Liverpool at receiving end

Football : Used to buying big players, the Anfield club has lost many stars in recent past, the latest being Sterling

Once upon a time, when Liverpool was the dominant team in Europe, it celebrated its triumphs by going out the very next day to buy two, perhaps three top players so it could perpetuate its greatness. Now, it is plundered by richer and more successful clubs doing the same to it.

For the third time in four years, Liverpool has had to sell one of its coveted stars.
In 2011, Fernando Torres went from Anfield to Chelsea - and Chelsea won the Champions League the following year.

In 2014, Luis Suàrez left for Barcelona - and Barça won the Champions League.
This week, Raheem Sterling moved to Manchester City - and City craves a Champions League title.

Each time it happens, the owners of Liverpool face the same market realities that other teams do in European soccer. Liverpool can recycle every cent, and more, of the money that it receives to buy new players, but in the end the most gifted individuals in the game want something more.

They want cash, and also trophies. And though the transfer system is sometimes portrayed as an exploitation of players, it now works the other way around at the very top.

Sterling and his agent have been, to say the least, unsubtle in their methods to get him out of his Liverpool contract and force the move to City. He is just 20. Born in Jamaica but taken to England by his mother at an early age, he was plucked by Liverpool from the academy of Queens Park Rangers at 16.

Liverpool didn’t make Sterling a gifted player. He already had a marvelous mixture of speed, balance and intuitive daring when he had the ball at his feet.

But Liverpool Manager Brendan Rodgers took to him like a father and guided him, accelerating him onto the first team with Steven Gerrard, Suàrez and the rest. Rodgers can come across like a preacher in his approach to team building, but starting from middle of last season, he was losing the battle for the heart and the mind of his favorite pupil.

Sterling’s agent, Aidy Ward, used every trick in the book to get his client from Liverpool to Manchester. That, in essence, is the agent’s role. He put his client in front of the BBC television cameras, where Sterling spoke of being offered a new contract that would “only” triple his salary of $50,000 a week ($2.6 million a year), once it became clear that City, or others, would pay five or six times his current rate.

When Liverpool said, just as publicly, that Sterling would not be allowed to leave, the player and the agent showed their power by using the media, again. They said that no amount of salary would keep him at Anfield. And as the club played hardball against steadily growing offers by Manchester City to buy him, Sterling failed to show for training, claiming illness. The question of whether he would travel Monday with Liverpool to Bangkok to start the team’s preseason tour went to the brink.

City finally met Liverpool’s price of close to $77 million in transfer fees. That sum, similar to the amount that Chelsea paid for Torres but well shy of the $115 million Barcelona paid for Suàrez, will have to be shared somewhat with Queens Park. The London club sold him for an estimated $1 million, but it cannily negotiated a 20 percent share of any fee that Liverpool might receive if it later sold Sterling.

Sterling’s attributes are inextricably bound up in the word “potential.” For City fans, he turns the clock back to the summer of 2008, when the Abu Dhabi royal family purchased the club and marked the occasion by signing Robinho, the exciting Brazilian winger, from Real Madrid.

Robinho dazzled to deceive. He gave the English club one spellbinding season of sorcery and goals, followed by a second season of mediocrity, and at 31 ended up back where he started, at the Brazilian club, Santos, before negotiating a move to China this month.

After Robinho came the Argentine Carlos Tevez, who similarly shone in City’s light blue colors, then rebelled against Manager Roberto Mancini before he was sent to Juventus. After two superb seasons with the Italian club, Tevez also is back home in South America with his first club, Boca Juniors.

There is little prospect of Sterling’s ever settling back in Kingston, Jamaica, or with the now-relegated Queens Park Rangers. But now that he has achieved his aim, it is up to him - and City Manager Manuel Pellegrini - to prove that he is worth anywhere near what he cost in transfer fees and salary.

City paid too much for two reasons. It needs fresh blood, and it has to comply with UEFA Champions League regulations that it must have eight English players on its 25-man roster.

While Manchester City once had a proud record of nurturing talent through its own academy, since 2008 it has not had the patience to nurture players. Its Middle Eastern owners chose instead to fast-track its success by buying talent. It has worked domestically, with Premier League titles, but it hasn’t so far in European competition.
The reigning champion, Barcelona, has just followed Liverpool’s former example of adding to a winning team.

Barçelona has bought two experienced players - Aleix Vidal from Sevilla and Arda Turan from Atlético Madrid - in the past month, despite the fact that neither can play for the Catalan club until January because of a FIFA-imposed penalty on them.

Vidal is a former Barcelona prodigy. Turan is Turkey’s most accomplished player, and his guile and passing ability fit the Barcelona template. At 28, Turan is costing about $30 million less than Sterling, and he is willing to sacrifice six months of his playing career to join the team of champions.