‘When I was two, my father was murdered – that shaped my life’
that?” Sterling – who also has 16-month-old son Thiago with fiancee Paige Milian – arrived in the UK from Jamaica at the age of five.
His father Phillip was shot dead when Sterling was just two and he and older sister Lakima spent three years living with his grandmother while his mother established a new life for them in London.
In the run-up to the World Cup, Sterling sparked a media storm with a tattoo of a gun on his left leg – before explaining in a brief statement it was a tribute to his father.
In the interview with the Players’ Tribune website, Sterling said: “When I was two, my father was murdered. That shaped my entire life. Not long after that, my mum made the decision to leave me and my sister in Jamaica and go to England so she could get her degree and give us a better life.
“I didn’t fully understand what my mum was doing for us. I just knew that she was gone.
“My grandma was amazing but everybody wants their mum at that age. Thank God I had football.
“When I was five, we moved to London to be with her, and that was kind of a tough time because the culture was very different and we didn’t have much money.
“My mum was working as a cleaner at some hotels to make money so she could pay for her degree.
“I’ll never forget waking up at five in the morning before school and helping her clean the toilets at a hotel in Stonebridge.”
Sterling admitted he had been a handful as a child and ended up being taken out of primary school for bad behaviour.
But his life was turned around when he started playing Sunday League football in a team organised by Clive Ellington, who used to mentor youngsters who did not have their fathers around.
Sterling said: “That was it. That moment changed my life. From that day, it was football, football, football. Obsessed. Totally obsessed.”
The England star told how Arsenal approached him at secondary school age but his mother persuaded him to opt for QPR instead, rather than risk being swallowed up by the north London club’s youth system.
He said: “My mum would never let me go to training alone and she always had to work, so my sister would have to take me all the way out to Heathrow.
“We’d leave at 3.15pm and get home at 11pm. Every. Single. Day.
“Imagine being 17 years old and doing that for your little brother. I never once heard her say, ‘Nah, I don’t wanna take him’.
“At the time, I didn’t understand how much she was sacrificing. Her and my mum got me here. Without them, you wouldn’t even know me.”
At 15, Sterling was snapped up by Liverpool – another massive turning point in his life. He said: “I love all my friends from my neighbourhood. But at that time, there was a lot of crime and I felt like Liverpool was a chance for me to go away and just focus on football.”
Sterling, who has been capped 39 times for his country, added: “England is still a place where a naughty boy who comes from nothing can live his dream.”