Liverpool captain, says that he truly understands Luis Suarez's decision of leaving the English club for Barcelona, but he is thankful that Suarez did not join Premier League rivals, Arsenal.

"His [Suárez's] wife is from Barcelona and I don't think you can begrudge a player like that, who has worked so hard for his dream," Gerrard said in an interview for Daily Telegraph.

"You can't go against him when he says he is leaving for Barcelona. His dream from the first day he came was to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona. Last summer when he was out in the cold and training on his own that's the conversation I had with him. I said: 'Don't go to Arsenal'.

"I would have been really sad and disappointed to see Luis go to Arsenal. With all due respect to them, I said to him that he was too good for Arsenal.

"I said if you score 30 goals for us and win the PFA player of the year, the press player of the year - I knew he was going to win them - I told him Real or Barcelona will come for you."

"I'm disappointed to see him leave now but I am happy for him that's he has got what he wants and deserves. Since day one he has been phenomenal in training every day and in the games. I think he got the wrong advice last year from people around him, from people saying he needed to play in the Champions League and it did not matter who it was for.

"I have experience of the Spanish clubs myself and I know if you play well they will come back and come back. I knew they'd be back for him as well. I just thought for his own sake, to get respect off the Liverpool fans, he had to give us at least one year.

"A lot of people might still think he should have given us one more, but my big dream was to play for Liverpool, and the foreign players' big dream is to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona, that's a fact."

With reports from: theguardian.com