Several unlikely stars have emerged during the World Cup, from inflatable unicorns to Japanese and Senegalese fans cleaning up after games. Last week brought a fresh contender: an American website better known for its baseball coverage.

The Players’ Tribune has attracted unprecedented British visitors in the past few days with a succession of personal testimonies from some of the world’s football stars. This weekend a long piece written by, and signed by, England forward Raheem Sterling has won praise for its honesty and for its explicit rebuke to traditional media’s unfair representation of his life.

“There’s a perception in certain parts of the media that I love ‘bling’. I love diamonds. I love to show off,” Sterling wrote. “I really don’t understand where that comes from.” The article chronicled the death of his father and the sacrifices made by his mother to allow him to train as a young footballer.

“If you grew up the same way I grew up, don’t listen to what certain tabloids want to tell you,” he said. “They just want to steal your joy. They just want to pull you down. I’m telling you right now, England is still a place where a naughty boy who comes from nothing can live his dream.”

Last week Romelu Lukaku, the Belgium and Manchester United striker, told of his impoverished childhood in Antwerp in a piece which prompted a similar reaction. “One of the things that seemed to resonate with readers in the Lukaku piece is the image of him sitting in the kitchen at six years old, seeing his mother pouring water into the carton of milk to make it last the week,” Sean Conboy, the site’s executive editor, said. “A lot of people can empathise with that image, even if you don’t care about Manchester United or Belgium, or even care about football at all. We’re trying to tell human stories, not necessarily just football stories.”

The site, founded in 2014 by the former New York Yankees baseball star Derek Jeter, styles itself “The Voice of the Game” and says its aim is to give athletes “a platform to connect directly with their fans, in their own words”.

“My goal is for the site to ultimately transform how athletes and newsmakers share information, bringing fans closer than ever to the games they love,” Jeter, who played shortstop for the Yankees for 20 years, has pledged. His site’s key aim, he has always claimed, provides sports competitors with a way to speak directly to their fans. From offices in New York, the Tribune also offers sports commentary, videos and podcasts.

In America some of the site’s more headline-making journalism has included a piece by Major League San Francisco Giants famous outfielder Andrew McCutchen on baseball’s relationship with poverty and an influential piece on race and gender in women’s sports by three of New York Liberty’s female basketball players.

Yet there has been criticism from the New York Times, among other newspapers, over how the articles are produced. Conboy said that some players approach the site with ideas, or a rough draft, while others talk to a camera to see what happens. The site’s editors “put together a draft in the athlete’s own words” and the player revises it.

“They have full approval, of course. They get to make sure everything is exactly how they want it,” Conboy said.