England footballer says image relates to father’s fatal shooting and his favoured foot
The England forward
Raheem Sterling has defended his new
tattoo against media criticism, saying the image of a gun has a “deeper meaning”.
The
Manchester City player posted a picture of himself on Instagram training with his England team-mates at St George’s Park, with a tattoo of an M16 assault rifle visible on his right calf.
The Sun put the image on its front page on Tuesday, with the headline: “Raheem shoots himself in the foot”.
Lucy Cope, who founded Mothers Against Guns after her son Damian was shot dead outside a club in central London in 2002, told the newspaper the tattoo was “totally unacceptable”.
“We demand he has the tattoo lasered off or covered up with a different tattoo,” she said. “If he refuses he should be dropped from the England team. He’s supposed to be a role model but chooses to glamorise guns.”
However, Sterling explained the tattoo’s significance in his Instagram post.
“When I was two my father died from being gunned down to death,” the 23-year-old said. “I made a promise to myself I would never touch a gun in my life time, I shoot with my right foot so it has a deeper meaning.”
He said the tattoo had not yet been finished.
Some have questioned the motives behind the criticism, which follows numerous negative stories about the player in recent months.
The poet and columnist Musa Okwonga said the Sun and the Daily Mail “seem to take it almost in turns to go after Raheem Sterling, apparently for no reason other than he is black and successful”.
In a thread on Twitter, Okwonga said Sterling received a “routine hounding” from the newspapers.
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Others suggested class could be a factor, with Adam Payne, political reporter at Business Insider UK, saying that Wayne Rooney had received similar treatment.