Something strange happened to Raheem Sterling when he left Manchester City for Chelsea two years ago. It wasn’t that he disappeared. But he faded, he vanished without anyone knowing why, like a charcoal sketch after an unfortunate nudge. He wasn’t completely forgotten, but he was pretended not to be there.
For the first time in a career that began twelve years ago, when Kenny Dalglish was still Liverpool manager, he was no longer a subject of debate. He was no longer a subject of disagreement or conversation, except to ask the question, “What happened to him?” or “Is he still playing?” And now: “Oh, so he’s at Arsenal now?”
Reminder: Raheem Sterling, 20 goals and 27 assists in 82 caps for the England team, is not yet thirty years old.
Yet so much has been said about him, especially in the tabloids. Detestable, vile, and mostly untrue things, about his tattoos, his private life, the house he gave his mother, the many children he was lent (wrongly), his Funkadelic fur coats, his “bling” side.
Raheem Sterling in the Three Lions shirt
A misunderstood style, an underestimated contribution
“It’s because of my face“, explained the target of these massacres on the front page. The face of a young Londoner of Jamaican descent who had grown up in a so-called “difficult” neighborhood, the face of these kids with too dark skin who scare the bourgeoisie when they hang around in groups outside the subway.
There could have been another Sterling. The boy from Kingston and Wembley who never forgot where he came from. The devout Christian. Paige Millan’s companion, by his side since his teenage years, who dropped everything to follow him to Liverpool and gave him two children. The footballer too, perhaps?
Because while the Sun and others were digging through the bins, another press never managed to leave its doubts and prejudices at the door when it came to assessing what Sterling had brought to his clubs (Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal, we’ve seen worse careers, right?) and to his country. He can frustrate at times, even exasperate. That’s his style. He’s a hyperactive, a action man. He has been known to get carried away by his speed and get tangled up in his dribbling, to miss “ready-made” goals, to forget a teammate who was better placed than him.
What happened to him, quite simply, happens to any striker. The difference is that those few misses are remembered as “proof” that Sterling, frankly, is better. It’s not like that when Harry Kane hits the crossbar or into the keeper’s arms. That doesn’t stop Sterling from having more goals and assists to his credit than any other active Premier League player, aside from Mo Salah: 185.
Fortunately for him, most of his managers have not had such blinkers, even if they have not always been fair to him. Most importantly, Pep Guardiola knows what he owes to the winger he inherited from Manuel Pellegrini. Of the six seasons Sterling played under the Catalan, he finished five as second in their Premier League goalscoring charts. The sixth? That was when he outscored Sergio Aguero in 2019-20, scoring 20 of City’s 102 goals that season.
Pep Guardiola gives his instructions to Raheem Sterling
Victims of Chelsea
Even when the arrival of Jack Grealish in 2021 further increased competition for his preferred position on the left flank – where Guardiola also fielded Phil Foden and Gabriel Jesus that season – only Kevin de Bruyne was more prolific on occasion: 15 goals to the Englishman’s 13.
It is a fact. Sterling’s contribution to Manchester City’s rise to the top tier of English teams in the past decade is consistently underestimated. One reason is his personality – or rather, the way it is presented in the British media. Another is the circumstances in which Pep Guardiola parted ways with him. It was seen as a kind of disavowal, when it was first and foremost a question of overhauling Guardiola’s system, which now had to accommodate a certain Erling Haaland.
And unfortunately, it was at Chelsea that Sterling landed, just as an already dysfunctional club was entering the most tumultuous phase of its history. Thomas Tuchel, who had approved his arrival at Stamford Bridge, was dismissed less than two months later. Graham Potter lasted seven. Frank Lampard returned for a disastrous interim. Mauricio Pochettino, who got the team back on track, was dismissed with a sack.
Each of them seemed to have a different idea of where Sterling could contribute the most, and so he played six of them in the space of two years. Name one Chelsea player – just one – who shone during those two years when Todd Boehly and his associates gave proof after proof of their incompetence?
With Arteta, he is on familiar ground
And so Sterling, who is not given a free pass, found himself in a sort of no man’s land. Still a starter in Gareth Southgate’s starting eleven who played the first two matches of the 2022 World Cup – his fifth major tournament with the Three Lions
-, Sterling has not been called up to the national team since.No questions were asked about him when new (interim) manager Lee Carsley spoke to the press last week, when it would have been unimaginable not to see him in an England shirt just three years ago. New Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca, having relied on him in pre-season games, in which Sterling excelled, has finally decided that he is not the kind of winger who suits his style of play. The truth may have been of a different sort. Sterling was the highest paid player in a bloated Blues squad, whose accountants are turning to increasingly bizarre ‘solutions’ (sell hotels to themselves etdo the same for the women of the club
) to balance the accounts.
Sterling is also hungry for revenge. His move to Arsenal could not have come at a better time. He knows how much Mikel Arteta, who he worked alongside for just over three years in Manchester, appreciates him. He has taken care to put all the odds on his side. He has his own fitness coach, Ben Rosenblatt, the former physiotherapist for the England national team. He worked hard on his fitness during the off-season, and went to fine-tune his preparation with the Harlequins rugby players and the judokas from the Camberley club before joining Chelsea. He is ready.
