# All played out? Raheem Sterling in startling decline after hitting the fateful 500 mark

In Rafa Benítez’s first season in English football, he rested Steven Gerrard for an FA Cup tie at Burnley, who were in the Championship. When Liverpool lost, there was a predictable backlash and, from certain quarters, derision as Benítez explained his rotation policy and the need to manage the number of minutes each player played.

Social media being in its infancy, it wasn’t quite the culture war that it would have become today, but certain old-school football men clearly felt that players should just get on with it: hard work never hurt anyone. But at the same time a piece of ancient wisdom kept surfacing, usually from elderly coaches who had spent a lifetime in the game: as a rule of thumb, however much they play, whatever age they start, a player has 500 games in them.

## The Arsenal Forward's 500th Senior Appearance

City won the league in 2021-22 and reached the semi-finals of both the FA Cup and Champions League. Sterling played in fewer games than he had in any previous Premier League season for City, but only just. He still scored 13 league goals. There were no great alarm bells ringing. But Pep Guardiola had evidently seen something, some diminution of the hunger, some fractional loss of acceleration, some infinitesimal leadening of the touch. At the end of that season,  for £47.5m.

Sterling was the first of the legions to sign for . Thomas Tuchel was still the manager. Goodness knows what sort of vision of the club was sold to his agent as negotiations were conducted via scribbled-on napkins in a members’ club in London. But it’s unlikely either Sterling or his agent realised there would be 41 further signings in the following two and a half years (a figure that includes João Félix twice).

Sterling did not have an easy start but he did score twice in a win over Leicester. Then  after a month and so the long, slow drift into confusion began, the hop from Graham Potter to Frank Lampard to Mauricio Pochettino to Enzo Maresca. Did any of them have a clear vision for Sterling as he moved into his late 20s, his notional peak?

## Sterling’s Decline

The body starts to go, everything else that sustains a player at the highest level tails off too. It’s a reminder of just how high a level  footballers habitually operate at, just how fragile their excellence often is, how quickly a small decline can become a huge one. Sterling is only 30, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, at the highest level, he is finished. The law of 500 has struck again.

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