PRIZE GUY RAHEEM THE RELUCTANT ROLE MODEL
Sterling won writers’ player of the year award for his class on and off the field
The same unremitting struggle goes on in the streets that Raheem Sterling calls home. Two people have been killed in separate acts of violence in the past week alone, including the brother of a girl at the school, a stone’s throw from Wembley Stadium, where the player’s skills were first honed.
It is a tough place to grow up. ‘he has probably always spoken up about race because he has seen what other people have gone through and were going through,’ says Paul Lawrence, Sterling’s Pe teacher at the Copland Community School when he was coming through the ranks.
‘he always did speak up more for others than for himself. When players tried to foul him or have a go at him in a game, he would generally get on with it. It was when something was inflicted on others that he would often respond.’
It is an outlook which has seen Sterling become a strong and articulate voice of resistance in the past 12 months to the racism which still pollutes football.
For this, as well as for his contribution to Manchester City’s season, the 24-year-old was yesterday named Football Writers’ Association Player of the Year with 61 per cent of the vote — a huge margin.
The citation states the award should go to the individual who is ‘not just the best player but by precept and example’. It cannot be said that Sterling has gone looking to become a figurehead. he is actually a highly improbable one.
When videos are being shot by players after another significant City victory, Sterling’s team-mates tend to be far more prominent than him. he has always been one of the more reticent speakers.
he articulates so powerfully how it is to be a young black player in the 21st century, though, because he has experienced arguably more than any other player of his generation what a brutal space that can be. The game grew complacent about race, happy to dismiss it as a 1980s problem, and Sterling has spent the last five years justifying his salary and wealth in a way that at white players simply would not have to do.
The BBC interview he gave which made his departure from Liverpool in 2015 so highly charged saw him feeling the need to defend himself against the salary he would be commanding. he didn’t want to be seen as ‘ a money- grabbing 20-year-old’ in his desire to leave for Manchester City.
It is no exaggeration to say he was hated by many in Liverpool at that time. There was pitifully little room for a cool examination n of why he had left. Burdened with h responsibility before his time, often filling the centre forward’s berth Luis Suarez had vacated, he e was just 20 and desperate to put ut his skills to better use in a squad of greater talents.
Within a year, Sterling was at the centre of another storm. he had just bought his mother a new home in Surrey and joked with his friends about it by posting footage of the place in the style of DJ Khaled, who mocks racial prejudice. This was dressed up as Sterling flaunting his wealth. The moment passed and football moved on to its next storm but a generation of young black players were left even more convinced that Khaled was right about them and a white establishment.
The abuse at Stamford Bridge last December, which led Sterling to speak out against the way black players are portrayed in the media and the hate still permeating the game. he also recently described to the New York Times walking towards the tunnel in his first match at everton in City colours and hearing a boy, with his father, hurl racist epithets at him. There was insufficient evidence to prove that the Chelsea abuse was of a racial nature but Sterling’s response had ripples throughout the game.
‘We’d been talking for years about the way we were being represented and the nasty little kinds of abuse and this seemed to capture it,’ one non-League player tells ‘SSuddenly, people wanted to talk ab about this. They wanted to ask us. B Before that, it seemed that the only way racism and stereotyping would be acknowledged was if an insult w was publicly thrown in your face.’
The reluctance of a player to put his name to such comments underlines the distance still to tr travel. Senior police officers have to told Sportsmail they are desperate for fo more players to take the steps Sterling S has.
‘We hear of reports but players are reluctant,’ says one source. Anything which might encourage us u to pursue discrimination more helps us hugely.’
Paul Lawrence says the boy he taught simply wanted to play, free from the bigotry he might encounter on the streets.
‘he would help me set the training stuff up and help me pack it away,’ he observes from the school now called the ARK elvin Academy. ‘he would never relax and rest up, even though he was the best by a mile. he would bring weaker players into the game. I never made him captain. I just wanted him to play with natural freedom.’