The Sunday Times May 22, 2022 5When Raheem Sterling left Liverpool
in the summer of 2015, it was to
better his chances of winning the
biggest prizes. At the time
Manchester City were more likely to
win titles than Liverpool and as
Sterling’s then agent Aidy Ward said
at the time, £900,000-a-week
wouldn’t have kept him at Anfield.
The expectation is that Sterling will
win his fourth Premier League medal
this afternoon.
No one can say the decision he
made as a 20-year-old hasn’t been
vindicated. He’s 27 now and as well as
the Premier League titles, he’s been
part of a City team that’s won the FA
Cup and four Carabao Cups. There
have been a lot of big occasions with
many ending in victory. What’s not to
be satisfied about?
A lot, in fact.
After being an unused substitute at
the London Stadium last weekend, it
is reported that Sterling will start this
afternoon’s hugely important game
against Aston Villa. He won’t be
presuming anything. What he’s learnt
from six seasons under Pep
Guardiola is that with the quality of
attacking players at the club, few
players are guaranteed to start the
biggest games.
Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo
Silva, for sure. In the pecking order,
Phil Foden, Gabriel Jesus and Riyad
Mahrez stand next in line. Marginally
behind them, Sterling and Jack
Grealish. Into this ultra competitive
arena is about to arrive Erling
Haaland, a brilliant scorer who will
have to adapt to the technical
demands of playing for Guardiola.
Sterling is one of those players not
content to start a lot of games while
being left out of the most important.
That he has scored more Premier
League goals under Guardiola than
any other City player means nothing
when it comes to team selection and
the inescapable truth is that as the
team’s attacking play has improved,
Sterling’s importance to the squad
has marginally diminished.
“I’m 24 years of age; every year it’s
getting better,” he said in a 2019
interview. That was true then but not
now. Ultimately the games that
matter most to the elite players are
the knockout games in the
Champions League. For last season’s
quarter-final against Borussia
Dortmund, Sterling played all of two
minutes. Against PSG in the semi-
final, he got eight minutes.
His presence in the starting XI forSterling at crossroads
as impact for City fades
last season’s final against Chelsea was
a surprise. He needed a big game but
the team didn’t perform and he was
quiet. In this season’s key games in
the Champions League, he started
the home quarter-final against
Atletico Madrid but was on the bench
for the away leg and again on thebench, home and away, against Real
Madrid in the semi-final.
He knows this is something he’s
got to deal with. “If there was an
opportunity to go somewhere else,
I’d be open to it,” he said last October,
suggesting he would prefer moving to
a club in France or Spain. “With
everything that comes with football,
money, being able to do nice things... at the end of the day, if football for
me is not at a certain standard I’m not
really at my happiest.”
The comments came in the
immediate aftermath of being left out
of the starting team for Premier
League games against Chelsea and
Liverpool. Asked about Sterling’s
comments, Guardiola was largely
unsympathetic, saying that if Sterling
wasn’t happy he was free to leave:
“What I want from Raheem and
everyone is they have to be satisfied
to be here and delighted to be in this
club. If that’s not the case they are
free to take the best decision for the
player and his family.”
Guardiola also said he would
always pick the attacking player who
scored three goals every game but in
his time there was only one of those
and so he never let Lionel Messi out
of the Barcelona team.
This stand-off with Sterling took
place six months ago. Since then
nothing much has changed. Sterling
has played plenty of Premier League
games but Guardiola didn’t start him
in either of the games against Real
Madrid. With Sterling the weakness is
that he loses the ball too often and for
a side that likes to control possession
this is a significant problem,
especially against the best teams.
The irony is that as Sterling has
tried to adapt his game to the team’s
needs, he forfeits the risk-taking that
was once part of his quality. For
England at Euro 2020, he would take
the ball with his back to goal, turn
and run at defenders. If that came
with the risk of losing possession, it
often unnerved the opposition and
contributed to more incisive
attacking play. For City, his first
instinct is generally to pass.
And now, at a pivotal moment in
his career, Sterling finds himself at a
crossroads. He can stay and hope to
become a more frequent starter in
the biggest games or decide that’s
unlikely to happen and leave. His
contract with City runs to the end of
next season and the club will want
him to sign a new deal or else they
will try to sell him this summer.
Sterling has said he wouldn’t mind
playing in the French or Spanish
league. Last year there was talk of
Barcelona being interested but they
spent what they had on Ferran
Torres. Real Madrid want Kylian
Mbappé and if that happened,
perhaps PSG could be interested in
Sterling. It has been reported that
Tottenham and Arsenal are
interested but who knows for sure.
Something Sterling said six months
ago remains as true now as it was
then. Namely he is a player looking
for an opportunity to start
somewhere else. Perhaps he now
needs that opportunity.
Sterling has missed key fixturesHaaland arrival will
only bring greater
frustration for a player
badly in need of move‘The stand-off with
Sterling took place
six months ago.
Since then nothing
much has changed’DAVID
WA LS HChief Sports WriterTHE VALUE OF STERLING ...
Most PL goals under Pep Guardiola... AND HIS DECLINE
Sterling past five seasons
Mins played Goals Assists2017-18
3,567 23 13
2018-19
4,096 25 15
2019-20
3,989 31 52020-21
3,705 14 10
2021-22
3,054 17 7Raheem SterlingSergio AgüeroRiyad MahrezKevin De BruyneGabriel Jesus8582585038it was so much simpler,” he says. “I
miss the simplicity of it. There are
good sides and bad sides of the profes-
sional game v non-League game
divide. People obviously point to the
money and status, the opportunities
and luxuries, you’re afforded as a pro,
but I just think the game is played in
non-League in its purest form.”
He is finishing the season strongly
for Villa, and his extraordinary block
to deny Wout Weghorst a winning goal
for Burnley in Thursday’s draw at Villa
Park was one of the best bits of
defending of the season. During a dif-
ficult patch earlier in the campaign,
he took a break from social media —
and that was another tonic.
“We were going through a bad run
of games and in those times I could
keep sending messages out: ‘Oh we’re
really sorry, we’re going to keep work-
ing harder,’ but that’s only really for
the fans to see,” Mings says.
“I came off social media because I
felt it was a good time to work harder
at the club. My role as captain is to
help identify why the team isn’t
playing well and rectify it, but also to
remind myself that it isn’t reality. I
think the more you read on there, the
more you shape an opinion of your-
self based on other people’s opinions,
which isn’t healthy.” Was it liberating?
“Definitely. All of your thoughts and‘We did without any
support from the
government. Now
isn’t the time you get
to wade in, put your
England shirt on and
get some applause’opinions are wholly yours again. I
definitely use social media a lot less
than I did anyway and that break gave
me a bit of time to disconnect.”
Mings is likely to be in the England
squad that Gareth Southgate names
on Tuesday, for the Nations League
matches with Hungary, Germany and
Italy next month. He has been identi-
fied by the England manager as one of
the “culture leaders” of the group and
is typically engaged and thoughtful
about Qatar’s hosting of the World
Cup. What issues — if any — might
England players seek to campaign on?
“I haven’t had time to educate
myself massively on Qatar’s culture,”
he says. “I’ve been there to rehab a
back injury. Fantastic culture. And I
find it hard to criticise another coun-
try’s culture just because it doesn’t
align with ours. But I’m big on
equality and inclusivity and the
LGBTQ community are high on every-
one’s thoughts, for safety, in terms of
[fans] going to Qatar.
“There are humanitarian and
workers’ rights as well. Qatar will say,
about the abolition of the kafala
system [which determines the status
of migrant workers] that they’re mak-
ing more progress than other coun-
tries and have made more progress
since being awarded the World Cup
than in the last 100 years or whatever.
“Boycotting the World Cup isn’t
going to do anything positive. What
we can do is highlight the problems
we think Qatar has.
“I think there are a whole host of
complex questions, but the kind of
questions we in the England team
have never shied from trying to get to
the bottom of.”Mings has deep
connections to
non-League football,
having started out
with Yate Town on his
rise to becoming
Aston Villa captain
and an England
international, inset
ANDREW FOX