On the pitch, his play has hit new heights. Off it, he was football’s man of the year. I had to vote for Sterling

THIS time last year, I voted for Mo Salah for Footballer of the Year and felt guilty I had not picked Kevin de Bruyne. Yesterday, I cast my F o o t b a l l Wri t e r s ’ Association vote f or Raheem Sterling and felt guilty that I had not picked Virgil van Dijk. Guilt is always going to be part of the equation when you have to choose between players as good as these. Some say that this year it is a bigger part of the equation than ever.

I voted for Sterling because he has been the stand-out player in Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City team who will win the Premier League title for the second time in succession if they close out their remaining three matches against Burnley, Leicester and Brighton.

I voted for him because of the goals he has s cored and t he goals he has created and t he entertainment he has provided. I voted for him because the real privilege of being at England’s behind-closed-doors match against Croatia in Rijeka last autumn was seeing Sterling close up, getting a more intimate glimpse not just of the football skills we’re all aware of but the way he holds off defenders with his upper body strength, his determination, his tenacity.

I voted for him because of the leap forward he has taken. Luis Suarez spoke last week about how Liverpool’s players used to mock Sterling for his poor finishing when he was at the club. Sterling worked on that. He has scored 17 league goals this season. Plus that hat-trick for England against the Czech Republic last month. ‘The change in him is spectacular,’ said Suarez.

But I voted for Sterling for other reasons, too. Wider reasons, I suppose. I voted for him because, after he was abused by a group of Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge last December, he had the courage to put his head above the parapet and speak out about the way he felt black players were treated by the media c o mpared wi t h whi t e players.

At a time when racism is creeping back into the English game, when a banana was thrown at PierreEmerick Aubameyang during the North London derby at Wembley, when black ex-players still find it unpalatably hard to get managerial jobs in the top four divisions, when Danny Rose is so sick of racial abuse he can’t wait to get out of the g a me, S t e r l i n g c h a n g e d the

conversation. He shone a light on the issue and gave us a glimpse of the effect that player activism could have on racism in this country just as the actions of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick have fuelled the Black Lives Matter campaign in the United States and stimulated the debate about the treatment of black men and women by police in America.

Sterling became a lightning rod for concerns about racism in English football and in English society. On the pitch, his play hit new heights for Manchester City. Off the pitch, he was football’s man of the year. Perhaps some feel above reproach but, for the rest, he made us look a little more closely at what we do and how we act.

In the aftermath of the abuse Sterling suffered, I was invited to become part of a WhatsApp group that consisted mainly of black, Asian and minority ethnic journalists. It was a forum for a lot of justified resentments. I didn’t contribute much but I did learn a lot.

Sterling’s intervention was the catalyst for the formation of the group. It made me think more carefully about the language we often fall back on to describe black players. Some of the other members of the group said they were going to get T- shirts made with the slogan ‘Pace and Power’ printed on them because that was all black players ever got credit for.

They were right. How many black playmakers are there? When do you ever hear black players being prai s e d by c o mmentators o r journalists for their vision or their awareness or their intelligence or their thinking? Not often. It is usually just pace and power. It is their athleticism. Changing the language is a small, small thing amid much bigger steps that need t o be t a ken but it i s worth addressing. You will know by now that on Friday UEFA announced they had ordered Montenegro to play a game behind closed doors and fined the Montenegrin FA £17,600 for the racial abuse aimed at Sterling, Callum Hudson- Odoi and Rose during the Euro 20 qualifier in Podgorica last month. It was a pathetically light punishment. But that’s the way it’s been for a long time now: FIFA and UEFA say all the right things about racism and then do next to nothing.

News of the fine spread dismay yesterday but since Sterling has started speaking out, there is a harder edge to that dismay. Dismay has been replaced by another word: Enough. If Sterling has accelerated t he pace of change, it i s an achievement that deserves its place in our view of him alongside the beauty he provides on a football pitch. Together, they’re why I voted for him as the FWA Footballer of the Year.