England and Liverpool FC captain Steven Gerrard has described football as a science that requires years of understanding and practice.

Opening a sports science facility at a Merseyside university, The Telegraph quoted Gerrard as saying.

''Thanks to the university developing the UK's first Sports Science degree, football and other sports are no longer seen as only a game but as a science.''

Named after the UK's first Professor of Sports Science, the Tom Reilly Building houses world-class equipment, including a scanner for measuring body fat, muscles and bone density, physiology suites with treadmills and bicycles, and machines for monitoring the heart, brain, joints and tissue.

Students at the university can read Science and Football as a bachelor's degree.

As well as being home to LJMU's School of Sports and Exercise Sciences, the building also houses the School of Natural Sciences and Psychology.

It contains hi-tech machines for analysing eating disorders, lie detectors, eye-tracking equipment and one-way mirrors like those used in police line-ups. Its neuroscience labs can analyse the changing states of the brain.

The centre, which 8,000 students will use, has a driving simulator which analyses the causes of road rage and the effects alcohol, and a chamber, which recreates conditions where oxygen is restricted, such as at high altitudes.

The Liverpool captain toured the new 25.5 million pound centre at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).

He said: ''This is a fantastic facility which will further enhance Liverpool's reputation as a city of sporting and academic excellence, and I'm delighted to be here today to help the university celebrate its opening."

Gerrard, who wore the captain's armband in England's last match, added: ''It's a great privilege to be launching the building named in honour of Professor Tom Reilly. Like me, his two great passions in life were football and family." (ANI)