Football
ESPN staff 9y

Liverpool's Brendan Rodgers defends Raheem Sterling over night out

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers has defended midfielder Raheem Sterling, saying he was entitled to have a night out after coming back from international duty with England.

Sterling was roundly criticised in the media for going to a nightclub the day after being left out of England's game against Estonia in Tallinn for being too tired.

However, Rodgers insisted after Liverpool's 3-0 defeat to Real Madrid that Sterling had every right to go out, and that the incident is "not a story."

"I think for Raheem it's obviously just important he focuses on his football -- it's unfortunate, six days before a game when he's on a day off, he can't go out," he said.

"It's obviously a story for some but, if you read it carefully, there's not a story in it: 100 percent it was a night out he was entitled to have.

"He was terrific tonight [against Madrid], and he goes about his work really well. With his rise he'll learn that maybe people want to knock you, but he's focused on his work."

Meanwhile, England coach Roy Hodgson has hit out at the media treatment of 19-year-old Sterling over the incident.

"With young Raheem Sterling this week, it guts me to see that sort of treatment," he told students at Cambridge University at the end of a talk about his philosophy of leadership on Wednesday.

"It's totally unfair and totally wrong. It's suiting people's agendas. But, you know, he'll be stronger for it.

"Is that right? Of course it's not right. But I can't turn the clock back, I'm living in 2014, I can't go back to Downton Abbey."

Hodgson also claimed that journalists were trying to drive a wedge between him and club managers, playing down reports of any row with Rodgers.

"There is no tension with Brendan," he said. "We get on very well. I've been very fortunate that, in two-and-a-half years, I've not had a single situation where a manager has tried to drag a player out of the team, or told me they don't want their players to take part.

"I think a lot of the players, if their manager said: 'I don't want you to play for England,' would say: 'I'm sorry, I love playing for England and I want to go.'

"Brendan and I have always got on very well since he took the job at Liverpool, so there's no problem at all. And Jose Mourinho has come out and said that on my behalf as well.

"I've been lucky. I think there have been club vs. country conflicts in the past, but I've been pretty shielded from it luckily. Journalists would like more conflict, because they work in a slightly Machiavellian situation.

"So when there is just the simple situation -- the simple situation of a player asking to be excused from a training session the day before a game because he was feeling tired, I said: 'No problem with that, in which case I won't start you, but thanks for telling me.'

"They don't want that, that's too simple. It must be Brendan Rodgers. Unfortunately, that's how simple it is. He [Sterling] didn't say he didn't want to play the game -- he played the game, 25 minutes. Journalists are always going to try and drive wedges between managers."

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