England manager Roy Hodgson has revealed winger Raheem Sterling confessed to being jaded and out of form before he was left on the bench for the Euro 2016 qualifier in Estonia.
Liverpool starlet Sterling started the season indifferently after a sparkling run of form with club and country in the first half of 2014, and Hodgson told reporters in Tallinn that the teenager suggested he needed to be rested from his country's latest Group E qualifier.
"We were just about to have a light session [on Saturday] and he said, 'I feel tired and I don't think I am in my best form at the moment'," Hodgson told reporters after his side's 1-0 win in Estonia.
"I admire his honesty for telling me. It was two days after the San Marino game when we did a lot of running because we had a lot of the ball.
"I had two players -- one was telling me he is tired, a little bit jaded and the other is full of beans so we put the one on that is full of beans [Adam Lallana] and left the other as sub.
"We do have to take players' workload into consideration and there are going to be times in top league teams where players suffer from some sort of physical and mental fatigue, but I think it's a bit unfair if all the expectations to give the player a little bit of a break fall on my shoulders."
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Sterling's rise to the top of the game has been rapid, with his advisers currently negotiating a new contract for a player who has been linked with English newspapers with a possible move to Real Madrid. Hodgson suggested his spiraling profile may have taken a toll on him mentally and physically.
"He broke into the Liverpool team, had a fantastic season and then went to the World Cup," added the England boss. "He is only a 19-year-old. It is not as simple as the training you are having may be taking a bit of juice from your legs.
"There is an awful lot going on in your head as well, so perhaps it is quite simply that the season has not started as well for Liverpool, he is in the spotlight for England and Liverpool. Maybe that has had some effect. I don't know. It's a theory."