Raheem Sterling had been presented as football’s anti-role model, the profligate poster boy of Premier League excess, in the years building up to last summer’s World Cup, having been targeted by racial abuse from stands and social media, as well as a barrage of dog-whistle tabloid articles.

Then, with a single sharp Instagram post, he turned the script. After exposing the hypocrisy, he became an in-demand spokesperson for charities, campaigners, and other social causes. He won back-to-back Young Player Of The Year Awards at Liverpool, and now, with Manchester City fresh off an incredible first-ever domestic treble, the pace of his ambition is only accelerating. We spoke with the most powerful player in English football about how faith and leadership helped him realize his full potential, what it means to be young, affluent, and black in Britain today, and how he battled and won the struggle to identify himself.

I got a message from a coworker on the train to Manchester: “You should listen to this.” It is an hour-long BBC football podcast in which the question “Is Raheem Sterling the most influential sportsperson in Britain?” is debated. I follow the link. It’s like listening to a debate about a statesman or cultural figure rather than the 24-year-old. Two hours later, I see him, dressed in shorts, a white T-shirt, a Dele Alli baseball cap, ankle socks, and trainers, walking across a football field to meet me. The naked legs reveal the pistol tattoo that prompted one of Sterling’s many negative press orgies in the days before he changed, in their opinion, from selfish, cocky, showy king of bling to, well, a cultural hero.

I had met him a few weeks before at the BT Sport Industry Awards, where he had won The Integrity And Impact Award among the great and the good of the massive business of sport. Following that, he was named PFA Young Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year. Trophies, trophies, and more trophies. Medals, medals, and more medals. Influence, influence, and more influence.

In the build-up to the FA Cup final, in which Sterling scored twice in a six-goal win over Watford to give Manchester City the first domestic treble by an English men’s team (“The women did it first,” as manager Pep Guardiola reminded us), Gary Lineker argued that Sterling was “perhaps the most influential player in the game,” and Ian Wright launched into a paean of praise for Sterling’s handling of racism.

Influence. Integrity. The social influence. These are not phrases that are frequently associated with the modern multimillionaire Premier League footballer. He had just been asked to go to New York to speak at a Wall Street Journal conference when we meet.

Charities and anti-racism organizations are begging for his attention and support, as well as the benefit of being associated with a profile that any politician would kill for – and this only a few years after a period when you couldn’t pick up a newspaper without reading about something Sterling had done to offend the tabloid morality of modern Britain. In a Bentley, eating a Greggs pasty. Shock. I’m taking Easyjet. Horror. My inquiry turned up this favorite: “Raheem Sterling treats himself to breakfast despite missing out on being named Young Player Of The Year the night before.” Was he expected to go hungry?