Manchester City winger Raheem Sterling has hinted his poor confidence in front of goal comes from his coaches’ advice while at Liverpool as a youngster.
Most recently the Englishman missed a hat-trick of opportunities in City’s 3-2 defeat to Manchester United, while his side were two goals up, which would have won them the title against their rivals at the Etihad.
“I remember being coached at Liverpool and there was another kid called Toni Silva and they said ‘you know, instead of blasting the ball and it goes in, do like Toni does, pass it around the keeper’,” he told Sky Sports.
“That kind of put me in doubt and that’s where it all started.”
Sterling left Liverpool in 2015 to join City, where he has won the League Cup twice and Premier League once.
On the other side, Silva is currently unattached, most recently playing for Greek side APO Levadiakos.
Sterling’s stellar season
The goals have been fairly evenly spread between Sterling’s feet with the Englishman scoring 10 with his right and seven with his left.
All but one have also been scored from inside the penalty area, with a 52% shot accuracy and 27.4% shot conversion rate.
