Sterling has thus far earned 18 caps for England since making his senior worldwide debut in November 2012.
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“I’m not going to hide that”.
Sterling’s £49m move to Manchester City was the biggest transfer saga of the summer and made him public enemy No1 with Liverpool fans.
“I want to be scoring goals, goals, and more goals”, he said.
“This is the real challenge”, said Sterling.
“A lot of people say that we have not had the better teams to play against or they have not been good or whatever, but we have to go out and beat what is put in front of us”. I always want to be on the ball and create stuff. “I’m not trying to look back on the past and I am only trying to look forward”.
“It was hard with all the negativity around you”, he said. No one likes to hear the negatives, you want to hear positives all the time.
“But the most important thing was I tried to not watch TV or read anything on my phone or anything like that. I tried to spend time with my daughter and mum and make the day go like that”.
“Everything was going on and there were people that didn’t agree with it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and my opinion was it was time for me to move on”. “He asked me a genuine question, I answered, told him exactly how I felt and it was his choice to take me out of the squad, or the team”.
“It was like any other chat which me and him have had as a player and a manager”.
No more so when turning down lucrative offers to stay at Liverpool last season in favour of a £49 million ($74 million) move to City in July.
Sterling, who is expected to pick up his 19th cap in the friendly with Spain tomorrow, said of his move: “I thought at the time it was right for me and my heart was saying that is what I should do”.
“I am just happy to be in a squad like that and hopefully I can continue my development and win trophies in the future with the football club”, the former Liverpool winger explained.
Sterling has spearheaded the revolution in the England side as a younger core of players have come to the fore in a remarkably successful campaign for Euro 2016 that saw Hodgson’s men win all 10 of their qualifying matches.
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“Going training with players of that calibre like Vinny [Vincent Kompany], Sergio [Aguero], David [Silva], Joe [Hart] – there’s only one thing you can do and that is improve”.
