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The look of bleak resignation on Raheem Sterling’s face said everything as he walked through the little court building here in Basingstoke, just before stepping into the dock to answer for 90 minutes of terrifying driving.
It was the cold, bleak solemnity of a 31-year-old who was about to admit driving dangerously while in possession of nitrous oxide and who has truly reached rock bottom.
The police video of his arrest, played to magistrate Kirsty Allman, showed the same apparent fatalism. As officers approach him on that brilliant May morning, he sits motionless in the passenger seat of his sports car in T-shirt and shorts.
‘I have a problem with nitrous oxide,’ he would later tell police. Evidence suggests he had been inhaling the chemical seven hours before multiple motorists, stunned by his vehicle careering across lanes in the rush-hour, see its driver sucking on laughing gas balloons.
When he reached Basingstoke police station, Sterling was disorientated, cold and exhausted by what evidence suggests was a solitary all-nighter. He could barely keep his eyes open.
The wall of silence that some of those closest to him encountered when contacting him in the hours after that arrest pointed to him seeking escape from any vestige of the game which is all he has known; turning his face to the wall and wanting no reminder of football. For days, he flatly refused to respond to some who have kept him going in his bleak past few years. ‘He went into oblivion mode,’ says one friend.
Raheem Sterling arrives at Basingstoke Magistrates' Court, where he admitted to dangerous driving in his Lamborghini Urus
‘I have a problem with nitrous oxide,’ Sterling would later tell police in the wake of his arrest in May of this year
The sport’s capacity to build players up and spit them out cannot mitigate for the 31-year-old’s terrifying pattern of behaviour at the wheel of his black Lamborghini Urus V8 on that brilliant spring morning. Zig-zagging across all three lanes. Forcing motorists to get out of his way. It was a miracle that no other motorist was injured or killed.
Yet his descent to this chaos has been frighteningly steep and provides significant context. Few beyond Sterling’s own family were privy to his thoughts in the hours before he trashed his reputation, but sources point to the madness occurring just four weeks after his attempt to relaunch his career at Feyenoord had ended ignominiously.
His criminal conduct was not the result of a wild night out. The worst of it occurred in the cold light of a Thursday morning.
He had rejected the financial security of a three-year deal which the Rotterdam club offered him, signing up to only 12 months instead, because he feared being marooned without game-time as he had in his wretched last years at Chelsea.
‘Everyone who knows him knows that he needs to feel part of a club,’ says one source. But that detail somehow didn’t cohere to an obstinate narrative about Sterling and money which has seen many take immense delight in his latest football failure.
Sterling had not played for nine months preceding his first Feyenoord game, in February, yet his poor first 30-minute run out from the bench became a European-wide sensation. ‘He thought he could escape the scrutiny over there and start again,’ says one source. ‘There was no escape.’
The Sterling who returned from Holland was, one source says, at ‘an all-time low psychologically,’ feeling a sense of ‘worthlessness’, having descended from the ranks of England's best players to a reject in the course of four years. ‘He is lost. Completely lost,’ says the source.
A few days ago he posted a photo on Instagram wearing a dark balaclava obscuring part of his face. 'You're too old for this,' read one of the most-liked comments.
Sterling (pictured alongside his partner Paige Milian) posted a photo of himself sporting a black balaclava last week
The 31-year-old has privately admitted his 2022 move to Chelsea was a 'huge mistake'
The public ridicule has evidently been fundamental to his sense of despair. In most walks of professional life, there would be a wish to relent, though that does not seem to apply to young footballers. Sterling has sought help to cope with the psychological impact of his decline but this kind of onslaught is not normal.
The collective delight in his struggles has its roots in the actions of the agent Sterling chose right back in his Liverpool days - Aidy Ward, who conducted ugly, public contract negotiations for his client.
Ward, who said he ‘didn’t care’ about Liverpool and branded Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher ‘a k**b,’ declared that Sterling wouldn’t be staying at Anfield even if he were offered nearly £1million a week.
It was a scarring look for a teenage player, who has never recovered from it. He took the heaviest criticism when England were eliminated from Euro 2016 by Iceland a year later. At that stage, he had yet to surround himself with the wise influences who might have prevented his hangers-on from posting video of his lavishly furnished home, soon after the Iceland defeat. He was castigated for that.
Sterling dispensed with Ward and grew up at Manchester City, who brought out the best from him. With stronger, wiser influences around, he spoke out against the racial abuse England encountered in Montenegro in 2019 and found the voice to argue against football resuming before it was safe in 2021.
The headline of a Financial Times profile in 2021 described him as 'The England football star who took on the racists.' How distant that all seems now.
When Pep Guardiola and City director of football Txiki Begiristain candidly told Sterling his game time would be limited if he extended his contract and stay for what would be City’s Treble-winning season in 2022-23, he took a career-ending decision which will haunt him for all his days.
New Chelsea owner Todd Boehly was giddy about signing him and desperate to sell him the long-term vision with the offer of £325,000 a week. Thomas Tuchel, always a big fan of Sterling’s, was also part of the appeal for Sterling.
The collective delight in Sterling's struggles has its roots in the actions of the agent he chose right back in his Liverpool days - Aidy Ward, pictured, who conducted ugly, public contract negotiations for his client
Sterling was dumped into the 'bomb squad' at Chelsea by then boss Enzo Maresca
But then BlueCo’s big football experiment at The Bridge played out and he was binned. Graham Potter played him at wing back before Enzo Maresca arrived to do Behdad Eghbali’s dirty work, ditching him two days before the 2024-25 season because the American co-owner didn’t share Boehly’s enthusiasm.
One minute Chelsea's website was proclaiming him ‘a positive influence and setting standards.’ The next, it was expunging all mention of him. One minute, Maresca was proclaiming his ‘importance.’ The next, he was dumping him into the ‘bomb squad.’
Everything unravelled after that. A professional life in the ‘bomb squad’ of unwanted Chelsea players left him training alone at 8pm. By the time he secured a season’s escape to Arsenal, it was quite clear that his power, pace and confidence had gone.
Chelsea have moved on, enjoying better PR under Xabi Alonso but Sterling is the collateral damage. That decision he took to join them weighs heavy on him. ‘It’s the feeling that he made such a huge mistake,’ says the source.
Had money been Sterling's main motivating factor, he would have taken the Saudi Arabia deal which Chelsea cooked up with one of the Gulf state’s clubs, to force him out in 2024. All who know him well say he would play for a fraction of his old salaries if he could just revive what he had.
He’s by no means the only one. The modern pattern of players combusting and their careers going pop prematurely has seen Dele Alli and Kalvin Phillips reduced to the shadows by the age of 30. Aaron Ramsdale is the latest.
In part, it is because they have too many people telling them how wonderful they are and throwing disproportionate sums of money at them.
Sterling's attempt to relaunch his career at Feyenoord ended ignominiously. ‘He thought he could escape the scrutiny over there and start again,’ says one source. ‘There was no escape’
There was the usual morbid fascination with Sterling’s decline here in Basingstoke, on Tuesday.
When he arrived in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes van at midday, members of the public gathered near the photographers to get a view and motorists caused a commotion by slowing in a busy road to rubberneck. Those who didn’t care hammered on their horns. Even at a bland town centre court, there were scenes.
His friends don’t know where he goes from here in a sport which has devoured him and expelled him, and neither, one assumes, does he.
‘He needs to get a foundation and get settled,’ says one friend. ‘He needs to determine whether he loves the game enough to continue within it.’
