Lest we forget, we have a talent on our hands...
How does Raheem Sterling score against Ronaldo and Messi at 20?
Sean Ingle
Few players are world beaters at such a young age but the Liverpool attacker’s Premier League figures are more interesting than the ones with pounds signs
Going into Sunday’s game at Stoke City, Liverpool’s Raheem Sterling has scored 18 goals in 95 games and 14 assists in his Premier League career. Photograph: Paul Thurlby for the Guardian
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Fingers on buzzers for a quickfire numbers round: £35,000 a week; £100,000 a week; “He is not signing for £700,000, £800,000, £900,000 a week.” Name the footballer. You knew instantly that it was
Raheem Sterling – and the figures were, in turn, his current salary, Liverpool’s new contract offer, and the dismissive response of his agent, Aidy Ward. Meanwhile Sterling’s potential transfer fee increasingly seems subject to Weimar Republic levels of hyperinflation – from £40m earlier in the week to £60m in one Sunday paper.
Meanwhile the country appears split down the middle. On the one hand we have Sterling the wunderkind, who
made his England debut at 17 and won Europe’s Golden Boy 2014. On the other, there are the doomsayers who warn that he might be another Aaron Lennon, his football talents prematurely frozen in carbonite. As one poster on a Liverpool forum put it recently: “His shooting has been poor, his crossing poor, and the only thing he was good at was taking selfies on his mid-season holiday.”
Then there are the professional fence‑sitters, who fatuously state that Sterling is a work in progress. Of course he is – he’s 20. Even
Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi were at that age. A far more interesting exercise is to try to figure out how Sterling compares with other top attacking midfielders/wing forwards when they were 20 – and that requires a broader range of figures than ones with pound signs and rows of zeros after them.
So far in his Premier League career Sterling has scored 18 goals in 95 games (a rate of 0.23 goals per 90 minutes) and 14 assists (0.18 per 90 minutes). This season – during which he has turned 20 – he has seven goals, seven assists and has created 75 chances in 35 games. Those numbers are pretty good. Especially given
Liverpool have lost Luis Suárez, been largely without Daniel Sturridge, and have seen Steven Gerrard coming out much the worse from a crunching challenge with Father Time.
In particular those 75 chances created stand out. The season Ronaldo turned 20, he created 49 chances in 33 games for Manchester United, and Messi managed 40 from 28 matches. David Silva registered 40 from 34 matches, Gareth Bale 39 from 23 matches and Theo Walcott 22 from 25 matches. Sterling trumps them all.
Indeed, only Eden Hazard and Mesut Özil posted better chance creation numbers at the same age. And remember, Sterling did this in a Liverpool side that struggled to get past 50 Premier League goals. Last season they scored 101.
Admittedly, Sterling isn’t quite at the very top table when you rank players based on their goals and assists by the age of 20.
Lionel Messi stands alone (he was scoring nearly three goals every four games even then) with Hazard and Arjen Robben the next best, albeit in the weaker Ligue 1 and Eredivisie. But Sterling’s numbers either match up, or are better than, everyone else in his position.
The comparisons with Sterling and Ronaldo at 20 are also worth exploring. At that age Ronaldo was not the goalscoring terminator he is now. According to Opta, he had played 64 Premier League games, scoring nine goals (0.2 per 90 minutes) and creating eight assists (0.18 per 90 minutes). Of course these numbers don’t tell you everything. Ronaldo was already an immense talent. He had starred in an FA Cup final and had a decent Euro 2004. But at 20 his raw numbers weren’t any better than Sterling’s. He certainly wasn’t a world beater.
There are other caveats, too. Young players mature at different rates, and past performance is not always a guarantee of future success. But as Omar Chaudhuri, the head of football intelligence at
21st Club points out, Sterling’s numbers have not been inflated by unsustainable hot streaks, which therefore makes what we have seen so far a decent indicator of what will happen from now on.
Chaudhuri, who works with several top European clubs, also makes another point. When it comes to highly rated young players, the transfer market has often got it right. He points to the list of the 25 most expensive under-23 signings in history. The top five? Neymar, James Rodríguez, Gianluigi Buffon, Rio Ferdinand and Sergio Agüero. Wayne Rooney, Fernando Torres (from Atlético Madrid to Liverpool), Hazard, Robben and Ronaldinho are also on the list.
There are duds in there too – Andy Carroll for one. But there are far fewer mistakes than in the list of big-money transfers from 23-30, which includes Kaká’s transfer to Real Madrid. Torres’s move to Chelsea, Gaizka Mendieta’s move to Lazio and many other flops.
As Chaudhuri puts it: “It’s also interesting that a lot of prodigies in Sterling’s position – Ronaldo, Hazard, Mata, Bale, Özil – were at least 21 before they made their first big-money move, which tells us a couple of things. First, that clubs are already willing to spend big on Sterling – and probably have been for a year, so since he’s been 19 – reflects his ability and potential. And second that his value is likely to be nowhere near its peak.”
Does this mean Sterling will develop into one of the best players in the world? We can’t be certain. But we can say this. There is an enormous amount to like about his football already and the odds are that he will get much better.
