For a player who has already delivered so much these past few weeks, Raheem Sterling’s pre-match reflections on Saturday night were surprisingly subdued. ’One negative comment can be on your mind,’ he related. ‘A lot of people don’t understand what goes in behind closed doors. It’s not only about match-days.’
The tone was a reflection of the difficult relationship between him and England, these past nine years. The low point came during that desperate night on the French Riviera against Iceland five years ago when he was up against arguably the weakest right-back in the 2016 European Championships - 31-year-old Birkir Saevarsson, who played in Sweden for Hammarby. Sterling came out second best.
That night seems as much a distant memory now, just like careworn Sterling we saw that summer, yet he has still has not found quite the acclaim that others have received during England’s journey to the quarter finals. It was Kalvin Philllips, the ‘Yorkshire Pirlo’, who took the acclaim after Croatia were beaten; Jack Grealish whose name was chanted in the second half against Germany and Harry Kane who has been the resurrection man and so nearly scored a hat-trick.
Raheem Sterling celebrates with Harry Kane after scoring the third goal against Ukraine
Sterling suffered on a desperate night against Iceland at the 2016 European Championship
Sterling has been the truly outstanding one, though. His three goals, supplemented by the quite beautiful assist for Kane last night adds up to the greatest contribution to a single England player to a tournament in modern times. He is certainly their player of this tournament.
It was something Steven Gerrard once said of Sterling that came to mind as he bounced off Mykola Shaparenko, landed off balance in the penalty area and yet still managed to find the pass that sent Harry Kane in to score the first.
‘He"s got the strength and power of a man,’ was Gerrard’s memory of the teenage Sterling he worked with at Liverpool. ‘He could always mix it with hard men.’ There would be titanic battles with the vast Slovakian centre half Martin Skrtel in training sessions at Melwood. ‘Sterling could carry Skrtel on his back,’ Gerrard said of those. ‘I"ve seen him do it in one-on-one situations...’
It was one thing to have had the clarity of mind to spot Kane after cannoning clear of Shaparenko and arriving in a pocket of space. It was something else to locate him with a diagonal ball navigated through four players. Kane will take the headlines today but the toe poke in off the goalkeeper’s chest was comparatively easy.
