Responding to the bizarre line of questioning about his early withdrawal, the England international insisted he was physically ready for a heavier workload despite his restricted minutes. “Yeah, I felt good enough to continue but, of course, it\u2019s the coach\u2019s decision,” he explained regarding Van Persie’s call. Pressing the obvious point about wanting to keep playing, Sterling added: “Like every footballer does. Once you\u2019re on the grass, you just want to be in the grass. But it\u2019s understandable.”<\/p>\n
Sterling’s move to Rotterdam hasn’t been without its detractors, but he has found a fierce ally in former Man City team-mate Jack Grealish. After a social media account mocked Sterling’s initial debut as a “nightmare” and compared him to “Bambi on ice,” the Everton loanee hit back. Grealish responded to the ‘stupid’ criticism with a passionate defence of his friend<\/a>.<\/p>\n “What a f***ing stupid Instagram post man what’s wrong with you guys,” Grealish wrote in the comments section. “Guy hasn\u2019t played or trained for so long. People like you guys is what [is] wrong with the world. Have some respect.” The support comes as Sterling continues to adapt to a new league following a frustrating end to his time at Stamford Bridge, where he was forced to train away from the first team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Responding to the bizarre line of questioning about his early withdrawal, the England international insisted he was physically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,41289,128625,596,262900,262902,151955,262901,85],"class_list":["post-529119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-eredivisie","tag-feyenoord","tag-football","tag-nac-breda","tag-nac-breda-vs-feyenoord","tag-r-sterling","tag-r-van-persie","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}