Re: Raheeeeeeeeem
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A Boy's Own Half Term Tale
FOR one pupil at Rainhill High, tomorrow’s return to school following the half-term holidays is likely to spark some genuinely unique playground chatter.
“So what did you get up to while you were off?†goes the bog standard question. “Well, er, let me think. On Monday, I played at Anfield for Liverpool’s youth team. We won 9-0 and I scored five goals. Then on Tuesday, I was named in Liverpool’s first team squad for the trip to Prague alongside the likes of Pepe Reina, Jamie Carragher, Raul Meireles and Dirk Kuyt. On Wednesday we flew out to the Czech Republic and trained at the Generali Stadium. I didn’t get a game on Thursday but I got to watch Kenny Dalglish’s first ever European game as Liverpool manager in person. Oh, I almost forgot, on Saturday I played for the under-18s, we beat Stoke City 2-1 and I scored twice.â€
As answers go it is the type that usually makes most schoolchildren wonder if their mate has been doing a bit too much dreaming. But when the pupil in question is Raheem Sterling then it is simply a blow by blow account of what has unquestionably been one of the most incredible weeks of his young life.
It really is boy’s own stuff. But that is the point – for all the excitement and inevitable hype that a run of events like this will inevitably bring, the most important thing to remember is that Raheem is still a schoolboy. He clearly has potential – he would not be at Liverpool’s Academy otherwise – but he is not the finished article, far from it. The worst thing that could happen to him now would be to be overburdened by the kind of expectation that has helped derail the careers of countless a promising youngster before now. He needs to be allowed to grow, develop and just enjoy his football without being overloaded by the excitement of those who are desperate for him to be the next big thing, no matter how well meaning they are.
It’s not always easy to be reserved and restrained in such situations. I’ve looked back at my Twitter entries from the night of Liverpool’s 9-0 win over Southend United in the FA Youth Cup and Sterling’s name is mentioned time and time again. Five goals – at least two of them outstanding individual efforts – made it somewhat inevitable that this would be the case, such feats of personal achievement will always be recorded and celebrated regardless of the age of the player responsible. But that is where it needs to start and finish, there is nothing to be gained by predicting how good Raheem could turn out to be – and there is certainly no point in comparing to players who have already made their names at the highest level – because all that does is heap unnecessary pressure on a youngster who may not yet be ready to deal with it.
We have been here before of course, many times. Football is littered with the next big things who fail to live up to the hype. That’s not their fault, they have simply displayed high levels of ability at a tender age and others have then plotted an over ambitious career path for them that they have been unable to live up to. “Remember the name†one television commentator famously remarked when a 16-year-old Wayne Rooney opened his account with a magnificent goal for Everton against Arsenal at Goodison Park. But there are other names that have long since been forgotten, or at least pushed into the recesses of the mind by the passage of time, simply because their careers never progressed beyond the developmental stage despite looking like world beaters as teenagers.
At Liverpool, the most obvious example is another Wayne, in his case with the surname of Harrison, not Rooney. In March 1985, Joe Royle, the then manager of Oldham Athletic, was sitting down at his office at the club’s Boundary Park stadium when the telephone rang. As soon as he answered he recognised the voice at the other end, it was Liverpool manager Joe Fagan. After a brief bit of banter between the pair, Fagan cut to the chase. He wanted to sign Harrison, who was then just 17-years-old but was rated as the most promising teenager in the country despite having played only two games in the old Second Division.
Royle was not keen to sell. He had envisaged building a team around the teenage forward and even though Oldham were not well off financially he wanted to keep hold of Harrison in the hope of seeing him fulfil his obvious potential at Boundary Park. Fagan, though, was persistent, and an offer of £250,000 was made, which was then a world record fee for a teenager, that was ultimately accepted.
As soon as news of the transfer seeped out, Harrison went from promising youngster to the next big thing in the blink of an eye. He was going to replace Dalglish in Liverpool’s first team, be awarded in excess of 100 England caps and take Bobby Charlton’s goalscoring record for the national team. There was no limit to his potential. Not in the eyes of the media and those taken in by the hype anyway.
But this destined to be a fairytale without a happy ending. For all Harrison’s ability, he never made the grade at Anfield and he disappeared from view to such an extent that by the age of just 22 he was forced to retire from the game that he had been tipped to become a star of. A cruel succession Injuries put paid to his dreams and after a total of 23 football related operations it was decided that his body could not take any more and the only option available to him was to hang his boots up. The word tragedy is overused in sport but what befell Harrison at such a young age could only ever be described as tragic. Luck can sometimes be as important as talent when it comes to young footballers and at the stage of his career when he needed it most, the only fortune that Harrison received was of the shockingly bad variety.
There was nothing Harrison could have done differently to make things turn out as he’d hoped. He was just an unwitting victim of fate, a player who had seen his undoubted potential amount to precious little simply because things had not gone his way. That is how finely balanced hopes of making it to the top can be. One day you can have the world at your feet, the next it is cruelly snatched away.
This is not intended to put a dampener on the excitement that had built up over Raheem Sterling over the past seven days, to do so would be unnecessarily heartless to a young player who has just enjoyed the best week of his burgeoning career. Nor is it a suggestion that he will not make it – indeed, the early indications are that he has got as good, if not a better, chance of doing so as any. His talent is precocious, his attitude mature beyond his tender years, his mastery of the football a joy to behold.
But Harrison’s story should serve as a salutary, if extreme, lesson that the best young players don’t always become the best senior players. Few know that better than Dalglish, who saw Harrison’s sad decline at first hand after taking over from Fagan within two months of the world’s most expensive teenager being signed. On Wednesday night, the Liverpool manager quite rightly did all that he could to ensure that the hype surrounding Sterling did not get out of hand.
"We don't have to manage the expectations of anyone apart from yourselves, you are the ones who are blowing things out of proportion,†Dalglish told the media at the pre-match press conference in Prague.
"Raheem can handle it, we can handle him, but everyone just needs a little bit of help. He might have got the praise but there were a lot of other people who deserved it too (Monday’s youth cup win). Flanno and Jack Robbo have already been in Europa League squads. You've got to be very, very responsible when you're talking about Raheem.
“It's fantastic for him to be involved as it is for the three other lads. Obviously Tom Ince has been involved before but for the four lads from the youth team it's a fantastic occasion. We want to make sure they feel part and parcel of the football club. They are here because they deserve to be here and maybe because of the injuries we've got at the moment it dictates that they are here. They've done very well but none of them will be carried away with the result the other night in the Youth Cup.â€
Tomorrow, there will be excitement on the playground at Rainhill High. That, though, is where it should remain for the time being because Raheem Sterling’s chances of being the player that everyone hopes he will be best served by him being given the opportunity to develop free of the burden of expectation.
Sorry no bolding ;D
