Rayan Cherki: The Future Heir to Kevin De Bruyne at Manchester City

Rayan Cherki has been tagged with big labels before, but this one carries real weight. Inside Manchester City, senior figures see him as the man to one day pick up Kevin De Bruyne’s creative baton. For Pierre Sage, the coach who watched him grow up at Lyon, that prediction doesn’t sound far-fetched at all.

Sage worked with Cherki through Lyon’s academy and into the first team. The talent, he says, was never in doubt. The noise around him was.

“It was a process with him, because a lot of people thought that he would not have success in his career,” Sage recalled, looking ahead to Friday’s clash in South London. “I did not have this same thought. I explained to him: ‘You have a big talent, and I think you can show it in special contexts’. And he did that in his last game against Bournemouth.”

That game, a reminder of why Europe’s elite have tracked Cherki for years, underlined what Sage had seen up close: a player who reads attacking situations at frightening speed and thrives when the stage feels just a bit bigger.

The challenge, as ever with gifted No 10s, has been everything without the ball.

“You have to give something for the team defensively and keep your talent in attack,” Sage said. “I had nothing to say to him offensively because he understood the play better than me. To control him, the best thing is to prevent all the passes to him, because when he has the ball he is able to do things we don't imagine.”

That last line is exactly why City’s hierarchy have earmarked him as a long-term successor to De Bruyne. They are not simply hunting numbers; they want someone who can bend games, someone opponents have to game-plan around. In Sage’s eyes, Cherki already lives in that category.

The admiration runs both ways. Cherki has described his former coach as a footballing genius. When that compliment was put to Sage, he pushed it straight back towards his old pupil, and then some.

“I don't know the word for higher than a genius,” he said. “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?”

Hyperbole? Possibly. But if City are right, and Cherki really is the heir to De Bruyne’s throne, the next few seasons will give that verdict a brutal, unforgiving test.