This training drill has transformed Raheem Sterling from a swift winger who barely reached double figures in goals per season into a back-post assassin who is one of the most lethal goal-scoring wingers in Europe.
The change came during Pep Guardiola's second season in charge of Manchester City in 2017-18, and Sterling will face the club for Arsenal this Sunday.
A key player in unlocking their incredible efficiency in front of goal has been Sterling's current manager, Mikel Arteta, who was Guardiola's assistant from 2016 until his move to the Emirates in 2019.
Guardiola had more senior assistants than first-time coach Arteta, giving him the luxury of being able to focus on his area of ​​expertise and learn from as many departments as possible.
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He continued to be drawn to analysis and his inquisitiveness led him down many a path, but his keen desire to understand the details of specific moments in matches helped to focus the work of Arteta and his team of analysts, while also seeing their research become part of the first-team decision-making process.
Among the projects they worked on were several that brought about dramatic improvements, including goalkeeper penalty tactics, the diagonal pass from full-back to wing perfected by Ben White and Bukayo Saka, and quantifying what it means to be a penalty-box predator.
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Arteta began observing wingers from around the world and using data to identify the best positions for them: he and his analytics team analysed the areas from which these wingers most often scored goals, how many touches they had on the ball and how quickly they took their shots.
The higher the level, the less time and space a player has to shoot, and the zone where most of the assists and points come from has been identified.
From there, drills were derived at the academy and Arteta has adapted them and introduced them into a first-team environment for Sterling to work on.
Arteta has modified training drills at City to help Sterling develop as a winger (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Guardiola's fitness coach, Lorenzo Buenaventura, is credited with making City's training more match-based by making the sessions match-based. Again, the club's research influenced their thinking. It was found that quick attacks required much longer sprints than regular counter-attack training, so Buenaventura started training with 60-yard sprints.
Sterling then had to shoot inside the marked box under pressure from the defence, but he sprinted, so by the time he got to the goal his brain was short of oxygen, making his decision even more difficult.
Arteta had a stopwatch during the training – any shot not taken within the allotted time was ruled invalid and had to be restarted – and the training emphasised the need to act decisively without overcomplicating things, and those who followed Sterling's development at City believe this was a key lesson he learnt.
A gruelling schedule left little time for training, so these post-training sessions were crucial to driving home the message. Videography also helped: footage of wingers such as Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery, whom Guardiola coached at Bayern Munich, was used in combination with 16 cameras set up around the training ground to show exactly what the manager wanted.
Footage of Ribery and Robben at Bayern with Guardiola helped explain what they wanted from Sterling. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)
Sterling joined the club in 2015 as a 20-year-old, lighting up Anfield with his dribbling skills as Brendan Rodgers' side came close to winning the Premier League in 2013-14. Manuel Pellegrini was the manager at the time, but when Guardiola took over a year later he felt Sterling would not fit into his system unless his tactics changed.
Guardiola, more than other managers, asks his wingers to follow a team structure, as evidenced by the change in Jack Grealish's game since his move from Aston Villa in 2021.
One of the principles Guardiola introduced to City was that they always had to look for a free player when in possession of the ball. To do this, players had to understand when they were clearly in a one-on-one situation. In that case, they were encouraged to be aggressive and challenge the man, but if they were surrounded by two players, logically a team-mate would be free somewhere else.
Sterling recorded 10 goals and 15 assists in all competitions in 2016-17, a healthy showing for a young player, following 11 goals and nine assists in 2014-15 and 11 goals and eight assists in 2015-16.
But that wasn't elite level, nor were Leroy Sane's totals of nine goals and five assists in his debut season after joining from Schalke, and as Arteta began to link his forwards better in his second year, the numbers became out of reach for a previously high-but-often-disappointing squad.
But success strengthens habits, which is why Sterling was so willing to tone down some of his natural game in order to become a difference maker.
It was almost comical that so many of his goals came from the same spot, but this was no coincidence, it was by design from Guardiola.
The most powerful assist zone was identified as the by-line area inside the penalty box, and City worked tirelessly to find a winger in that position – and if one was there, another would be on the other side, ready to cut back or tap in for a square ball across goal.
In 2017-18, Sterling scored 23 goals and provided 14 assists. His shooting percentage almost doubled from 10.9% to 20.7% as City won the league with 100 points, more than any other team has managed.
The following season he scored 25 goals and provided 14 assists, and in Arteta's final season in charge at City – before he moved to Arsenal in December 2019 – Sterling scored a career-high 31 goals.
A great record with Arteta
His performances dropped off slightly over the next two seasons before his move to Chelsea, but he still managed to score double figures, and his struggles at Chelsea were unsurprising given the stability and structure of Guardiola's football.
It was the perfect platform, but Chelsea adopted so many different identities and aggressive recruiting strategies that it was hard to find continuity and consistency.
Sterling was dropped from Chelsea's squad this summer, with manager Enzo Maresca retracting earlier statements about his importance, but he could still receive tens of millions of dollars.
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When Arsenal sporting director Edu Gaspar posed the opportunity for Arteta to reunite with his former winger, he naturally had doubts. Sterling is now 29 and has achieved just about everything there is to achieve.
“When I had my first phone call with him I knew within the first 10 seconds I had to bring him in,” Arteta said earlier this month.
“My only question was what stage in his career was he at? I knew within 10 seconds that I wanted him here before the next question was asked.”
“He's fantastic. Full of energy, smiling, working really hard. He wants to prove a point and when someone has that feeling, you can sense it straight away. Of course, we don't need to know much more about his abilities and what he can bring to the team.”
The timing of Sterling's arrival couldn't have been better: the international break allowed him to spend two weeks with a handful of veteran players, burning into his muscle memory Arteta's methods and the principles that have taken his game to another level.
They last worked together five years ago and both have evolved in that time – Sterling has embraced fatherhood and faith, while Arteta is a different man to the coach he worked with one-on-one and sees leading an entire team – and they will be hoping that their shared maturity will make the difference against City on Sunday.
Sterling has had some good individual records against his former clubs, scoring in both of their meetings with Chelsea last season, and he has proven he knows how to make life difficult for his former club, making Kyle Walker's night extremely difficult in a 4-4 draw back in November.
Arteta has found ways to exploit untapped resources in Sterling before and he will be hoping he can do so again this time.
(Top photo: Arteta and Sterling at City in 2019, Mark Atkins/Getty Images)
