Raheem Sterling: How Man City ‘phenomenon’ turned dreams into reality

When youth worker Clive Ellington first spotted Sterling on the school playground, he knew he had found someone special.

“He stood out for all the right reasons. It was almost like a one-man team,” Ellington tells BBC Sport. “On the way home I asked him who he played for and he said: ‘I don’t.'”

Shortly afterwards, Sterling joined local club Alpha & Omega FC – where Ellington remains a coach – and spent four years there before being snapped up by QPR and then quickly brought into Liverpool’s academy.

Now with City, Sterling is aiming to win back-to-back Premier League titles, while chasing the FA Cup and the Champions League to add – to the Carabao Cup his side won in February.

Sterling is used to winning and, even as a kid, he struggled with the idea of losing.

“Losing was not an option for him,” says Ellington. “He was tearful when we lost. He just couldn’t understand if team-mates weren’t performing. He couldn’t understand why somebody wouldn’t be giving 100%.

“If he thought the team didn’t perform well, he’d let you know. If he didn’t think he was offside, he would let the referee know he thought he was cheating. I had to get him to understand it was OK to lose.”

Sterling was described as a “quiet boy” off the pitch. Everyone used to say “it was with the football that he did all his talking”. But when he did talk, it was only ever about one thing: football.

“He didn’t see football as recreational. He saw it as a business and something he was going to make a living out of,” adds Ellington. “I remember saying to him that he was going to be playing for England by the time he was 16 – and he just looked at me and said: ‘Yeah.’

“He would say that the little grass pitch behind his house was his Wembley stadium. That’s where you’d find him.”

Sterling wasn’t far off. He was 17 when he made his England debut, the fifth youngest player to do so.