Why It's Vital Pep Guardiola Repairs Raheem Sterling's Shattered Confidence

Confidence is vital to every athlete. It’s perhaps the single most important factor in sports performance.

An athlete must believe they can achieve their goals for them to reach their optimum level. Without that, they are inferior and less likely to perform to their maximum. Having the necessary physical capability is one thing, but without belief, an athlete simply cannot produce their best.

Look at Raheem Sterling during his debut season for Manchester City. In his first few months at the club, he played well and showed moments of excellence. He wasn’t a consistent force, but given his age (he was 20 when he signed for City), that was understandable.

He played on the left and sometimes centrally, and he scored 10 goals before the turn of the year, including a superb hat-trick against Bournemouth and a double against Borussia Monchengladbach that secured City top spot in their Champions League group.

His pace brought a new dynamism to City’s attack, and with width on both sides of the pitch, they were stretching teams in a way they hadn’t the previous season. Sterling had work to do, such as improving his finishing and learning how to make better runs, but his first half of the season had been solid and, at times, spectacular.

However, a severe downturn in form followed, and by the end of the season, with his confidence seemingly in pieces, he was barely part of the side. He played only one full 90 minutes in the last 10 weeks of Manuel Pellegrini’s tenure, which tells its own story.

Sterling was nervous, inhibited by his own lack of belief and unable to assert himself as he would at his best and struggling to do even the simplest things on the pitch.

Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

Of course, he had good reason to have suffered a crisis of confidence. His move from Liverpool to City had caused consternation on Merseyside.

Liverpool remain one of England’s biggest football institutions, with influential voices littered across the media. The fact Sterling, who had been one of their most exciting players during the previous two seasons, had chosen to leave a club with such a rich history of success upset their army of former players, many of whom weighed in and publicly denounced the youngster.

It was a smear campaign that transmitted to the wider public. Sterling was cast as a mercenary, a player only in it for the money. He was booed at almost every away ground he visited last season in a strange, vitriolic and coordinated attack that was both unfair and damaging to young talent.

And it continued during the summer with England. His performances at the 2016 UEFA European Championship weren’t good enough—but look across the entire England squad and it’s difficult to find a single player who produced their best.

They exited the tournament at the last-16 stage, beaten by unfancied Iceland and with their reputation at an all-time low. Sterling suffered the biggest backlash of them all.

VI-Images/Getty Images

The Sun ran a story with the headline "Obscene Raheem," criticising the winger for "flaunting his millionaire wealth" on Snapchat after he posted a video described as a "Through The Keyhole-style tour of a luxury mansion." The newspaper article added that the "pampered star" was videoed "bragging" about his "wealth" and "extravagance."

"

Thursday's Sun front page:
Obscene Raheem#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #eng pic.twitter.com/2Kq7QWBQ4l

— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) June 29, 2016"

Hours later, Stuart Brennan at the Manchester Evening News published an exclusive report that revealed the house featured on the City man’s video was a property he had just bought for his mother, who raised her son on her own after his father was murdered when Sterling was just nine and still works as a nurse.

"

Well, well, well. It seems there was more to the "Obscene Raheem" story than first thought https://t.co/zNkiZeRDO8

— Stuart Brennan (@StuBrennanMEN) June 30, 2016"

It’s been a sickening campaign. Sterling has faced more than his fair share of criticism and is probably wondering where it will all end.

But when he meets up with the City squad in Beijing next week as they start their pre-season tour of China, he will be met by a new manager, one with a history of maximising players’ performance levels.

Pep Guardiola, who called Sterling during this summer's Euros to wish him well and tell him he was set to be a key player for City, per Daniel Taylor of the Guardian, is now very much in the swing of things at City.

This is the new manager's third week of training with a squad of senior players not involved at international tournaments and some of the club’s most promising elite development squad stars. They head to Munich for a game against Bayern on Wednesday, before the likes of Sterling join up with their City team-mates in China.

And he will be desperate to get his hands on a player as talented as Sterling. The forward's form is wayward at present, and he has certain limitations in his game, but Guardiola will look past the hysteria and claims Sterling is a waste of money and see a young player, full of pace, who possesses some outstanding qualities. The Catalan gave the green light to City directors last summer when his opinion on whether Sterling should be signed was sought, and he clearly values and rates his ability.

There are technical issues—chief among them is Sterling’s often erratic finishing—and Guardiola will need to focus on improving them, but it’s his lack of belief that is holding him back at present.

OLI SCARFF/Getty Images

And Guardiola has done it before. Rafinha, Kingsley Coman, David Alaba are just three players to have benefited from the former Barcelona manager's man-management skills and found better form under his guidance. Sterling is primed to do the same.

It’s vital Guardiola can do it. Sterling cost the club £44 million and was seen as a long-term, homegrown attacking option for years to come. This was a player they invested big money in because they expected big returns over a sustained period. They need a sharp improvement from their 21-year-old.

The biggest threat to a player’s confidence is failure. Sterling failed to perform for England this summer—the England squad as a whole failed spectacularly. That will have a negative effect on his mindset. He’ll be doubting himself, his ability, his future. It’s the job of Guardiola and his staff to rebuild his confidence and return his performance level to where it was during his best period at Liverpool in 2014.

Each player is different, and each one requires different management techniques. Sterling, it seems, is a player who thrives on confidence and on being told by his manager that he is capable and a valuable member of the side.

He now has a manager well capable of doing just that.

Rob Pollard is Bleacher Report's lead Manchester City correspondent and follows the club from a Manchester base. All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Follow him on Twitter @RobPollard_.