Stop grumbling ladies and gentlemen – the brightest talent that England has had in decades is on the verge of making the most exciting move he could possibly make.
Forget the astronomical transfer fee – that’s what English talent goes for these days – and forget the fact that City need homegrown players, Sterling is not simply a signing to make up the numbers, nor is he an overpriced luxury, he’s an acquisition to make City great. Over the next decade City will be one of England’s top very teams, and Sterling will reach his peak: one of England’s best players at one of England’s best clubs.
Short-term, though, Sterling will make City better. David Silva, City’s maestro of a playmaker, dons a beard and wizard’s cap when he plays. He has no left foot – it’s actually a wand – and he is the possessor of a style and a guile rarely seen outside of the capital of Catalonia. Sergio Aguero is a striker so potent that he frequently misses a month or two of the season and still finishes as top scorer.
It’s high praise to say that a 20-year-old can make this lot better, but add Sterling and City get their own ‘SAS’ primed to raid the opposition area with elegance and prolificacy. After all, why didn’t City win the league last season? The City hierarchy think that it simply boils down to the fact they didn’t score enough goals. A whole 19 fewer Premier League goals than in the 2013/14 title-winning season when City scored 143 goals in all competitions – beating Manchester United’s record from the 1950s: a decade so free-scoring that even a 3-2 could have been seen as ‘dull’.
Sterling won’t bring goals by himself, but he’ll be a Jesus Navas replacement. Navas has the speed, and he’s certainly a good provider when he wants to be. But he lacks the skill and trickery that Sterling has. Too often Navas runs into blind alleys, crashes against defenders or wallops the first defender with a cross. Navas is a Jack Russell Terrier, he’s an excitable busy-body who’ll bite at your legs. Sterling is a Springer Spaniel – just as excitable, but you trust him not to overheat and have to lie down for a while.
Long-term, though, Sterling brings more to City. He’s young and can develop in lots of different ways. It’s up to the manager to figure out what the youngster’s best role is and what parts of the game he should work on most intensively. Does he need to become a better passer, for example? Maybe he needs to work on his strength? The great thing about being 20 is that, like electricity, you are pure potential – you can become anything. It’s once you plug into something that you become something, but when you’re 20 you can plug into anything. Sterling is clay in the hands of a master potter, it’s up to Pellegrini to shape him.
And to a team ageing as rapidly as Manchester City, youth is an invaluable thing. The whole structure of the club these days is designed to be sustainable and ‘holistic’, and the first-team squad is anything but that just now. But the signing of Sterling is a step towards rectifying that. Of course, ‘holistic’ is a new-age, business-speak way of saying ‘integrated’. The club’s owners have set about integrating all aspects of the club, building a home for their Blues in East Manchester, pumping billions of pounds not just into Manchester City, but into the city of Manchester itself.
The men, women and children who represent the football club will be housed in one small city, so to speak. A city built by Manchester companies, creating schools and jobs for Manchester people: the Etihad Campus is ‘Manchester City’ in microcosm.
And the grand idea taken to it’s logical extremes, the ultimate realms of fantasy, is that one day City’s new youth academy will churn out homegrown talent La Masia style. The overall dream of Sheikh Mansour seems to be one involving mirror image after mirror image – the players of all genders, ages, colours and creeds representing the club; the club representing the city; and all of that representing the country itself. More than a club. A hell of a lot more than a club, actually. Just like Barcelona and Catalonia.
City were on the cusp of signing Fabian Delph before his U-turn embarrassed the club on the same day as United announced the signing of a literal legend of the game in Bastian Schweinsteiger, so the club needed a win. Perhaps they didn’t want to spend quite so much on Sterling, but they needed a win badly.
And Sterling is a big win. Not just for this season or next season, but for the next 10 seasons. Forget the ‘money-grabbing 20 year-old’, forget the undeserving diva, forget the spoilt child throwing his toys out of the pram. Manchester City is the club with the long-term vision and the ability – both financially and philosophically – to make it work and that’s why Sterling is moving.
The youngster has sat across from Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez in the Liverpool changing room. He’s seen Gerrard miss his chance to finally win a Premier League title and has seen Suarez move on to claim a treble at Barcelona. He’s seen Gerrard and Carragher leave as Liverpool legends, but without a Premier League winners’ medal to split between them. But for a young Londoner with the talent that Sterling has, that’s a mundane prospect. It seems to have spooked him. He wants medals and adulation. He wants to be the greatest English player of all time. At City the grass looks greener, and with the finance, the philosophy and the players why wouldn’t it? At City, he can fulfill his dream.
I said that Schweinsteiger is a legend of the game: he has eight Bundesliga titles, which is the most any player has ever won. He has 111 Germany caps and he has time to win a whole heap more. He’s won a World Cup and a Champions League. This season Xavi, Pirlo and Frank Lampard have left Europe for semi-retirement. Xavi has eight La Liga titles, Pirlo has six Scudetti, and Lampard has three Premier League titles. They’ve all won a Champions League and played in countless finals, and that’s not even to mention the number of domestic cups they have between them. Pirlo and Xavi are World Cup winners, too. So when Sterling looks up to these guys, he sees his whole career ahead of him. When he retires he wants to have what they have, and what’s wrong with that? There’s no point in playing football professionally if you don’t want to be the best. And clearly the young lad doesn’t think that Liverpool can offer him the chance to reach those particular levels. Imagine the regret if he stayed at Liverpool while City dominated.
So lay off Sterling. He’s doing the right thing for himself, for Manchester City, and if all goes to the Sheikh’s plan, for the country, too. These are grand dreams but why shouldn’t he have them? He’s 20 and has the potential to be anything. And City are a team who will not only take him where he wants to go, but they’ll make him their poster boy for the next ten years. Surely that’s incentive to be the best. One day we might hear Sterling’s name mentioned with players of the ilk of Xavi and Pirlo. And if that happens he’ll be totally vindicated. Sterling’s aim is the stars, and City have offered him their rocket ship. He’d be a fool not to take it.