Following a week of criticism aimed at Raheem Sterling, his Manchester City teammate Kevin De Bruyne has hit back at those singling him out from behind a keyboard .
Sterling has been at the centre of controversy after a picture of his gun tattoo surfaced on social media, which sparked outrage from a British tabloid.
He was in the headlines once again a few days later; this time because it was revealed he arrived late to the England training camp due to a delayed flight coming back from a holiday in Jamaica.
But De Bruyne believes the media focus should be shifted to Sterling s talent on the pitch instead.
He is an unbelievable player, the Belgium international told reporters. I don t know why people in England always want to criticise him. He is a good guy.
Why do people talk about things they don t know about? It s easy to talk behind a keyboard.
I wouldn t care if people were saying things like that about me. I ve never seen Raheem do stupid things.
If he had done drugs or something dumb I would think; OK, yeah, that s a problem . But these days you get scrutiny for everything.
Looking to his own team s World Cup campaign, the Belgian midfielder is confident that the team can progress following a smooth qualification period.
This is our official team picture !
— Belgian Red Devils (@BelRedDevils)
Qualification was really easy, we had an easy group, he said. Playing teams like Gibraltar who don t have any professional players, we were able to have a huge goal difference.
Their final group game pits them against England, a team many of the Belgian players are familiar with from their club football.
All of our players know the English players and what they are like, he added. They have a young and talented team.
They are at the same level as us. I don t know what Panama and Tunisia are like, we have friendly games first and then we will look at those two teams.
It doesn t matter sometimes if you finish first or second in the group. We finished second last time [in Euro 2016] which was probably easier because we played Hungary, but if we finished first we would have played Spain.
Belgium s next game will see them face Egypt in a friendly on Wednesday.
