Manchester City attacker Raheem Sterling has revealed he was already thinking about leaving former club Liverpool for a bigger club at the age of 15 - well before he had even broken into the club's first team.
Speaking to Gary Linekeron BBC's Premier League show, as reported by theLiverpool Echo, Sterling admitted thathe hadalways planned to depart Merseyside if he didn't win trophies early in his career. He left for City in the summer of 2015 after making his name at Anfield, in a record transfer for a British player.
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And Sterling admitted to Lineker that he already had ambitions of playing in the Champions League and would do what he could to ensure that happened when he got to the big stage:At that time I was 15 years old and we were already talking about what we'd like to do after Liverpool if things didn't turn out like we wanted.
I just said well this is a massive club and a massive opportunity for me now but I remember saying to him by the time I'm 22, if I haven't won anything or playing in the biggest competitions then I need to assess my options.
You want to make sure you're playing at the highest level. Liverpool are a great team, I never said that wasn't the case. But at the time it was a great opportunity to come here and work with some of the best players in the world.
I'm not saying there aren't some great players at Liverpool because there are but it was for me, my development and where I wanted to be.
It was about playing in the Champions League and against the biggest teams like Barcelona.
I've always loved Liverpool, it was a great team which helped my development. I never had any big issues there at all with the fans or anything like that. It didn't go the way I would have liked but it happened and you have to move on.�
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