Raheem Sterling is angry but calm, outraged but measured, enraged but reasonable.
It does not need repeating how he has become such an impressively fearless and eloquent standard-bearer for the fight against racism in football. His contribution to the renewed awareness of vile discrimination does need underlining.
As one member of the FA staff suggested to me late on a Montenegrin Monday night, never mind Player of the Year, this young man should be on the honours’ list.
It is impossible to disagree.
Especially when, away from Sterling's calls for meaningful and draconian punishments, he gives a simple insight into how it feels to be a victim.
“It’s a real shame to be coming somewhere and get reminded what skin colour you are and what you resemble,” he said. “It is a shame someone else and other people think it’s cool to make fun of you for it.
“It’s 2019 and time this stuff got cut out and put to bed.”
And that, in a nutshell, is what Sterling and his black England team-mates had to endure in Podgorica. It is what he and every other black player has had to endure, wherever it may be, for however many moments in their careers.
Sterling never intended to be the figurehead he has become, but he calls it as it is — exasperation long since taking hold of him.
“I didn’t mean to be no leader,” he said. “I don’t think I’m a leader in this movement. I’ve been seeing it for a while and I just thought it was a bit sad at times and I just wanted to bring awareness to it. I was just speaking up on a situation I thought was serious.”
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On the field, Sterling still believes the best response is to let his and his team-mates’ football make the racists choke on their own bile. That is why he celebrated his goal in the Gradski Stadium by cupping his ears to the crowd.
He explained: “It was not an outpouring of frustration. It was just to let them know that you have got to do better than that to stop us.
“Just keep smiling, and that is a sign there has to be more than racist chants to stop us.”
And to combat the racist chants, Sterling reiterated his insistence that isolating and punishing individual, moronic offenders – and merely fining associations and clubs – is pretty much like going into a fight armed with a balloon on a stick.
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“We can only do so much as football players,” he said. “We can only bring the awareness and let the people in charge do something that is really going to put a stop to this. Banning one or two people is not going to change anything.
“If it happens again at the next game, what are they going to do? Ban one or two people again?
“I think there has to be a more serious take on this. You have to do something that makes them really not want to do it again. If only two idiots do something like that, it needs to be the whole stadium. [If that happens, then] The next time these lot play a game again, two or three idiots are not going to think to do it because they know they are going to make their team suffer.
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“Play behind closed doors. It’s something to make them think about it.
“If you want to do that [the abuse], keep that in your head. If you do do that, then you know your team will be punished. I think that even it is our England fans, it should be the exact same.
“This is no time to be cancelling out two people’s season tickets. They should know that if it’s two people, the whole stadium is getting it. That will make people think a lot more.”
Making people think a lot more.
That is certainly what Raheem Sterling is doing right now.
