Rayan Cherki: Lyon’s Rising Star Set for City’s Future

The first time Pierre Sage saw Rayan Cherki glide through Lyon’s academy pitches, he knew. The talent was too big to ignore, too rare to dismiss as another precocious youngster who would fade away.

Others weren’t so sure.

“A lot of people thought that he would not have success in his career,” Sage recalled, speaking ahead of Friday’s clash in South London. “I did not have this same thought.”

Sage worked with Cherki across Lyon’s youth ranks and into the first team, watching the mercurial playmaker grow from gifted teenager into a player now being lined up for one of the most demanding roles in world football. City executives have already earmarked him as a long-term successor to Kevin De Bruyne, the man expected to carry the weight of their attacking creativity in years to come.

That kind of billing can crush a player. Cherki seems to feed off it.

For Sage, the journey with his former prodigy was never straightforward, but it was always clear.

“It was a process with him,” he said. “I explained to him: ‘You have a big talent, and I think you can show it in special contexts’.”

Those “special contexts” are starting to arrive more frequently. Cherki’s last outing against Bournemouth offered another glimpse of what he can do when the stage and the stakes rise. The technique, the vision, the imagination – all of it sharpened, all of it decisive.

Sage never doubted what Cherki could produce with the ball. His challenge lay elsewhere.

“You have to give something for the team defensively and keep your talent in attack,” he said. “I had nothing to say to him offensively because he understood the play better than me.”

That line hangs in the air. A coach admitting that his player sees the game at a higher level in the final third. Not many would say it. Even fewer would mean it.

So how do you stop a player like that?

“To control him, the best thing is to prevent all the passes to him,” Sage explained. “Because when he has the ball he is able to do things we don't imagine.”

That is the problem now facing defenders in England and across Europe: cut the supply or brace for the chaos that follows.

Cherki, for his part, has described Sage as a footballing genius. The compliment was thrown back with interest.

“I don't know the word for higher than a genius,” Sage replied. “I am not a genius; he is a genius. To speak about something and to teach something is a step. But to do these things is another step. He is at this level. Maybe God?”

The comparison is hyperbolic, but the message is not. In Sage’s eyes, Cherki does not just talk the game, he executes it at a level that separates the gifted from the truly elite.

On Friday in South London, under the lights and the scrutiny, another chapter in that evolution awaits. If City are right about their heir to De Bruyne, nights like this will soon become his natural habitat.