LONDON — He has said he has the kind of face that people just don’t like — “the ‘I don’t like face’” — and, in the past few days, quite a few people have tried to prove him right in what seems a peculiarly British cocktail of race, envy and, of course, tabloid newspapers.
Raheem Sterling, 23, ranks among the most contentious, skilled and expensive of players in English soccer — a game that conjures a national near-zealotry that other sports can rarely match.
For some he is the perennial bad boy, alternately overpaid and profligate or meanspirited and tightfisted, depending on the story du jour.