CITY Sterling’s critics are attacking wrong guy
RAHEEM Sterling had breakfast on Monday morning. The absolute nerve of the man.
He trails in third in the PFA Young Player of the Year, bringing embarrassment to his club, country and young footballers everywhere and then brazenly tucks into a bowl of Frosties … IN PUBLIC.
That is what is wrong with football these days. Players like Sterling under-achieve, only winning the Premier League and Carabao Cup, and scoring 23 goals, and holding down a position in the country’s outstanding football team.
And despite all that failure, he swans around in an expensive car, flaunting his croissants and wearing a baseball cap - in a plush Cheshire suburb where there are known to be retired colonels and blue-rinsed ladies of leisure.
Why can’t he catch the tram to City training, or at least buy a second-hand Skoda, like Tom Finney would have done?
Sterling seems to excite this nonsense like no-one else, inducing a sneering, insidious tone from people who often should know better.
Media outlets fall over themselves to show us what a complete wastrel he is. Sterling buys big, flash house (for his mum, as it turns out, bless him) days after England’s Euro exit, Sterling flies Easyjet, Sterling eats a pasty from Greggs.
Then we have Sterling being accused of ‘letting his country down’ by cave-dwelling opposition fans, as if he has just sold the Crown Jewels to Kim Kardashian.
Why Sterling? Is it because of the love-in with Liverpool, where he is a figure of hate after leaving Anfield in a bid to improve himself as a player and further his career?
Is it because his younger days were peppered with stories about his love life, or the fact he had friends who used shisha pipes, or was pictured inhaling helium from a balloon?
Or is there something more sinister?
The helium balloon episode was typical of the utter tripe that gets written.
It was labelled as his ‘drugs shame,’ as if he had turned into Colombian narcotics baron Carlos Escobar, rather than being a teenager having a giggle by making his voice sound squeaky.
What makes this treatment of Sterling even more indigestible is that the lad is not the brash, cocky bling merchant these stories convey.
People are pleasantly surprised when they meet him, to find a polite, quiet, sensitive soul – he remains a football rarity, someone who thanks people for interviewing him!
While his younger days might have seen him make a few mistakes, who among us didn’t mess up as a teen?
Nowadays, at the grand old age of 23, Sterling’s life has morphed into that of James Milner, often ridiculed – again, unfairly – as being stultifyingly dull.
Sterling’s social media nowadays show him with his girlfriend and kids, doing dull, everyday domesticated stuff … you know, like popping down the road for a bit of breakfast.
If he was not that man, Pep Guardiola would have shown him the door by now – he is not a manager who tolerates self-servers, showboaters or braggarts.
You just know that if – or probably when – England flop in the World Cup, it won’t be Harry Kane, or Jordan Henderson, or Jamie Vardy, who takes the rap.
It will be Sterling who is ‘flaunting his wealth’ after bringing shame to a group of people who think it is acceptable to shower Amsterdam tourists with beer.
And he will not have to dance on top of his Bentley, using a St George flag as floss, to invite such approbation. All he will have to do is pop down the road for a bacon buttie.