FOOTBALL IS ONE of the very few jobs in the world whereby an employee, in this case Raheem Sterling, is relentlessly lambasted for being ambitious and seeking a pay rise.
Granted, the analogy is clearly somewhat flawed. The average job is mundane, whereas working in football is extraordinary by any measure. Furthermore, most people never have nor never will be placed in the incredibly fortunate position whereby they can afford to turn down a £100,000-a-week offer.
But the parallels are not entirely irrelevant. How many people could honestly say that they’d do differently to Sterling if one company was offering £100,000, whereas a rival company — or at least someone in a position of authority (e.g. an agent) — was promising the strong possibility of earning £150,000?
And yes, ‘company’ is the key word, because once you strip away all the emotion and magical thinking that invariably surrounds football, that’s what every Premier League club is, effectively.
Of course, many people will argue that Sterling isn’t worth £150,000-a-week and they may well be right. But teams such as Manchester City are financially secure enough that they can well afford to gamble continuously — you could probably even make a decent XI out of all the highly-touted British youngsters that have failed to make an impact at the Etihad. The owners, therefore, won’t stop rolling the dice, in the hope that they can eventually find a young English star who can survive and thrive, as only Joe Hart has really done since the Eastlands revolution’s inception in 2008.
Sterling sceptics warn that the player may follow the plethora of unfulfilled English talent into obscurity (or worse, Aston Villa) should he decide to make the move to City, or even Arsenal, where a first-team spot will ostensibly be more difficult to secure than at Anfield. And they may have a point in that regard — Sterling clearly has plenty of talent, he is not the one-dimensional speed merchant that wingers are often accused of being — in addition to pace and trickery, he possesses excellent vision and intelligent movement. Yet his performances have been highly inconsistent this year, and too often, when Liverpool are under the cosh, the youngster has failed to rise above the mediocrity, as players such as Luis Suarez invariably managed to do last season.
However, those factors aside, is recent criticism of the England international really justified?
Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher has been one of Sterling’s more outspoken critics. During the most recent edition of Monday Night Football, while acknowledging that the winger is “a good lad,” the Sky pundit said: “For a 20-year-old kid to be taking on Liverpool Football Club over a contract. To the pit of my stomach that just winds me up, it angers me.”
He added: “To do what he’s done now. There’s nothing worse than that. You keep your mouth shut — get on with playing football.”
Most Sterling critics will acknowledge his London background and the fact that he doesn’t have the same affinity for the club that more local players such as Carragher or Steven Gerrard might have. They will empathise with his ambition and desire to test himself at the highest level.
What fans — many of whom booed Sterling at the club’s annual awards ceremony last night — and critics of the player seemingly cannot abide, however, is his decision to go public in a now-infamous BBC interview, seemingly under the influence of his agent or representative. And this decision was probably ill-advised. It created more trouble for the youngster than it was worth, and arguably terminally disrupted Liverpool’s season in the process.
The interview was ultimately a mistake — something more or less everyone reading this will have made more than once in their late teens or early 20s. The difference for Sterling is that his mistake occurred with millions watching.
The Jamaica-born starlet insisted he was not a money grabber, but many people got the opposite impression, after Sterling voluntarily admitted to turning down a lucrative contract offer. As PR disasters go, it was up there with the worst ones in recent memory.
Sterling’s indifferent displays on the field haven’t helped since then, nor have the latest rumours of unrest, but the cardinal sin appears to have been that BBC interview, as far as the majority of observers are concerned.
The latest press snippets suggest Sterling’s agent feels he has been “bullied” by the club. Carragher and others have ignored this claim, but perhaps there is more than an element of truth to it.
Many people seem to think Sterling created the controversy by going public with the BBC interview, when in fact, it was Brendan Rodgers and Liverpool who really initiated the whole trial by media.
Sterling went public in April — two months after Rodgers had openly told the press that the club made the winger an “incredible” offer. By making this statement, Liverpool backed the young player into a corner and it’s no surprise he decided to adhere to a similarly aggressive strategy thereafter.
By emphasising this “incredible” offer, the club were clearly engaging in bully-boy tactics and left Sterling open to accusations of greediness long before he ever made contact with the BBC. To treat one of their biggest assets in this regard seems both cruel and a little naive — perhaps the Reds thought they could pressure the player into signing a deal by subtly threatening him, but clearly, the policy has backfired.
So while Sterling’s conduct has been less than exemplary during this saga, Liverpool’s has surely been far worse.
As Gary Neville highlighted the other night, it’s hardly the first time the club’s authorities have encountered serious problems with one of their best players – Steven Gerrard’s imminent departure appears to have left a sour taste, Luis Suarez stayed for one last season despite similar much-publicised arguing, while even the Jordan Henderson deal was far from harmonious.
Moreover, the one promising young attacker they did tie down to a long-term, five-year £150,000-a-week contract last October — Daniel Sturridge — has completed 90 minutes just twice in the Premier League since then.
Of course, it’s much easier to take the dismissive view and paint Sterling as the epitome of the modern, villainous, ego-driven footballing mercenary, but perhaps Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers would be better off looking in the mirror and asking some hard questions of themselves, after a dismal season in which they have frequently flirted with catastrophe.
