English football may eat its young, but at least it does so with a sense of grand, banquet-hall theatre. What stage are we at now in the collective devouring of Raheem Sterling? Stuffed and filleted, a single caramelised Braeburn clenched between his teeth, Sterling has spent the last few days nudging his way a little further down that familiar digestive process of hope, hype and fruitless backlash.

This is not the moment to rehearse again the rights and wrongs of Sterling’s contract wrangle, a drama of status and gentlemanly expectation that has already reached Jane Austen-like levels of intrigue. There is though another element in the current drama that stands out a little uncomfortably. Among the assorted soundbites swirling about in the wake of that unauthorised BBC interview it is the regurgitation of Brendan Rodgers’ claim last year that Sterling is “the best young player in Europe” that seems most startling, and indeed illuminating.

So far this point has been picked out only to add fuel to the internecine argument. But stepping away for a moment from the question of how much exactly Sterling deserves to be paid, there is something jarring about this in its own right. The best young player in Europe is an Englishman who has never scored a goal in the Champions League, never won any kind of trophy, and never made any real impact against one of the heavyweights of European or international football. Really?

In Rodgers’ defence it is worth noting Sterling has a greater formal claim on this title than anybody else right now. In December last year he was voted Europe’s Golden Boy, or best player 21 or under, at the head of a 30-man shortlist that also included Calum Chambers, Lazar Markovic, Adnan Januzaj, Luke Shaw and Eric Dier. Previous winners include Lionel Messi, Sergio Agüero and Mario Balotelli. Which gives a fairly clear indication of how seriously such things should be taken: genuine A-grade talent will always out; but the leap up from good to seriously good is often no more than guesswork and faith.

What weight should be given to such a title is another matter. Paul Pogba, for example, is still only 22 and clearly a class above. Is Sterling even the best young player at Liverpool? Philippe Coutinho, a seductively thrilling (if non‑English) attacking talent might have a say in that. As might Jordon Ibe, who has barely played but is probably just as exciting when it comes to a punt on unspent potential.

This is not to denigrate Sterling’s talents. I was there to see probably the best three moments to date in his career, each of them entirely convincing: the goal in the title-decider-that-wasn’t at home to Manchester City, when Sterling seemed to pause time briefly, rearrange his body, tweak Joe Hart’s nose and then tickle the ball into an entirely unexpected part of the goal; the title-clincher-that-might-have-been when he pummelled the ball into the Norwich City net from 30 yards out; and in Manaus, where, as England’s No10, Sterling had a wonderful half-hour, carrying the ball with purpose, twisting and turning with thrillingly muscular intent, and producing an entirely illusory sense of an England team finding a winning gear.

Each time Sterling rose to the occasion where others shrunk. He is adaptable, intelligent and blessed with real speed and strength. Against this he has done pretty much nothing of any note so far. His career is a series of nice moments, with almost no imprint outside the Premier League. It is even tempting to conclude there is something slightly illusory about his appeal. Sterling looks so brilliantly upright in possession. There is a charm to his manipulation of the ball and his fine touch that so far exceeds his basic effectiveness.

All of which is to be expected. Sterling is 20 years old. Only in the overheated Premier League could a series of promising moments lead to some apparently serious talk of a £50m transfer fee. The real point here is that beyond the island borders of the World’s Most Excitable League, European football is awash with equivalent fine young talent in Sterling’s part of the pitch. Various factors, among them an easing of concussive tackling and the emphasis on finding space in an increasingly suffocating top tier game, have contributed to making players in Sterling’s position key to the modern game.

As a result, fine-touch attacking midfielders are frankly crawling out of the walls in Europe’s top leagues (never mind Brazil and Argentina, the historic cradle of the No10). The No10 is the position of choice in the Bundesliga, where even the current fifth-placed club, Schalke, have a pair of young creative players at least as good in Max Meyer and the excellent but injury-prone Julian Draxler, who tortured Chelsea’s midfield for half an hour at Stamford Bridge last autumn.

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Beyond this can anybody say with any certainty that Sterling is better than Mateo Kovacic, Hakan Calhanoglu, Memphis Depay, Paulo Dybala, Alen Halilovic, Davy Klaassen, Nikola Ninkovic or Jesé Rodríguez? Is he a better prospect than Martin Odegaard, Real Madrid’s performing teenager? Is he actually better than Alex Oxlade‑Chamberlain, Ross Barkley, and Harry Kane? Maybe he is right now. Maybe not next month. It is a meaningless, unanswerable question, an argument about possibility and potential, and a crown that can only really be awarded in retrospect.

In a sense this is simply part of the wider picture. English football has always been in thrall to individuals rather than teams: the idea of The One, the foundling genius emerging fully formed from some urban dustbin rather than the far more difficult business of carefully structured success. Whereas almost without exception the best footballers in the world over the last 20 years have been part of some coherent and identifiable process. The best thing about the current world champions is not whether Thomas Müller is the best gangly, awkward, hyper intelligent space-interpreting semi-targetman in the world (he is), but that a system has borne fruits, producing not the occasional standout genius but a generation of brilliantly modern footballers.

Sterling may well get the bumper deal he probably deserves in the current market, whether at Liverpool or elsewhere (and Manchester City look the most obvious suckers for a domestic poster boy). But it is worth bearing in mind this is a strictly localised farrago; and that the Sterling Supremacy says as much about the rarity of such home reared talents in the Premier League as it does about an agent with eye on the main chance.