*In some corners of the media, Raheem Sterling can do nothing right: he spends too little, then spends too much, is too mouthy, isn't scoring enough. In an Instagram post, Sterling accused these outlets of being racist towards black footballers. GQ Associate Editor Stuart McGurk looked into it more in this insightful piece. With Sterling once again a hot topic in the news, we returned to the GQ Style profile of the most talked about player in the England squad. He talks a lot about race, football and how he views it, and it makes compelling reading today. *
Footballers aren’t supposed to be like Raheem Sterling. They aren’t meant to be involved in tabloid stories, moral panics, race rows or political debates. They’re supposed to be media-trained, mum-friendly supermen who track back and sell trainers. They’re supposed to be grateful, deferential, and somehow above all the temptations of the average young man. They’re supposed to do the business on the pitch, visit sick kids at Christmas and not much else.
But here we are in 2018, and one of England’s most dynamic young footballers is being hauled into an age-old dispute that’s affected everyone from Jack Johnson to John Barnes: criticism of ostentatious young black men in sport.
The tabloids have never taken to Sterling – not since he first enraged Middle England by answering back to manager Brendan Rodgers in the Being: Liverpool documentary series. But in the last year or so, the young Manchester City forward has found himself in the middle of a full-on ideological spat – between his detractors in the dying media empire of old, and his defenders in the new, woke, digital realm.
One side of the argument is intent on painting him as the personification of all that has gone wrong in the game: a cash-driven, heavily tattooed hoodlum from Sadiq Khan’s lawless London – a little gangster with a club badge. Whereas the other side claims him as the rare example of a forward-thinking, forward-playing footballer, one who’s stayed true to his roots and refuses to doff his cap to the establishment.
The level of discussion around Sterling is enormous, greater than any English player since David Beckham. Alongside Brexit, trans rights and drill music, his name has become part of a generational and familial schism happening in this country now. His name is not one to bring up at the Christmas dinner table. ‘What about that nice Harry Maguire?’ says a nation of worried mums after his name enters the conversation.
But has the young man born Raheem Shaquille Sterling been lost in this political tug of war? As I prepared to interview him, I dived deep into the discourse around him: studying old interviews and flicking through hundreds of headlines. Some wanted his blood, some wanted him deified, but my research only served to take me further away from him. It was as if his reality and his talent had been eroded, as he became a kind of abstract emblem for both sides in a very British culture war.
The day of the interview finally arrived, and looking on at the ‘bad boy of English football’ trying on different outfits and half-dancing along the sticky floors of Manchester’s FAC251 club, the tabloid furor around him felt both absurd and somehow inevitable. Sterling just isn’t like most footballers. You can feel that as soon as he walks in through the door.
Rigorous media training at the behest of their clubs means that footballers can often come across over-rehearsed, uncontroversial or just plain boring these days. But the sharp edges of Sterling’s personality are very much there to prick your fingers on. He’s shy, aloof, funny, occasionally stubborn and unrepentantly North Weezy. Sterling is slight, snake-hipped, yet steely – in both his deltoids and demeanor. He calls a shirt "a Burberry ting" and mouths the lyrics to obscure Afrobeats tunes from his own playlist. He isn’t 'all credit to the gaffer’ and ‘giving a 110 per cent’. He is, for want of a better word, cool. He is more Bobby Brown than Wes Brown – and I’d hazard a guess that’s one of the things the tabloids don’t like about him.
Meeting on the Monday after City’s opening-day decimation of Arsenal (where he opened his account for the season with an 18-yard screamer), I mention that during my preparations I’d watched an interview he did for Football Focus from exactly the same time last season. In that interview, Gary Lineker had asked him what it was like to deal with constant criticism in some sections of the media. Is it a drag constantly talking about the negative headlines, rather than the football itself?
At first he seems fairly Zen about it: "When I was younger – I was like 'why is this happening to me?' But now, it’s part of my job… I can’t complain, just gotta get on with it. I’ve got a life, a family and training in the morning."
But as we dwell further on the issue, his frustrations become evident. "With the gun tattoo, nobody spoke about it before," he considers. "It wasn’t a big issue; there was nothing about it until they made it a big thing. It’s like… if you don’t show it to the world, the world wouldn’t have seen it.
"They say it’s bad for kids to see, but they’re showing even more kids. I think they put things on a much larger scale and make them bigger than they are. If there’s not an issue, why make it an issue? That’s when I think it’s a bit personal."
He is keen to state that he has no issue with taking on criticism, as long as it’s related to what happens on the pitch. "If I have a bad game, kill me", he mock-shouts. "Do what you want, tell the whole world – I have no problem with that. Anything football related, I’m happy to take it, that’s what I’m here for."
But there is a problem there – Sterling is unique among modern footballers in the way that his professional life is almost as contentious as his personal one. For all his inimitable cantering runs down the flanks, his end product is nonetheless questioned by many. He may have taken home a career-best 23 goals across all competitions last season, but many fans and pundits believe there are still far too many missed chances and botched runs in his game. Compared to immaculate contemporaries like Salah, Hazard and Mbappe, he can seem wasteful. On the famously unforgiving international stage, criticisms of him seem to amplify – as any casual Twitter search of his name will tell you. ‘Couldn’t finish an Ikea meatball platter’ was one typical gibe that did the rounds.
His club loyalties and motivations have also been brought into question, and it’s fair to say his old fans at Liverpool don’t exactly adore him. In 2015 he reportedly rejected an improved contract from the club and failed to report to a pre-season tour of Asia – before abruptly signing for City, for £49 million. Despite being an integral part of one of their best teams in recent years, the song on The Kop still goes: 'Raheem Sterling, your agent’s a knob’.
Yet when you look at the simple facts and stats, much of the criticism comes across as overplayed and sometimes totally unfair. When England played Sweden in the World Cup quarter finals, he was ranked the worst English player in the game by the BBC Sport audience, but the fact that he scored lower than substitute Fabian Delph (who hardly touched the ball in 13 minutes) suggests that there might be something else lurking behind the results. Footballers engineer moves to bigger, richer or more-likely-to clubs all the time, but few are as maligned as Sterling for it.
As a player, he isn’t a nailed-on goal machine like Harry Kane, but he is still only 23 years old – and improving every day under the tutelage of Pep Guardiola. As a professional, he probably isn’t bound to the sort of traditional club loyalties footballers used to be (at time of going to press he is being linked with a mega-money move to Madrid) but very few are these days. Perhaps if he were Belgian or Chilean as Thibaut Courtois or Alexis Sánchez are, the public might be more ambivalent about his actions. And quite simply, for all his flaws, no other English player is starting week in week out, scoring and setting up goals for the best club in the land. Sterling isn’t a prospect, he’s already there – he just has a lot further to fall than most English players.
Sitting across from Mr Controversy himself, as he diligently plans the journey back to his mum’s house for a family dinner, it seems bizarre that such a young player could have courted so much hullabaloo so early in his career. In near enough every interview, Sterling does, he finds himself tackling tough questions about the dubious instincts of the British media, while most of his contemporaries are only just breaking through. Having been in the public eye from the age of 17, and an England international since 2014, does he ever feel older than his actual years?
"Nah, I’m 23", he laughs. "Every year my birthday comes… I know the age I am. But I’ve had to mature from young, especially with my upbringing. I’ve seen a lot of life and know the expectations."
Sterling isn’t exaggerating when he says he’s seen a lot. The son of a murdered father, he moved from the Maverley district of Kingston, Jamaica (where last year, social events were banned and businesses forced to close at 7pm due to ongoing gang violence) to the St Raphael’s estate in Wembley, before attending the local Copland Community School. At Copland (now renamed the Ark Elvin Academy), an estimated 92 per cent of pupils come from a minority ethnic background, 36 per cent are on free school meals and over 50 different languages are spoken. I wonder what it was like to go to school in such an environment, so removed from the mainstream of the British experience.
"I was one of those kids on free school meals," he confirms. "But it was amazing growing up with so many different cultures. If I meet a Somali person I speak of bit of Somali to them, because I learnt it at school from some of my good friends. It’s good to have different cultures around you, you learn a lot. You learn what it’s like for them growing up, what their parents are like… you get a feel for their environment."
I suggest to Sterling that it’s probably quite good preparation for playing in a Premier League football team. "It’s a preparation for life, not just for a football team", he replies. "It’s a diverse country, we can learn a lot from different nationalities."
After dazzling in local youth football, young Raheem was quickly snapped up by Queens Park Rangers, before moving to Liverpool at the age of 15. He finished his education in his new city, while his family stayed in London. "It was the right option for me; the way they set up the academy was amazing. I bought straight into it. I was by myself… but I made friends up there and could concentrate on my football."
Moving to a white-majority area though was where he experienced racism for the first time – something Sterling reveals to me out of the blue. "I was walking home from school, and somebody called me over. I thought they wanted to speak to me… and they just called me the word. I didn’t think there was any racism in this country, growing up where I did. I didn’t come across anything like that until then."
What shocks me most is the random directness of it. It’s a long way from the coded tabloid language I had been prepared to talk about, yet also very similar. Such attacks are by no means ancient history either: just last year, he was the victim of a strange, violent and racist training ground attack from a Manchester United fan who kicked him, called him ‘the word’ again and told him that he hoped his ‘mother and child wake up dead in the morning’. His attacker got 16 weeks in prison, while Sterling went on to score twice against Tottenham that afternoon.
Group these incidents together and it becomes clear that Sterling has been through the gamut of racist abuse in this country; evidently, loaded newspaper headlines are just a small part of what a young black man can experience here.
Perhaps because of this, he’s stayed very close to the world he grew up in. Despite moving away before he even finished school, the streets of North West London don’t appear to have left Raheem. His social life hasn’t been streamlined into a series of photo ops with showbiz mates –his friends remain the same as they always have been. "All my friends are from my form class, since Year 7. They’re living their life, but we keep in touch. They always try to give me advice and encouragement," he says proudly.
Having moved from Jamaica to London at the age of five, London to Liverpool at 15, and Liverpool to Manchester at just 20, where feels like home to him now? "Wembley’s home, Kingston’s home," he smiles. "I can’t come back to a season without going to Jamaica for at least five days; eat the food, chilled vibes. And London’s the same, my friends and family are from there. Two beautiful cities that I’m in love with."
His cultural tastes also seem rooted in his London-Jamaican background. Unlike many footballers, his musical choices seem to go far beyond "a bit of Drake in the car."
"I can’t listen to just Drake for too long," he laughs. "I’ve got to mix it up – UK, Jamaican, bashment, hip hop… underground. I like a bit of house but not too much house. Popcaan’s new album, Not3s, J Hus, Kojo Funds. I love the UK scene right now."
He seems intrigued by the clothes he’s modelling today (and enquires after a pair of Wallabees), but he describes himself as a "tracksuit guy" first and foremost. And while he enjoys the restaurants of his latest adopted city, he declares the sofa is his favourite spot in town and that he enjoys "silly walks."
We get onto the subject of footballers’ extra-curricular activities. The English game is littered with lightning-quick academy starlets who seem to fall by the wayside, yet Sterling has added grit and goals to his game. Is lifestyle a contributing factor for those who don’t make it?
"You have to keep it basic off the field, don’t be living life too wild," he explains. "In this country, drinking’s a big thing and you can get caught up in a scene… and then you won’t get the efficiency you want on the football field. You’ve got to look after yourself, and that’s what I’m trying to do."
The overwhelming impression you get from Sterling is that of a complicated young man – but one who above all is defined by his determination and professionalism. Anyone that’s achieved so much, at such a young age, has to be endowed with a special kind of focus, a real will – which makes it even stranger that he’s so often portrayed as a spoilt, distracted, prima donna. Does it bother him that the press has created this character for him?
"That’s their problem", he shrugs. "Everyone who knows me knows exactly who I am and where my heart is. I don’t live my life to please people. Once upon a time I would do certain things to change the perception of me… but in the end people will see the real me and accept the real me. What happens in between now and then is just what happens."
I suggest to him that the way he’s spoken about reminds me of Ashley Cole, another black English player who despite being one of the best in his position, couldn’t seem to do a thing right with the media. "They probably just had their select few that they thought they could get to," he ponders. "He probably made a mistake once in his life, and since then they’ve been on him."
I hope that he is eventually discharged from this war with the tabloids, or he risks ending up seeing out his career in exile, terminally under-appreciated in his own country, yet with a cabinet full of silver.
I hope he finishes his career a happy, old footballer in his own country.
But then, you also get the impression that if anyone can handle it, Raheem can. For all his frustrations, he’s been through more difficult times in much tougher environments. He’s seen more of life and felt more of the glory. And as he says goodbye and climbs into a gleaming top-of the-Range-Rover on the way to eat his mum’s cooking, he at least seems comfortable in the world he’s built around himself. Whether the rest of the world will let him feel comfortable in theirs remains to be seen.
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