Ignore the denials, Raheem Sterling's foolish posturing is all about money

Hearing a footballer claiming that contract negotiations are nothing to do with money is like listening to a politician tell you that he will neither raise taxes nor cut spending: it is a lie so transparent it has become wearisome. Of course Sterling wants more money. The idea that he is somehow trying to parlay himself some sort of greater professional test of his ability is nonsense.

What more pressing challenge could he have than helping to turn his current club into a trophy winning operation? They are pretty close to that already. At the last time of looking, Liverpool were scheduled to play at Wembley in a fortnight, just 90 minutes away from the opportunity to appear in the final of the world’s oldest cup competition. His thirst for silverware looks more immediately likely to be sated by staying precisely where he is.

So let’s not pretend. Let’s not be party to the ridiculous charade proposed by his earnest television interview. This is to do with money. Nothing else. And the depressing news for those of us who through our season tickets and television subscriptions supply the money to the likes of Sterling is that this sort of tiresome negotiating stance is not going anywhere soon.

The massive upsurge in the Premier League’s television revenue (which is about to be increased yet further by the imminent announcement of the next overseas rights deal) will have only one certain consequence. Sure, Richard Scudamore might be doing his best to ensure that a little bit of the cash trickles down into the grass roots and community spending. But the vast majority of the increase is going to go in one direction. It is headed straight into the offshore trusts of the immediate participants, the players, their representatives and the club directors.

The scandal of Sterling gerrymandering for a salary worth £7.8 million a year while many a Premier League club does not pay its junior staff the minimum wage is not about to change. Football has always been a microcosm of wider society. Its financial priorities are no different from the rest of the economy, skewed to ensuring the rich get richer and the poor pay the bill.

You do wonder though quite who it is who advised Sterling to undertake the interview with the BBC. Nothing wrong with the journalism – it was a fine piece of work by Natalie Pirks, who asked all the right questions. But what on earth possessed Sterling to do such a thing at this critical moment in the season?

His manager must be beyond fuming. There are Liverpool, attempting to reach the FA Cup final and secure Champions League football and just as they need everybody in the club to pull together, their most exciting prospect decides to go public with his feebly self-serving whinge about how the grass appears to be greener elsewhere. Green as in the colour of a dollar bill.

Why on earth could Sterling not have waited until the end of the season to make public his complaint? It is not as if Liverpool are exactly expecting him to survive on starvation rations. He is already earning £1.8m a year. Which, a quick survey of the earning potential among his school contemporaries would suggest is what most of them would be lucky to earn in a lifetime of employment. If such a thing as a lifetime of employment still exists for most 20 year olds. Sympathy, therefore, for his position would have been in short supply.

If this was an attempt to seize the public relations high ground, then it utterly failed. Here he was presenting himself as some sort of victim at the precise moment he should be concentrating on his game, putting his energy into earning a bit of this silverware he craves for his mantelpiece. If nothing else, as an advert for his skills to a putative employer it does not say much about his concentration levels.

Anyone with half a brain could have told him going public like this would backfire. But then, presumably, he was advised to do it by his agent, a representative of a business whose priority is almost solely financial, a body whose half brain is fixated on the colour of their clients’ money.

To speak out in such a way at such a crucially important time in the collective endeavour must have been the single most undermining thing that could be done for Sterling’s image. A player of huge potential now merely looks a grasping twerp. You imagine the reception in the dressing room – among a group he effectively said we not good enough to meet his long term needs – will not exactly be conducive to team spirit.

There can be few football supporters who don’t now hope that Liverpool call his agent’s bluff and refuse to be railroaded into an unsustainable deal. Because unless the club goes and tells him to sling his hook, this sort of absurd posturing negotiation is going to become the norm.