England manager Gareth Southgate has stated expressly that Chelsea attacker Raheem Sterling will not be called up to the September 2023 England Three Lions squad despite the late changes.
Southgate did not include the forward in his latest squad list that will face Ukraine in the 2024 UEFA European Championship qualifiers and Scotland in a friendly on 9 and 12 September respectively. Sterling was reportedly unhappy at the decision, having been an important part of the squad for the past decade.
Southgate maintained his stance on Sterling’s exclusion even after Jack Grealish and Trent Alexander-Arnold both pulled out of the squad after picking up knocks in their last Premier League games before the break, further riling up the Jamaican-born English forward.
Sterling’s last stint with the England national team was the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. He missed the last two international breaks in March and June due to injury.
Now that he is fit, Southgate has chosen to keep him out of the squad to the surprise of many in the football media space.
Sterling is a Three Lions veteran with 82 caps under his belt. He has featured in every tournament for England since 2012 but Southgate’s latest move seems to suggest that he is slowly edging out the 28-year-old from the squad.
With Grealish and Alexander-Arnold both out injured, the former England midfielder has the opportunity to give late call ups. He has instead decided against it, choosing to stick to the players who are left. Many believe it is a decision he is taking to exclude Sterling as any late call-ups cannot skip the former Manchester City man.
The England squad have all reported for camp and have begun training for their games during this international break. Sterling, meanwhile, is left disappointed but is taking a well-deserved break after his services to Chelsea in the opening weeks of the 2023/24 Premier League season.
Mauricio Pochettino has trusted the former Liverpool youngster since pre-season, barely giving him any rest. The 28-year-old is the first name on his team sheet and has also proven to be his most decisive player in the last few weeks.
This comes after his admission that Sterling was his nemesis while he managed Tottenham Hotspur. The Argentine manager spoke with BBC Sport about how he hated coming up with tactics to stop Sterling while he coaches Spurs and Southampton before that.
“We [Pochettino and his staff] arrived to Southampton or Tottenham and he was playing at Liverpool and then [Man] City. He was always a player that we said, ‘we hate [you] because you are fast, you are [good] one-v-one, you score goals, give assists’,” Pochettino said of Sterling.
“I said, ‘now you are in our side, please, I want to enjoy you, you know your game, I’m going to enjoy how you score and run’. And I think he laughed, and I said, ‘yes, we are going to try to help you to perform again at your best’. But he deserves the credit.”
