An underwhelming first season with Manchester City turned into a nightmare over the summer of 2016 for Raheem Sterling as a player already disliked by much of the country used him as the figurehead of their anger at a disastrous Euro 2016 for the England team.
Sterling's decision to leave Liverpool - one of the powerhouses of English football - a year earlier for the upstarts to the top table saw him wrongly painted as a misguided moneygrabber, and all sorts of claims and predictions were made (Jordan Ibe, anyone?) that those who spouted them should be embarrassed by. City thought £49m was a bargain for the forward back then, and so it has proven.
Nevertheless, it wasn't clear that that would be the case after his first year came under Manuel Pellegrini's final season at the club where the sense of drift was overwhelming as everybody prepared for the arrival of Guardiola that summer. Not that the City manager promised good news for all.
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An England teammate of Sterling was Joe Hart, who had been one of City's best players for years but would be bombed out of the club before September. There was good reason for all City stars to have concerns about what was to come, not least one subject to untold abuse from 'fans' of the national team.
However, while Sterling was away in the mire with England he received a call from Guardiola. The Catalan had not yet met his players but wanted to reach out in a difficult time to personally reassure him of his place in the manager's future plans for City.
So it has worked out. Despite a few blips along the way, the boy from Brent became just the third player after Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero to score 100 goals under Guardiola and won a clutch of trophies to boot including four league titles.
For 18 months or so, Sterling has been wrestling with his position at City as Guardiola has turned to other players in big games. As he enters the final year of his contract, he was given time by the club to think about whether he wanted to sign a new deal or seek a new challenge.
It has been in that time where the conversation with Tuchel has taken place, and the German coach has said words to the same effect that Guardiola did back in 2016: a reassuring message telling Sterling how integral he is to the plan at Chelsea. It is unclear if there is anything drastically better than what City are offering - can anybody promise a player will start every big game? - but sometimes a different voice at the other end of the line can make the difference.
It was good man-management six years ago, and it is the same here that has worked in convincing Sterling he can rise to a new challenge. One phone call saw his City career take off, and another could call time on it.
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