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For a man of just 23 years, Raheem Sterling has crammed a lot into his life.

England caps, Liverpool’s young player of the year award twice, front-page controversy, a family tragedy and winning the Premier League under Pep Guardiola have all made their mark on the City player.

He became the most expensive under-21 player in football history when he joined City from Liverpool in July 2015.

But who is the man behind the facade of the footballer?

Sterling was born in the notorious Maverley district of Kingston, Jamaica – an area more noted for its gun crime and poverty than its football.

His mother took him and sister Lakima away from that hell-hole when he was six, emigrating to London, where the family settled on the St Raphael’s estate, close to Wembley Stadium.

The wisdom of that was underlined when Sterling’s absent father was shot dead in Jamaica – when he was a child.

But north west London was no paradise, and Sterling was soon attending a special school, due to behaviour problems in mainstream school.

Football was his saving grace. One teacher told him, at the age of ten: “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.”

The lure of gang culture loomed large in his life, but Sterling was too busy playing football.

His childhood was played out in the rising shadow of the new Wembley, and it soon became clear Sterling had a better than average chance of playing there one day.

His teacher Chris Beschi felt that Sterling’s label as a naughty, educationally sub-normal kid, was just wrong: “Raheem is amazingly intelligent in so many ways,” he said.

“At Vernon House he would have been statemented as having special educational needs. It’s a stigma to have when someone like Raheem is a brilliant thinker. He would get concepts off the football pitch as well as on it. He had a great work ethic which lots of the other kids didn’t.”

Perhaps those formative years explain the fact that Sterling has occasionally strayed from the path – he was pictured by national newspapers smoking a shisha pipe and inhaling nitrous oxide from balloons.

Neither activity is illegal, but does not reflect well on a professional footballer – but when weighed against fears he might end up in prison, they are pretty small beer!

His football talent, playing for the Alpha and Omega Youth Club, was spotted by Queen’s Park Rangers, and he was in their Centre of Excellence at 11.

QPR academy director Steve Gallen said: “There was good and bad in that team - the good was Raheem and the bad was the rest of the team. A match would finish 6-5 and Raheem would have scored five goals while the rest let six in.”

City watched him playing, as a 14-year-old, for QPR’s under-18 team, but only Liverpool and Fulham tried to sign him – the Merseysiders sealed a £1million deal for him before he had turned 15.

He made his first team debut for Liverpool at the age of 17 years and 107 days, making him the third youngest debutant in the club’s history – behind Jack Robinson and Jerome Sinclair.

Unlike those two, Sterling secured his place in the first-team squad, and made 129 appearances, scoring 23 goals, for the Anfield outfit.

In 2014 he was named Europe’s Golden Boy, awarded to the best youngster in Europe, as voted by top sports journalists from across the continent. Previous winners have included Sergio Aguero, Mario Balotelli, Lionel Messi and Paul Pogba.

He secured a huge move to City in July 2015, signing a five-year deal and under Guardiola has become one of the best young players in Europe.