Raheem Sterling looks ridiculous in ongoing saga over Liverpool contract
Posted Friday, April 03, 2015 by ESPN
It was surprising to see Raheem Sterling talking in great detail about his contract issue just a few days before one of Liverpool's most important games of the season when he previously said he wanted to concentrate on football.
He really has done himself no favours with this. Simply telling people "it's not about the money" is not going to make them believe it's not about the money. It just makes you look ridiculous.
He has certainly heaped even more unnecessary pressure on to himself. Every missed opportunity or poor piece of play was already being met with withering cynicism from Liverpool fans.
They would moan, "You want £150,000 a week and you can't even use your left foot?" or "If you want that kind of money, how about stepping up to take a penalty instead of letting Lovren do it?"
That will only get worse after this interview. He's also opened himself up to nationwide scrutiny as well. All eyes will be on his every move between now and the summer, and if he thinks the speculation and criticism will go away because he's put "his side of the story" out there, he's mistaken. That interview has merely poured more fuel on an already roaring fire. His advisers have an awful lot to answer for.
"It's not about the money," he said. Well, of course he did; they always say that, don't they? Especially when it is indeed about the money.
The best place for Sterling right now is Anfield. He plays every week, has a manager who understands him (even to the extent of sending him to Jamaica for a week while his teammates are throwing snowballs at each other back at a frozen Melwood), and there's no reason yet to believe the club cannot compete for trophies.
Other clubs may offer more chance of silverware but will Sterling play such a pivotal role for them? There is no guarantee he'd be starting every week for Arsenal, while Manchester City is the place where promising young English talent goes to die.
Real Madrid are often linked, although cynics may claim that is the work of an agent trying to raise the profile and contract value of his client. For argument's sake, let's assume their interest is genuine. Where exactly is he going to play in that team?
Gareth Bale is a vastly superior player to Sterling. Perhaps in two or three years' time Sterling would be ready for that move, but right now his finishing is so erratic the Bernabeu crowd would be suffering from repetitive strain injury in no time due to all the white-handkerchief waving they'd be doing every other week.
Some perspective needs to be added because it would appear the player and his camp have lost theirs. Being the best 20-year-old in Europe (Brendan Rodgers' words, not mine) does not automatically make you one of the best players in Europe. Sterling is an exciting talent who may eventually go on to reach the level of Bale, Luis Suarez or even Cristiano Ronaldo, but equally he could just as easily level off and become Theo Walcott.
Sterling makes a valid point when he says he'd have signed a contract had it been offered last summer. He had outplayed the deal he was on and was clearly worth a lot more to the club than the reported £35,000 a week they were paying him. That deal took some time to thrash out as Sterling's representatives wanted closer to £50,000.
At the time he'd only played around 20 games in the first team and the demands seemed excessive. His form suffered and he came in for criticism similar to that he's getting now. The contract he eventually signed was fair at the time he signed it, but following his rapid development over the next 18 months it quickly became apparent Liverpool had got themselves something of a bargain.
Given the youngster's increasingly mature and accomplished performances during the title run-in, Liverpool could have "re-upped" him in the summer and given him a wage more in line with his newly acquired status as one of the club's key players. Significantly, they didn't. They dragged their heels while quite happily saving themselves a tidy sum in the process. After all, Sterling signed that £35,000-a-week contract, he's got a number of years left on it so that's his problem, right? Wrong. It's now become Liverpool's problem too.
It's easy to see him as the bad guy here, and to some extent he is, but he's just playing the game. Liverpool knew exactly what they were getting into when they signed him.
The likes of Arsenal and City may be circling like vultures but is that any different to what Liverpool did when they plucked Sterling from QPR's academy when he was 15? He was quite happy to ditch QPR for a better offer, so why would he not do the same to Liverpool?
There's a lot of talk about a perceived lack of loyalty from the player, but Liverpool took advantage of that to sign him in the first place so they can hardly be shocked by it now. Sterling left QPR because Liverpool offered him a large salary and the best environment in which to flourish. In order to keep him, they'll need to do the same again.
Sterling doesn't owe Liverpool anything. That's a concept fans often throw around but loyalty is a two-way street. If Sterling had not made the grade, Liverpool would not have thought twice about moving him on and rightly so.
They did not give him a chance to play in the first team out of the goodness of their heart; they did it because he was good enough to contribute and help the team get better. From Sterling's point of view, they kept him on £35,000 a week when his performances were consistently worth at least double and at times treble that amount.
Barring the odd exception, the only loyalty in football comes from the fans. While everyone else in football are filling their pockets, the fans are having theirs emptied through extortionate ticket prices and ludicrous costs for watching on television.
Sterling says he wanted to put the record straight because he doesn't want those fans thinking badly of him. That just shows how detached many footballers are from the real world. Sorry Raheem, but turning your nose up at £5million a year is hardly going to make you a sympathetic figure.
Still, it's difficult to apply "real world logic" when football about as far removed from the real world as possible. Sterling is merely a product of the environment he's grown up in.
There is so much money in football that the more money the clubs make, the more the players want. If the players don't get it, where would that money go? None of it will ever filter down to the fans so that just leaves the owners, and I think most fans would prefer the money in the pockets of the players than the businessmen.
The moral of this sad story is don't hate the player, hate the game ... and the agents.
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