Raheem Sterling is without a club, and Thomas Tuchel says it is sad to watch. The German, who signed Sterling for Chelsea in 2022, has spoken with real sympathy about a player who once had the Premier League at his feet.
Tuchel was there at the start of the slide. He paid £47.5million for Sterling, backed him as a marquee signing, and has now watched that transfer unravel into a spell with no team at all.
Tuchel hoped a big move for Sterling at Chelsea
Sterling joined Chelsea from Manchester City in the summer of 2022, with Tuchel in the dugout at Stamford Bridge. It was meant to be the next step for a player with 82 England caps and a trophy cabinet to match.
Tuchel was blunt about how big that step turned out to be.
“I was fighting for this transfer and he could never prove the importance that he normally had. It was a big step for him at that moment in time,” he said.
The move never settled. By the start of the 2024/25 season, Enzo Maresca had frozen Sterling out of the Chelsea squad entirely. Arsenal took him on loan that year, though it was never more than a brief chapter: one goal in 28 appearances, a long way short of the player Tuchel had signed.
Sterling’s exit from Chelsea was confirmed in January by mutual agreement, once the loan had run its course. He then joined Feyenoord in February. That spell, too, ended at the close of the season, leaving him without a club heading into this one.
The numbers around Sterling transfers
The numbers around Sterling’s fall are stark on their own. A £47.5million fee, one goal in 28 games during a loan spell, 82 England caps that now feel like a different era. Few recent transfers have drifted this far from their starting point.
Tuchel’s sympathy stems from knowing Sterling before any of that happened.
“I have a lot of sympathy for him and I feel that he has struggled ever since he left Man City and he was at the peak of his career,” he said.
He was careful not to reduce Sterling to statistics alone.
“It’s sad to see that someone struggles because he was a devoted father for his children and he was a family guy, a nice guy to be around. It just seems that he goes through a difficult period,” Tuchel added.
Tuchel is not describing a player who lost form through tactics or fitness. He is describing someone who, by his own account, simply stopped being able to show what he could do, even as life around him carried on as normal.
What’s next for Sterling
There is no obvious next step for Sterling right now, and nobody involved is pretending otherwise. He is also awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to dangerous driving and possession of nitrous oxide, a legal matter that sits alongside the footballing one.
Tuchel was asked to explain the decline and chose not to claim certainty.
“I’m not sure how much is his fault, sometimes you just enter a strange spiral in your life, a downward spiral. Thoughts are with him of course, the belief is always that he can turn it around and I wish him the best,” he said.
That is about as far as the record allows anyone to go. Arsenal fans who remember Sterling’s short loan spell will know it was never a defining one, and nothing here points to where he goes next. Tuchel’s comments read less like analysis and more like a manager watching a player he once believed in run out of road.
For a career built on 82 caps and a title-winning peak at City, that is a hard place to end up. The question Tuchel leaves hanging, and one few in the game seem able to answer, is whether Sterling still has a route back from here.
Tuchel has made similar points about young talent before. His praise for England’s emerging players and his words on England’s next generation show how quickly careers can swing in either direction. Full details on his remarks about Sterling are available via Tuchel’s comments to football.london.
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