football.london caught up with a former Tottenham striker who has packed plenty into his career so far in the game and is now enjoying a new football format
Kazaiah Sterling has packed more into the past decade than most of us will squeeze into a lifetime.
Having turned 27 on Sunday, the Spurs academy product can tell you about his days training with Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, making his Champions League debut at Wembley, being scared of Mauricio Pochettino, having a frightening injury, playing football in the USA and on Monday night making Hollywood star Idris Elba rather unhappy.
Back in March 2017, Sterling took part in his first ever media interview after an FA Youth Cup game at Stevenage's Lamex Stadium. It was with football.london and the 18-year-old striker spoke exactly as you would imagine a youngster to, with a touch of nerves and precious little in the way of words.
It came just days after Pochettino had revealed that Sterling would be training with the first team the following season alongside Kane because "there is no better teacher to learn from".
Fast forward eight-and-a-half years and it's a very different Kazaiah Sterling speaking with football.london today. He has been moulded by a career that has taken him through most levels of the sport across the world and now he is one of the stars of a new football format that has got a lot of people talking and watching.
Back in 2017 though and the young Sterling faced a formidable figure in Pochettino who helped set him on his path.
"He was really good, but my first years, I was very scared, because he didn't really speak to us, he didn't give too much away," said the former academy striker. "My first encounter with him, I was definitely very scared. Obviously, as a young player, you want to really impress.
"But the more I got to work with him, I really enjoyed it. He's very professional, very demanding. I feel like even to this day, a lot of the habits he kind of forced upon us stick.
"With him, because he's very professional, if you're not doing certain things, you won't be in the first team. When I first came up, he didn't really care who you were, if weren't training properly, not professional all the time, you weren't going to be anywhere near the first team.
"That's how Harry Kane got his chance. That was Pochettino's philosophy. It doesn't matter who you are, as long as you work and show that you're willing to listen and be professional, then he'll give you a chance. It was really good to be around that sort of environment."
Not long after Sterling had first joined Spurs from Leyton Orient and become a scholar he found himself training in the academy with two stars who had fallen foul of Pochettino's ways - Emmanuel Adebayor and Aaron Lennon.
"Adebayor was hilarious, honestly. When he was training with us, he was quite good to be fair. Aaron Lennon was really good," said the striker. "I'd say that definitely helped me.
"In my first few months, I was paired up with Aaron a lot in time of training against him. It was good to see what the level of a first-team player was like. I enjoyed them training with us. It helped me get a taste for what first-team football is like."
At the end of the 2016/17 campaign, Pochettino took Sterling on the post-season trip to Hong Kong with the first team and the young forward netted his first senior goal in the game against Kitchee in added time.
Dele Alli played him in down the left and after a defender's tackle only bobbled the ball back up against him, Sterling calmly slotted it through the goalkeeper's legs to complete the 4-1 victory. He grinned widely as Dele hugged him while Kane applauded before coming over to do the same.
The following season would bring the chance to work more closely with the player who would become Tottenham's record goalscorer, the England captain and now Bayern Munich star.
"To me Harry Kane wasn't just a first team player, he was an academy prospect as well. Knowing I was going to be training with someone like that, taking the same steps, was so inspiring and encouraging," he said.
"And on top of that, his quality was like...well it was a joke, honestly. Everything he'd do was literally perfect, each strike was perfect, honestly. Training, even replicating it in games, seeing what he's doing now is no surprise to me at all."
Sterling revealed that there were a couple of defensive players in the Spurs squad back then who looked after him in particular as he stepped out wide-eyed into a new world.
"Danny Rose was really good with me. He really looked out for me," he remembered. "Eric Dier, he was really good with the young players. Michel Vorm as well. Danny took me under his wing and was very encouraging, as was Eric."
Rose would spend his final season at the north London club with the U21s after seeing out his contract and unregistered in the Premier League squad.
"He was really good with the boys. Whilst he was training with us, he was so professional," said Sterling. "He would talk to the boys about football and on and off the pitch stuff.
"He was really encouraging and you don't really expect that when a first team player comes down to train with you. For a lot of the boys who didn't know him as well, they were probably a bit shy to talk to him, but he was really good with them, very encouraging. He was a very good role model whilst he was with us. He's a good guy."
Sterling had his moments for Tottenham, named on the bench in the Premier League against Manchester City in April 2018 and again the next season away at Fulham. He made his FA Cup debut in January 2019, coming off the bench in the 81st minute in the 2-0 defeat at Crystal Palace.
It was Sterling's full debut the previous season in December 2017 though that he will remember forever as he replaced Dele in the final minutes of the Champions League win against APOEL Nicosia at Wembley Stadium in front of 42,679 supporters.
"I had a good feeling that I was going to make my debut that day," he recalled. "[Pochettino] didn't actually say it, but there were a few of us on the bench, Luke Amos and Kyle Walker-Peters.
"We weren't entirely sure who was actually going to come on, but I just had a feeling. The game was going great as well. It was 3-0 at the time. I just had the feeling that I was going to be able to come on.
"I did and it was such a great feeling. I would have loved it to be at the new stadium, but being at the national stadium, not many people get to say they played at Wembley. My family being there as well. It was incredible."
In that moment Sterling became the youngest ever player at that point to represent Tottenham in the Champions League at 19 years and 27 days.
It was a remarkable achievement. Footballers are easy targets for criticism. People don't realise quite how much effort and sacrifice it takes just to get into an academy, let alone making it all the way through that multi-year process to the first team.
Imagine being 18 or 19-years-old and after getting all the way over the years you find that your competition for a spot in the team is Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and an experienced star in Fernando Llorente, who had won everything across the game.
"A lot of people don't actually realise that as a young player, even just making that step up from being an academy player to the first team, it's almost impossible," said Sterling.
"Each age group, there are 15 players from each age group and you're all technically competing for that same spot. And then on top of that, you've got players in the first team who you're battling for a spot against.
"I feel like a lot of people from the outside, they don't realise how hard it is actually competing for a spot. It's not just 'you're young, we'll give you a bit of game time' or 'we'll just throw you in there'.
"You have to actually be at a certain level for them to even consider giving you a slight chance, because I'd say there were players who were better than me that at the time weren't even getting chances. There were players in the first team who weren't even getting minutes.
"I'm also competing against those guys for minutes in the first team. So from the outside, I feel like a lot of people don't really realise how hard it actually is."
So with all that in mind, sometimes people can look unfavourably on a player when their career reaches a peak and then heads over the other side, despite the odds overwhelmingly suggesting that's going to happen, even if they've beaten those odds to get to that point in the first place.
Over the next two years, Sterling was sent out by Tottenham on a string of loans across the Football League to Sunderland, Doncaster Rovers, Leyton Orient and Southend United and then up in Scotland to Greenock Morton.
He told football.london that he knew while on his second loan of that bunch that he would probably never get back into the Spurs first team reckoning.
"I'd say the loan at Doncaster. I feel like that would have been a really good loan for me with Darren Moore. I'd known him from my younger years. We were a young team and I felt like that was going to be the loan where I properly kicked on," he said.
"And then I ended up getting injured. It just started off as a dead leg. It was a freak injury. It was a dead leg, then I ended up getting a blood clot in my leg and it turned into the bone. It was a proper freak injury.
"I ended up not playing for almost a year. I feel like that period, that's when I knew I'm realistically not going to be in the first team.
"[Jose] Mourinho had just come in as well. I think Poch got sacked around the same time, I'd got the injury. So a new manager had come in. Mourinho, he's known to be very cut-throat as well. So, realistically, I couldn't see myself being out for this long and then just going straight into the first team."
Sterling was mentally strong enough to process what was happening when many others might not have. Hundreds upon hundreds of other academy products at clubs across the game have spoken about having injuries and misfortune rob them of their chance and struggling with the realisation.
"It was hard, but honestly, I don't like to look too far ahead. I thought realistically that's probably not going to happen, so my main focus was just trying to get back fit," said the former Spurs man.
"Get back fit and playing and then once you're back fit playing, you never know what can happen. I made peace with that quite early, which made the process a bit easier."
It was after his short spell in Scotland that Sterling's career took a new and unexpected turn with a spell in non-league football before the game swept him across the Atlantic.
"I was training with a few teams. It was around the COVID era as well so it was probably the worst year to be transitioning from team to team because even getting trials was really hard," he said.
"Just because of the whole COVID situation, teams weren't really having people in. You'd have to go through certain procedures just to come in and train. It was a crazy time.
"One of my close friends, who passed away recently, he was playing at Potters Bar and he just said 'do you want to come play?'. I thought, you know what, I'm training in places but I'm not really at a team right now. I'm just going to get some games, enjoy football again. I ended up playing there for a bit.
"Then to be fair, me playing there, I got a lot of interest from a few National League teams wondering why I was playing at that level. People were confused as to why I was playing there, but honestly, it was just to get some fitness and enjoy the game again."
Then came a transatlantic opportunity in 2022 as Sterling grabbed the chance to play in the levels beneath the MLS where you now see the likes of Messi, Son and Hugo Lloris. He would score goals aplenty for South Georgia Tormenta and then last year moved to Pittsburgh Riverhounds.
"In my head, I always wanted to go to play in America. I thought, why not do it now?" he said. "It's so different. In America, in the colder areas, it's proper cold so while in the south, a lot of them have grass pitches, on the west coast, California, a lot of the places up north like New York, Chicago, they have Astroturf pitches.
"You get decent crowds at that level. The team I was at, I'd say they got up to 4,000, some teams would get up to 6,000 and it was a mixture of young and old people. They're really loud. Some of them bring whole bands to the games. You get a good atmosphere at a few of the grounds.
"Also there's a lot of good players out there. How their sports system works is you do four years at university, then you go into whatever pro sport you're doing so it's a good structure that they have."
For Sterling, it was a chance for football to take him to places and meet people he otherwise might never have seen.
"It just opened my eyes to the world. There's so much stuff out there that you wouldn't even imagine in different environments," he said. "It was really good to experience different things, see different cultures as well, how sports are in different countries.
"Especially growing up in an academy, you're not really exposed to what life is outside a Premier League environment. There's loads of good organisations, you meet loads of good players as well that you didn't think would be out in these sort of places. It was a really good experience."
Now his former Tottenham team-mate Son has made the move to the USA and Los Angeles. So how does Sterling think the South Korean will do in a land where the American sports dominate?
"You know the type of character he is. He's obviously a great player, but he's a great character as well," he said. "I can't see him not having a positive impact over there. Just naturally, the type of person he is. Fans will love him as well.
"Players will love him. Great guy to work with. I can only see him having a positive impact out there. Even just in terms of more players maybe being willing to go out there. Seeing a player like Sonny out there, I feel like that will attract more players to go out there as well and play."
That's Son's future though. What about Sterling's? The 27-year-old has begun coaching young players and was doing so just moments before this interview took place. He will begin working through his UEFA licences this year.
"I enjoy working with younger kids. In my head I still see myself as quite young, I feel like I can relate to them," he said. "In terms of the journey as well. As much as I can I try to teach young kids what I know, talk to them when I can about little things because I feel like it all adds up."
On Monday nights you will find Sterling playing in the second season of the Baller League, shown live on Sky Sports each week.
The striker was the MVP of season one, firing SDS FC to the title during a finals day held in front of a crowd of 20,000 at The O2 Arena.
If you haven't heard of it yet, the Baller League is an indoor six-a-side competition that originated in Germany and has now swept into both the UK and USA, propelled by influencers, Hollywood actors and former football stars.
It's football but with a twist at times. For example, during the final three minutes of each 15-minute half, the format can suddenly change to three v three, or long-range goals counting as double and even goalkeepers not being allowed to use their hands.
Managers also get two wildcards per week, so can pick anyone in their team for that match and penalties are like ice hockey ones, with a one-vs-one situation with six seconds to score.
Last season, Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Micah Richards, Luis Figo, John Terry, Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg, Ian Wright and TV host Maya Jama were among those in charge of various sides in the 12-team league, alongside stars of YouTube, TikTok and Twitch.
This season's edition has added Idris Elba to their ranks as the manager of Rukkas FC and on Monday night, the Hollywood star could only watch on unhappily as Sterling scored the winning goal for SDS from a one-vs-one penalty situation in a 3-2 victory at London's Copper Box Arena.
Last week, Sterling scored a hat-trick in a dramatic 5-5 draw with Ian Wright and Alan Shearer's Wembley Rangers.
With the large crowds it draws and the followings of the people involved, Sterling believes it's something that can exist alongside the regular game of football each week.
"I definitely think there is a chance for it to thrive. This time last year, I didn't even know what Baller League was," admitted the striker. "In this short space of time, it's grown drastically. I feel like it gives players a chance to showcase themselves in a different style.
"You see different types of football as well, with a good combination of players and content creators as well, which boosts the exposure. Five-a-side, six-a-side, that's something that's been going on in England for years, but it's never really had the platform.
"This has given it such a platform. They have millions of viewers each Monday. So, I can only see it getting bigger."
Sterling is one of the stars of the league alongside various former players and he is looking to get back into regular football again alongside it, as he is nearing full fitness again following a period in hospital with rhabdomyolysis, yet another freak twist in his career.
Now he is close to full fitness and sharpness, the Baller League is giving him highlight reels aplenty to show prospective new clubs.
Sterling still keeps a close eye on that club in north London where his journey began and did so with a couple of coaches now on Thomas Frank's staff - Justin Cochrane and Matt Wells.
"Justin was my first ever coach at Spurs. I had him at under-12s and then again at under-16s and 21s, so I've known him basically my whole life. And Matt, I worked with him when I was a scholar around that 2017/18 time, he was the 21s coach," he remembered.
"He was a great coach, both of them. Great coaches. Proper footballing coaches. They're coaches that if you work with them, you'll improve. You're guaranteed to, a lot.
"I'm not surprised they're now part of Thomas Frank's staff. It's really inspiring to see. Honestly, just as a player, knowing them personally, a lot of what they've been through on their journeys, to see that full circle moment of them coming through.
"It's a bit similar as a player. You see a player building through the academy, making it to the first team. Seeing a coach build, go up all those levels and make it to the first team, it's really good to see. I'm really happy for them."
For Sterling and his own path from academy to the Champions League and then across the world, he has no regrets over a career that brought some wonderful moments before misfortune took it in a different direction.
"I do often think about this, but looking back honestly I don't think there's anything I would have done differently," he said. "When I was at Spurs I was working hard. I didn't take my position for granted. I gave myself the best chance I could. I was a bit unfortunate at times but that is how life works.
"Those misfortunes shaped how I am today. In that aspect I don't really regret any of that. If any young players are going to read this, I would probably say give yourself the best chance possible in terms of working.
"Don't take anything for granted. It sounds very cliché but honestly keep working hard and give yourself the best chance you can then at the end of it, if it doesn't work out at least you know you tried your best and gave yourself the best chance."
The striker has high hopes that the next young Tottenham star will grab their chance at the north London club.
"With football there's always someone coming through next, but you never know who it's going to be," he said.
"One of my favourite games to watch as a former academy player was the one [against Elfsborg] and seeing three academy boys come on and score. That's literally what it's all about.
"It only takes one moment to put yourself on the map and get yourself in and around the first team. There's always going to be another player who's up and coming and then it's about taking your chance.
"You might as an academy player not get as many chances as someone that's been brought in who might be the same age as you, but that's how it goes. So if you get there you've got to take your chance."
Sterling has his eye on one Spurs academy product in particular who is currently trying to grab some minutes amid the club's injury list.
"I've trained with Dane Scarlett. I know Dane personally, he's a great, great player and I feel like he's got so much to give," he said. "He's definitely one of the players I feel can progress and be a regular in the first team.
"100 per cent he can take the chance. He came on the other day and won a penalty. I'm sure he would have loved to have taken the kick as he takes great penalties.
"I've always said, if I was ever in that situation where I was playing and there was a younger academy player, or a young player, I would always, even though I'm a penalty taker, let them take it.
"I would 100 per cent make sure he's taking it, but I guess, Richarlison, he's a striker as well, he wants to get his goal. But I feel like there's definitely a chance for Dane there. It's going to be hard, obviously. I feel like Tottenham, they're always under a lot of pressure for results.
"But you've just got to do as much as you can in training, get the trust of the manager, and when he does get a chance, hopefully take it."
Only eight years have passed since Mauricio Pochettino declared that one young Tottenham academy striker would get his chance among the stars.
Football has taken Kazaiah Sterling across the globe in the years since, through the highs and the lows, and it has shaped him in ways he could never have imagined. His story though is far from over.