![](\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Messi-to-miss-Barcelonas-LaLiga-opener.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSterling has emerged as one of the finest forwards in football, scoring 25 goals last season and six already this campaign, as well as two for England.<\/p>\n
Xavi, who played alongside Messi at Barca under Pep Guardiola, reckons the 24-year-old is well on his way to becoming the best player on the planet.<\/p>\n
\u201cMessi and Ronaldo have dominated the best player in the world awards for so many years now, it\u2019s hard to remember a time before them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMessi is the best ever for me \u2013 and even though they\u2019re both still playing at a very high level \u2013 there will come the day not so long away when somebody else must step into those shoes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at young players who can be crowned the future best in the world and you still think of Neymar, Mbappe, Salah, and of course Sterling. I look at the moment \u2013 and Sterling is winning that race.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s always been a good player, a dangerous player, but under Pep he become one of the best in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how Pep works \u2013 he would have worked closely with him since his arrival \u2013 where he needs to improve and what he needed to work on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re now seeing the results of that \u2013 he\u2019s still young and can be the world\u2019s best,\u201d Xavi said according to the UK Mirror.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barcelona legend, Xavi Hernandez, has said that Manchester City\u2019s Raheem Sterling, is on course to step into Lionel Messi\u2019s shoes, as the best player in the world. Sterling has emerged as one of the finest forwards in football, scoring 25 goals last season and six already this campaign, as well as two for England. Xavi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10667,8712],"class_list":["post-153202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-lionel-messi","tag-raheem-sterling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/142761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}