Raheem Sterling news: Man City forward opens to leave the club

Sterling considers moving abroad from Manchester City

Speaking to the Financial Times, Man City forward shared: “If there was the option to go somewhere else for more game time, I would be open to it.  As an English player, all I know is the Premier League and I’ve always thought maybe one day I’d love to play abroad and see how I would come up against that challenge.” 

Last week, Talksport reported that Barcelona has been interested in Sterling. They want to buy this 26-year-old player to replace Ousmane Dembele due to his frequent injuries as well as to fill Antoine Griezmann’s void after he left the club this past summer. 

Barca are interested in signing Sterling

The contract of Sterling with Manchester City is valid until June 2023. He joined the Etihad stadium team from Liverpool in 2015 for a fee of £50 million. After 6 years playing for the club, Sterling scored 115 goals, assisted 88 times in 302 games. He won 3 Premier League titles with The Citizens. 

However, his performance in recent years is unstable. He was often out of his best form in important games and then had to sit on the bench in many games of the club. In addition, the coming of Jack Grealish with the record transfer fee for a similar position seemed to make the relationship between Sterling and his coach Pep Guardiola become uncomfortable. The Spanish manager has been also using young talent like Phil Foden and Gabriel Jesus successfully so that Sterling’s position has been gradually disregarded. 

It was rumored that Mancity and the England player has failed in extending his contract in March 2021 because he wanted to raise his salary from $375.000 to $437.000 per week. The club were even open to selling Sterling in the summer transfer window but they decided to keep him playing as a false 9 when they could not buy a striker. 

Sterling- Pep

On the other hand, Sterling has been one of the main keys of the England team, helping Gareth Southgate’s team to have impressive results at Euro 2020. He scored in the winning game against Croatia and contributed a brought back a penalty for the Three Lions in the match against Denmark in the Euro semi-final. 

Also in the interview with the Financial Times, Sterling also shared about the issue of racism in England, especially after Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka missed penalties in the Euro 2020 final game. He said: “I feel when it is mentioned to racist abuse, I don’t feel like it’s taken as seriously as if you would mention certain other topics.” He then added more: “It is a situation which builds character, so with all of the experiences that happened in life and on the football field, I do believe in the future it will make us a bit more resilient, but again, it is something that we are still talking about, it is still happening. For it to be by your own fans, it is not nice.”

Some more information about Raheem Sterling

1. Who is Raheem Sterling?

• Raheem Sterling full name: Raheem Shaquille Sterling
• Raheem Sterling age: 26 (DoB: 8 December 1994)
• Raheem Sterling height: 1.70 m
• Raheem Sterling position(s): Forward, winger, attacking midfielder
• Raheem Sterling number: 7
• Raheem Sterling current club: Manchester City
• Raheem Sterling salary: £15,600,000/year
• Raheem Sterling net worth: $52.8 million

Sterling Manchester City

2. Raheem Sterling’s Honours

Manchester City

• 3 Premier League titles: 2017–18, 2018–19, 2020–21
• 1 FA Cup: 2018–19
• 4 Football League/EFL Cup: 2015–16, 2018–19, 2019–20, 2020–21
• 1 FA Community Shield: 2019
• UEFA Champions League  2nd: 2020–21

England

• UEFA European Championship 2nd: 2020
• UEFA Nations League 3rd: 2018–19

Individual

• Liverpool Young Player of the Season:(2)  2013–14, 2014–15
• Golden Boy Award: 2014
• UEFA Champions League Team of the Group Stage (2015–16 season)
• UEFA Champions League Squad of the Season (2018–19, 2019–20 seasons)
• Premier League Player of the Month: Aug 2016, Nov 2018
• PFA Team of the Year in the 2018–19 season 
• PFA Young Player of the Year in 2018–19 season
• FWA Footballer of the Year in 2018–19 season
• UEFA European Championship Team of the Tournament in 2020 season

Reference Sources

• manchestereveningnews.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• wikipedia