As Raheem Sterling pulled up a seat at Manchester City’s village-sized training ground and started to go through the story that had brought him to this point, his mind briefly went back to his first day at a professional club, at the age of 10, when Queens Park Rangers invited him to join their academy, and to the dreams of a schoolboy.

The date was 8 March 2005 and that night, at home in Wembley Triangle, the young Sterling turned on the television to see Chelsea playing Barcelona, under the floodlights at Stamford Bridge, with the Champions League anthem blaring. “It was the night Ronaldinho scored that cheeky toe-poke goal,” he says. “That is why it sticks in the mind.”

Ronaldinho was one of the players Sterling used to pretend to be when he was dancing around the other kids on the school pitches. “I remember watching it on TV, listening to the music, wondering what it would be like to play in a competition like that and thinking: ‘Yeah, that’s where I want to be.’”

Ten years on, Sterling is the most expensive English footballer there has ever been. His career has had its controversies – more of that later – but it does not need long in his company to realise there are still elements of the young, impressionable boy. Sterling was so starstruck when he first saw Steven Gerrard at Liverpool he remembers it being like looking at a waxwork model.

Later, the conversation turns to his mother, Nadine, and it is very clear she still plays a huge part in his daily life. When City played West Ham recently and Sterling returned to the dressing room, dejected after his first league defeat for his new club, there was a text message waiting on his phone. It read: “You need to be in the box more, you need to get on the end of the knockdowns, mum.”

This is his first interview since joining City, signing from Liverpool for an initial £44m – potentially rising to £49m – and moving into a new house in the green, green grass of Wilmslow, where, as a snapshot of the modern footballer’s lifestyle, he cheerfully tells the story about installing his own barber’s shop. The floor is already down. A chair and mirror are being put in and a spare room is being converted. “Otherwise it’s annoying,” he explains, “when your barber comes round and cuts your hair, and it’s all over the carpet.”

He comes across as polite and well-mannered – offering at the end of the interview to carry the photographer’s equipment back to his car – and it is when he pulls back his sleeve to show off the tattoo on his left arm that there is a reminder there is a certain amount of charm attached to Sterling’s story.

There was no problem with the manager or the other players at Liverpool

The ink is of a young boy standing on Wembley Way, looking up at the national stadium with a ball under his arm and the No10 on his shirt. “That was my number when I was at QPR,” he says. “I grew up five minutes from the stadium and watched it being built. I’d play football right outside and look up at this huge stadium with all the cranes and building work and think: ‘One day, when it’s finished, I need to be playing in here.’ So the whole idea was me, in my shirt, looking at the stadium, saying it’s a dream and wanting to be a part of it.”

He has made it now, as a regular for the England team, and has packed so much into his short career that Roy Hodgson declared recently he would be surprised if the 20-year-old did not reach the 100-cap mark one day.

Sterling is also reacquainting himself with the Champions League and although he speaks well of Liverpool, pointing out his departure was nothing like as acrimonious as many people believe, he clearly feels vindicated by wanting to move along the M62. “The tempo, the passing, the two-touch movement in training; it’s really surprised me,” he says of his first few months in Manchester. “It’s really sharp, really good to be involved in. There are more experienced players here. Obviously, Liverpool had many great players as well but the players here have been at the highest level for many years and you can definitely see that on the training pitch.”

Up close, he is slight yet wiry but it is easy to be deceived. Gerrard tells a story in his new autobiography about seeing his former team-mate carrying Martin Skrtel on his back and realising that “there is a 16- or 17-year-old frame there but with the strength and power of a man – even more than a normal man,” someone powerful enough to “take on a 6ft giant and make it look easy”.

Gerrard describes it as “natural strength” but it is also a legacy, Sterling believes, of his days at Copland school and various junior teams, when he often came up against opponents who were four years older. “I don’t think I was ever with my real age group,” Sterling says. “And on a Saturday, when you’re playing against under-18s and the bigger boys see you – you were definitely a target. I’m still short now but when I was 14 I was like a pencil. You had to be aggressive and hold your own.”

Plus, of course, Sterling had whippet-like speed to elude opponents. As a kid, he excelled at long-distance running. But he could easily have been a sprinter, too; at 14, he claims, he was running 100 metres in under 11 seconds. “It was when I was at QPR that I realised I could beat players purely with speed. One of my friends, Bruno Andrade, was so quick he just used to knock the ball past whoever he was playing against and I thought: ‘Why can’t I do that?’ Until then, I would try to dribble and maybe try a stepover but Andre would just knock it then – beep, beep – and he was so fast he would get there first. So one weekend I tried it, too, and it worked.”

In his younger days, he says, he had “anger issues” on the pitch, which might come as a surprise, given there is absolutely no hint of it now.

“I didn’t like losing,” he says. “No one likes losing but I didn’t even like anyone scoring against me. I’d be going nuts and, after a while, the coaches would have to tell me: ‘You can’t do this, you can’t behave this way if you want to play in the big leagues.’ I was a sulker. I used to walk off the pitch. If my team was losing I’d be terrible. I don’t think anyone would like to see the behaviour I used to carry on with. It’s a blessing really that behaviour has gone, though I couldn’t do that when my mum was there. She was strict. She wouldn’t let me go to the next game if she saw me doing that. Thankfully, I grew out of it anyway.”

His departure from Liverpool, a proud and emotional club, was never going to be easy, upsetting many supporters, but behind the scenes the reality is that he left on reasonable terms. Sterling was a popular member of the dressing room and had a good relationship with Brendan Rodgers.

“When everything was going on and it was in the papers every day, everyone at Liverpool was top-notch. I spoke to the manager every day. I spoke to all the players. Everyone outside the club made it out as being something really bad but there was no problem with the manager or the other players. The manager even invited me over to his house to talk. It wasn’t anything like as bad as people made out.”

I don't regret doing the BBC interview

The truth is simple: he just wanted to join a club where there was a better chance of silverware. He does, however, reflect it was a mistake to go public in his infamous interview with the BBC, when he wanted to get the message out that he was not a “money-grabbing 20-year-old”.

“I don’t regret doing the interview because it was frustrating hearing some of the stories about myself and some of the silly money people said I was supposedly rejecting, when it was nothing like that. I just wanted to get my point across but probably there was a better way I could have done it.

“After that, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone; all the negativity that came through. It was difficult for me. I don’t mind bad press when it is about football because hopefully you can do something to put it right. It just felt towards the end [at Liverpool] it was a bit personal. People developed this perception of me and it was shocking to find the way that some people viewed me.”

Raheem Sterling joined Manchester City from Liverpool for £44m, potentially rising to £49m. Photograph: Andrew Yates/Reuters

He has wanted to make that point for some time and this might be a good time as well, with England playing Estonia next Friday, to clear up that, contrary to popular opinion, Sterling never claimed to be too tired to play in the corresponding fixture in Tallinn a year ago.

“That was so crazy I don’t think that could happen again, for anyone,” he says. “The manager asked me a question and, being the person I am, I answered honestly. He asked me how I was feeling and I said I was OK but ‘my legs do feel a bit tired’. I never once said: ‘I don’t want to play’ or anything like that. He just asked me a general question and I was honest. I didn’t lie and say: ‘Oh yes, I feel 100%,’ but at the same time I never said I didn’t want to play. Obviously, the manager changed his mind about me playing and probably based it on that conversation but I was just being honest.”

Hodgson has become increasingly protective of his player since then and when Sterling talks about playing for England there is the clear sense that every game at Wembley carries an extra personal meaning. Another of his tattoos is of Wembley Park, his local underground station, and there is still a great deal of affection for his old neighbourhood. “Going back there now with England is so weird. We’re heading into the stadium on the coach and I’m looking out of the window, passing where my friends live. I can see the car park where I used to ride my bike, the areas where I played football, and where we used to go rollerblading every weekend. It’s just really strange.”

His first time there was at the age of 12 for the 2007 FA Cup final, Chelsea against Manchester United, in a parade of local youngsters wearing shirts showing the previous winners. “Didier Drogba scored the winner,” he recalls, “and I was wearing a United top from the 1970s.”

Now he is looking forward to being there one day in City’s colours. “I remember my first day here after signing,” he says, looking around at the training ground. “I was driving in thinking: ‘This is the place, this is the place you want to work every day.’”