Raheem Sterling’s sister’s touching sacrifice which he credits with his success

Raheem Sterling, 26, has been one of England’s star players in the Euros 2020, scoring three times ahead of the tense final against Italy.

Having been recruited by Liverpool aged just 17, Raheem was once the most expensive English player of all time.

His life has not been without heartache, and his father, Phillip Slater, was tragically murdered when Raheem was just two years old, when he and his family lived in Jamaica.

Raheem has previously revealed this was the catalyst that made his mother, former athlete Nadine Clarke, to move to England to get her degree and give her children a better life.

The footballer and his sisters stayed with their grandmother in Kingston, Jamaica, until Raheem moved to England when he was five, literally living in the shadow of Wembley Stadium.

Writing in The Players’ Tribune in 2018, Raheem explained: “When I was two years old, my father was murdered. That shaped my entire life.

“Not long after that, my mum made the decision to leave me and my sister in Jamaica and go to England so she could get her degree and give us a better life.

“For a few years, we lived with our grandmother in Kingston, and I remember watching the other kids with their mums and just feeling really jealous.

“I didn’t fully understand what my mum was doing for us. I just knew that she was gone. My grandma was amazing, but everybody wants their mum at that age.”

Raheem was scouted by many academies of the top football clubs as a youngster, including QPR as a ten-year-old, but his mother encouraged him to choose a club that was not local, in a bid to keep him away from gang culture.

He spent three years in a specialist school due to behavioural problems, and a teacher named Chris Beschi told him: “If you carry on the way you’re going, by the time you’re 17 you’ll either be playing for England, or you’ll be in prison.”

Beschi called him “the kid in school who had a kind and innocent passion about him”.

Raheem wrote: “I actually feel kind of bad looking back on it, because when I started going to primary school I was so naughty.

“I was probably driving my mum mental. It wasn’t that I was bad bad, I just didn’t want to listen.

“I didn’t want to sit still and hear what the teacher was saying, mate! What are we talking about today ― subtraction? Come on. Not having that.

“I’d be staring at the clock dreaming of break time. Eat a bit of food, then head straight outside. Running about in the mud, pretending I’m Ronaldinho. That’s all I cared about.

“I was so naughty that they kicked me out of primary school.

“Well, actually, that’s not totally true. Technically, they didn’t kick me out. They just told my mum that I needed to be in an environment with more attention.”

And Raheem credits his success to the incredible sacrifices his family made for him, ensuring he was able to attend football training, despite the long and arduous journey as sister Kima-lee took him on the bus.

“Three busses. The 18 to the 182 to the 140,” he penned.

“The red double-deckers with the blue wool ’80s vibe on the seats. Spent ages on those. We’d leave at 3:15 and get home at 11 p.m. Every. Single. Day.

“She’d sit upstairs in the little cafe and chill until I was done with training. Imagine being 17 years old and doing that for your little brother. And I never once heard her say, ‘Nah, I don’t wanna take him’.”

He continued: “At the time, I didn’t understand how much she was sacrificing. Her and my mum got me here.

“My whole family played a massive part in my life. Without them, you wouldn’t even know me.”

And while he could never repay Kima-lee for her support, he did buy her a house for her birthday.

In 2018, Raheem was subjected to heavy criticism for getting a tattoo of a gun inked on his right leg – with some accusing him of glamourising gun violence.

But this was far from the truth – the tattoo was in honour of his father and a promise to himself that he would never pick up a gun.

“When I was 2 my father died from being gunned down to death I made a promise to myself I would never touch a gun in my life time,” he wrote on Instagram.

“I shoot with my right foot so it has a deeper meaning.”

Now, a father himself, Raheem has sons Thiago, three, and Thai-Cruz, one, with fiancée Paige Milian, 25.

He also has daughter, Melody Rose, from a previous relationship.

On parenthood, Raheem told GQ Magazine: “Now, having my own kids, I make sure I give them that love from the father figure that I didn’t have.

“And I think that’s probably helped me feel better as well.”

He added, poignantly: “Sometimes it’s tough, but everything happens for a reason.”

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