Sterling Set To Clash With Old Friends

When Raheem Sterling gazes out the window of Manchester City’s coach on the road to Wembley on Sunday, it will be no surprise if the winger’s dreams of League Cup glory are interrupted by a flashback to his childhood.

Sterling’s presence amid the pomp and circumstance of City’s League Cup final showdown with Liverpool represents a remarkable triumph in the face of adversity for the 21-year-old.

Only 11 years ago, Sterling was facing an uncertain future as a new arrival at Vernon House, a school for children with behavioural difficulties which is situated less than a mile from Wembley.

Transplanted from Jamaica when his mother was forced to move to London to improve her financial situation by working as a nurse, Sterling was struggling to adapt to the bleak surroundings of the west London estate that became his home from age five.

Sterling, who had no contact with his father before he was killed in a gang-related incident in Kingston when he was nine, was in danger of earning a potentially ruinous label as a disruptive pupil.

“He was a tiny little ball of energy, and sometimes that would tip over into anger and he would get aggressive with other kids,” his Vernon House teacher Chris Beschi told BBC Sport.

But, crucially, Sterling found an outlet for his growing pains whenever he had a ball at his feet and by the time he was 11 he had caught the eye of youth coaches at nearby QPR.

Unlike so many of his pampered contemporaries in the Premier League, who are whisked away to plush academies to learn their trade, Sterling’s football education had initially come on the streets, where he would play with a juice carton or a can if no ball was affordable.