Raheem Sterling - from scapegoat to national icon
Turn right out of Neeld Crescent, walk past Harrow Road’s cluster of fast-food shops, cross the train line on the concrete footbridge and, around half a mile later, you're standing on the Wembley Stadium concourse.
It was a short and simple journey for Raheem Sterling from his home in Brent, north-west London, to the national stadium where he dreamed of playing.
In fact, if you look closely at Sterling’s forearm, you’ll see a tattoo of a young boy holding a football, looking up at the Wembley arch. You might not have heard about it, although the chances are you will know about the one of a gun on his right leg.
Those two images – and what they have come to represent – tell us a lot about Sterling’s journey from child prodigy to European Championship finalist, one that has been anything but straightforward.
It is a tale of loss, of racism, of vilification, of talent, of dreaming big and of a sportsman’s power to make a difference on and off the pitch. And, at every stage, of proving his doubters wrong.
It's easy to forget that Raheem Sterling is only 26 years old. His has been a life lived in the limelight, on and off the pitch, with a glare of publicity that has existed ever since he joined Liverpool from Queens Park Rangers aged 15 for £600,000 and which has intensified with every passing year.
At times that glare has shone on his performances for club and country. But often that has been a sideshow.
An incident from 2018 says a lot about the challenges he has endured.
“Raheem shoots himself in foot” screamed the front page of the Sun newspaper, as pictures emerged of a tattoo of on M16 assault rifle on his leg. It was “sick”, the paper added.
But there was so much more to the story than met the eye.
Sterling’s father was shot dead in Kingston, Jamaica, when Raheem was two.
With the World Cup a matter of weeks away, he was having to explain himself, saying the tattoo had a “deeper meaning” and that it reflected a vow he made to “never touch a gun” after his father was killed.
Not for the first time, the frenzy around Sterling, rather than his football, became the focus.
The boy from Brent
Sterling never knew his dad, but there was no lack of parental influence. He cites his mother, Nadine, as the most significant factor in his football career.
It was Nadine who brought him to England, setting up home in Neasden, north-west London, when he was five.
She gained an education while cleaning bathrooms and changing bed-sheets.
Sterling spent time at Vernon House, a special school, where teachers attempted to help with his behavioural problems.
Writing for Players’ Tribune, Sterling said: “I just didn’t like to listen to anyone but my mum. That was my problem.”
“If you carry on the way you’re going, by the time you’re 17 you’ll either be playing for England or you’ll be in prison,” teacher Chris Beschi told 10-year-old Sterling.
Beschi was right. On 14 November 2012 – 24 days short of his 18th birthday – Sterling made his first senior England appearance.
“If anybody deserves to be happy, it’s my mum. She came to this country with nothing… and now she’s the director of a nursing home. And her son plays for England”
By the time of his England debut, Sterling had a reputation as a precociously talented, pacy attacker.
He had already become the third-youngest player to represent Liverpool, and the second-youngest to score for them in a competitive fixture.
Those landmarks were just the start.
He was soon one of the club’s most important players and, in 2013-14, formed a thrilling attack alongside Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge, which looked set to end the Reds’ 34-year wait for a top-flight title. That climaxed with a Steven Gerrard slip and heartbreak for Liverpool, but Sterling was soon playing regular Champions League football. That year he won Europe’s prestigious Golden Boy award, an honour bestowed by journalists on the player deemed to be the continent’s best young player.
But alongside this success came something sinister, something that has lingered throughout his career and something with which his name would become synonymous - racism.
First, in July 2015, came a turning point for Sterling.
Imagine being 20 years old and becoming the most expensive English player in history. That's what happened when Manchester City signed him for £49m on a five-year contract.
City boss Manuel Pellegrini described Sterling as "one of the best attacking players in world football".
It was the stuff of dreams.
It was a huge and pivotal moment in his career. But with the signing came a wave of criticism. He was accused of being a money-grabber. His contract with Liverpool was worth £35,000 a week and he turned down an offer of £100,000 to stay, instead asking to leave.
In an interview with BBC Sport, he said he "talks about winning trophies" rather than money.
Liverpool’s last piece of silverware had been the League Cup in 2012. Their last league title? Four years before he was born.
“I don’t want to be perceived as a money-grabbing 20-year-old, I just want to be seen as the kid that wants to play football”
While one newspaper accused him of being “greedy”, criticism wasn’t just coming from the press. Former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard said he was “disappointed” with Sterling.
And in May 2015, he was booed by some of his own fans after winning Liverpool’s Young Player of the Year award. The club’s former manager Graeme Souness said the supporters “would be entitled to turn on him”.
Fiercely criticised for having the temerity to force through the move to Manchester City through his actions off the pitch, he was soon having to deal with the scourge of racism on it.
As Sterling headed in for Manchester City training on 9 December 2018, he made a decision to send an Instagram post to his millions of followers. It was a post which would have far-reaching consequences. It would become a pivotal moment in his career, his life and in the way football confronts racism.
The night before, on a cold Saturday evening at Stamford Bridge, Sterling went to retrieve the ball in readiness for a corner, as champions Manchester City went in search of a goal against Chelsea.
It should have been a relatively innocuous moment. It proved anything but. The contorted faces of the white men hurling abuse in his direction remain vivid images even now.
That was Sterling’s 24th birthday.
Manchester City reported the abuse as racist.
Sterling said he "had to laugh" when he heard the remarks because he expects "no better”. After all, this was nothing new. The previous year, 29-year-old Karl Anderson had been jailed for racially aggravated common assault after an “unprovoked” attack on Sterling outside City’s training ground.
Police investigated the allegations relating to the Chelsea match, but the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence for a criminal charge.
Chelsea conducted their own investigation and lip-reading experts concluded the abuse was racist. One Chelsea fan was banned for life, with five others banned for between one and two years for incidents at the same game.
En route to training the day after the incident, Sterling pressed ‘post’.
He compared two Daily Mail articles about his Manchester City team-mates Phil Foden and Tosin Adarabioyo: “I am not normally the person to talk a lot but when I think I need my point to [be] heard I will speak up,” he wrote.
The headline in the article about Adarabioyo, a black player, read: “Young Manchester City footballer, 20, on £25,000 a week splashes out on mansion on market for £2.25m despite having never started a Premier League match”.
The headline on the article about Phil Foden, a white player, said: “Manchester City starlet Phil Foden buys new £2m home for his mum.”
Sterling called the difference in treatment of Foden and Adarabioyo unacceptable.
“This young black kid is looked at in a bad light. Which helps fuel racism and aggressive behaviour,” he said.
“For all the newspapers that don’t understand why people are racist in this day and age, all I have to say is have a second thought about fair publicity and give all players an equal chance.”
It was simple, but extremely powerful. And it sparked a national conversation about the media’s treatment of black players, and Sterling in particular.
The Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) made the link between press coverage of Sterling and racism in the stands, saying Sterling is "often singled out".
"While it may be true that no racial slurs have been used in the press coverage received by Raheem and others, we are in no doubt that the negative narrative influences public opinion and emboldens racist rhetoric," it said.
Arsenal and England legend Ian Wright asked: "How many people do you see get the criticism Sterling gets?"
"They are picking on him because of the background he has come from and they want to keep him down, drag him back down. They don't want him to continue to be a success.”
Clive Ellington, Sterling’s former mentor who identified his footballing ability as an eight-year-old, said the person he knew had “always been very humble, very focused on his football, and the media was painting a different picture of him this whole time”.
Former England and Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher also spoke about the media’s coverage of Sterling, saying it “has racial undertones”.
"The perception is of a young, flash, black kid from London... The perception that he's more interested in cars, jewellery, night clubs than football," Carragher said.
"Anyone writing that, it's garbage. Raheem was a mouse. He wasn't on nights out, he was humble and trained very well.”
But this wasn't just an issue at home.
Spokesman
In March 2019, England played Montenegro in Podgorica in a Euro 2020 qualifier, beating them 5-1. The Montenegro fans had been chanting racist abuse throughout the game and, in the 81st minute, Sterling scored the fifth goal and was subjected to yet more vitriol from the stands.
He celebrated by cupping his hands to his ears, which he later said was a direct response to the abusers.
And he called on football's authorities to take "a proper stance".
"The punishment should be, whatever nation it is, if your fans are chanting racist abuse then it should be the whole stadium so no-one can come and watch,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
"When the ban is lifted, the fans will think twice. They all love football, they all want to come and watch their nation so it will make them think twice before doing something silly like that."
Seven months later, another England qualifier - this time a 6-0 win in Sofia over Bulgaria - was overshadowed by racism that led to the game being stopped twice.
In the 28th minute, Sterling was a target of the chanting that led to the game being halted for the first time. It was one of those moments so shocking that you remember where you were and who you were watching it with.
He condemned the “idiots” afterwards. Once again, Sterling was making a stand.
In June 2021, Sterling spoke to ITV about how the media portrays him.
“Putting these perceptions in people’s brains, I just felt like that is something that can make people really dislike you,” he said.
“You’ve got to speak up, and I think the most important thing is for players who follow us afterwards, to try to make it a lot easier for them.”
Over the previous few years Sterling had, unwittingly or not, become a spokesman for racial equality. He was no longer speaking up just for himself.
“It’s almost like he’d weathered the storm and he was playing the role of the big brother,” journalist Musa Okwonga, speaking about the Instagram post, told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Football Daily podcast.
“That’s where the spokesman aspect comes in - he’s saying this isn’t just about me, it’s not my own grievance, it’s how are we treating this generation of footballers? Is this really appropriate, if we want England to flourish?
“And that was so clever because it held up a mirror to the media’s treatment of Sterling and other black players in a way that had never happened before.”
Sterling played that role again in 2019 when Juventus and Italy’s Leonardo Bonucci suggested that the racist abuse his team-mate Moise Kean received had been partly Kean’s fault.
Kean, then 19, spread his arms while facing the crowd after scoring for Juve in a Serie A game. Bonucci said Kean "could have done it differently" and "the blame is 50-50".
"All you can do now is laugh,” said Sterling.
“I’ve never seen an athlete in my generation take the bullets in the way he has taken the bullets. Metaphorically speaking, he is a martyr”
Broadcaster Craig Mitch
In 2021, athletes speaking out about racism and protesting against racial injustice is the norm. In the summer of 2020, sportsmen and women all over the world joined the global conversation following the murder of unarmed black man George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
But in the context of Sterling’s story, it’s important to remember that when he called out the press for fuelling racism in December 2018, it was still a rarity for a footballer to speak about anything race-related. This wasn’t what footballers were supposed to do.
His standing was underlined when he appeared on BBC TV’s Newsnight in June 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s death, discussing how the incident related to life in the UK.
Everybody in the country needed "an equal chance”, he said, regardless of ethnicity.
"It’s been going on for hundreds of years and people are tired and people are ready for change,” he said. “But this is something that needs more than just talking. We need to actually implement change and highlight the places that do need changes."
And since footballers started taking a knee in 2020, Sterling has been a crucial voice in that conversation too.
In 2021, Sterling was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to racial equality in sport.
When asked in the ITV interview last month if he would continue to make sure that things change, Sterling said: “It’s not something I’m killing myself to do anymore. It’s not something I’m going to be on the front line speaking about.
“I just feel when it comes to racist abuse, it’s not taken seriously.”
Perhaps, for once, football could be his sole focus.
"He’s doing it because he believes in it, he’s been through that, he knows how it feels and he wants to try and make change in a positive way"
Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson
Amid all of the abuse, vilification and negativity, Sterling was somehow putting all that aside when on the pitch.
In 2017-18, he played a crucial role in Manchester City’s title win as they became the first team to register 100 points in a Premier League season. It was the first of three league titles he has won with City.
The following season, he was instrumental in a domestic treble, as Pep Guardiola’s team won the Premier League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup. The 24-year-old also won the PFA Young Player of the Year award, as well as the Football Writers’ Association’s Footballer of the Year award.
Under the guidance of manager Guardiola, he cemented his place as one of Europe’s premier attacking players. He has reached double figures for goals in each of the past four Premier League seasons, and has surpassed 100 career goals in all competitions.
With the potential to play for another decade at the highest level, he has already amassed 96 Premier League goals, putting him 32nd on the all-time list. It would be surprising if he doesn't finish in the top 10.
But through it all, there has been a constant sense that he is not appreciated at international level in the way he is by his club’s supporters.
Until now.
In some ways, Raheem Sterling's England career is his life in microcosm - the constant criticism, the doubt and the abuse, but emerging triumphant through it all.
Sterling has been a mainstay for the national side since his international debut nine years ago, but his popularity with successive managers has not always been mirrored in the stands.
His England career can be divided into two vastly contrasting sections.
Sterling scored two goals in his first 45 caps up to October 2018. Since then, he has scored 15 times in 22 appearances, during which time he has captained the team twice.
Why the difference?
“You grow up, mature, stop looking for people to give you validation. It’s got to come from within”
Sterling was involved in 15 of England’s 37 goals in qualifying for Euro 2020 and yet, after a relatively disappointing season at club level when he was left out of some key games, his place in Gareth Southgate’s side for Euro 2020 was the subject of much debate before the tournament.
But if there was doubt, there was certainly no self-doubt.
The perfect illustration came when he was asked, having scored England’s only goal in the opening 1-0 win over Croatia, whether he had justified his inclusion. His reaction, a raise of the eyebrows and a slight tilting of the head, said more than any words could.
Less than a month on, he stands on the cusp of greatness. Goals against the Czech Republic and Germany have followed, and he produced a stand-out performance, growing stronger with each passing minute, as England overcame Denmark in the semi-finals.
It was he who won the penalty which decided the game, although perhaps inevitably even that brought with it controversy, with accusations that he had dived.
Now, as the European Championship final with Italy beckons, Sterling has history within his grasp. He has a strong case to be considered player of the tournament, a feat which would be remembered for generations as England aim to end a 55-year wait for a major trophy.
He has been helped, he says, by “Wembley magic”, and has spoken of how the “support and energy from all the fans have been incredible both at Wembley, and from everyone watching at home”.
His has been – and continues to be – a turbulent story. But on Sunday, a few minutes from his childhood home, could he write the most glorious chapter, one he dreamed about as a boy?
CREDITS
Written and produced by Miriam Walker-Khan
Illustrations by Kingsley Nebechi
Editors: John Stanton and Sam Chadderton
Photos: Getty Images
Publication date: 9 July 2021