This is one of the promises of his club, in a very disappointing new season for OL, about to say goodbye to their dreams of Europe next year. Still connected, like his team, to alternating current for observers, the playmaker of French hopes, Rayan Cherki, celebrated his 100th with the pros during Lyon’s victory against Monaco, Friday May 19 (3-1). And how ! Le Gone, who will celebrate his 20th birthday in August, made his “champagne football” talk. The hardest part remains ahead of him.
It was expected, and if all is not perfect, it is there. Rayan Cherki, one of the greatest hopes of the round ball, from the famous training center of Olympique Lyonnais, in his hometown, has again caused ink to flow this week. He signed a spectacular match against AS Monaco, which succeeded him well, and in particular an exceptional gesture on the goal of Maxence Caqueret: a roulette six meters in the opposing area, which this weekend made the rounds of the football planet. He then scored his goal, remarkably close, late in the game. And again played a full match, not counting his defensive efforts, which he is sometimes criticized for. Note The Team the next day: 8/10.
” He progressed. Against Monaco, to be honest, he really worked », confirms Hervé Penot, journalist with the famous French sports daily. Rayan Cherki, notes our colleague, is a pure number ten, an attacking player endowed with an extraordinary technique, a practically ambidextrous right-hander, in a team just as young and inconstant as him. He defends more and more, certainly, but still ” out of time “, sometimes. ” He’s his trainer. Laurent Blancwhich sums it up best, according to Hervé Penot He’s got phenomenal talent, but sometimes he plays like someone you might be used to being free on the pitch. It still has significant gaps to fill. »
This can lead to tasteless matches; stadiums that we hear getting annoyed by an ill-considered technical gesture; a lack of simplicity; some risk-taking, too; teammates frustrated by a bad choice; too soft a strike; a failed panenka (it was his joker); coaches who are exasperated to see him going against the direction of the game, slowing down the pace by keeping the ball too much. Bad flaws that he nevertheless tries to correct, even if the natural can come back at a gallop. And when Rayan Cherki gets into the right tempo, when he’s good, he feels things, when his playing becomes fluid, simpler, when he shows himself to be altruistic, hardworking, realistic, he becomes unplayable and the public treats.
Cherki, a model of precocity
Many footballers from the youth of OL went to populate the other Ligue 1 teams, and very often became champions of the French Championship, regularly decisive against their training club, moreover. Many have established themselves abroad, including in the largest stables on the continent. A few have lifted the World Cup or the Champions League. One of them won the Euro. The most famous, Karim Benzema, is now Ballon d’Or. It would therefore be cruel to compare the young Rayan Cherki to his elders in the Rhône, even if the artist evokes big names in football from the same place, with various fortunes thereafter.
One thing is clear, however: the prodigy, frequently outclassed since his six years at Saint-Priest, is ahead. He remains the youngest player to have scored a goal in the Youth League, a competition bringing together the under-19 teams of clubs qualified for the Champions League.
Launched by Rudy Garcia, he then became the second youngest player to participate in the C1 (he is currently third), then the youngest scorer in the history of the pros of his club, during a 32nd final in the Cup de France, and finally the youngest player to take part in a final phase of the C1, in the half against Bayern (Warren Zaire-Emery, of PSG, has since surpassed him).
If Rayan Cherki is not a pure striker, he even allowed himself to symbolically style the number one legend of the scorers of his heart team, the patriarch Fleury Di Nallo – who continues to sit at the top of the scorer rankings of OL, far ahead of Alexandre Lacazette and Bernard Lacombe – by becoming the youngest player to reach the six-goal mark with Les Gones. Incidentally, and for the record, he put his name on the 5,000th “golaso” in the history of Olympique Lyonnais. The name “Cherki” is often cited at the top of the world rankings of the most promising young people of our time, if not in the first place. The UNFP nominated him as a hopeful this year.
His relationship with Laurent Blanc served him
If Rayan Cherki has the defects of his qualities, exacerbated by the demands of modern football focused on data, for example the number of kilometers covered, he must also take care of the statistics that are most visible in the players of his profile, and therefore deliver more assists or be more sharp in front of the opposing cage. To be even more decisive, in short. Capable of anything, Cherki admits, he runs on instinct, and sometimes he procrastinates. In the cup, a few months ago against Lille, he had undoubtedly listened to his captain, pressing his shot heavily, which had ended up under the bar. But on Friday, it took him several chances before he set his sights.
Cherki is not so introverted. So he spoke about it in complete relaxation, on Prime Video after the match, having fun with the exuberant reaction of commentator Smaïl Bouabdellah at the time of his impeccable roulette – which is not trivial on the lawn, wearing crampons – and delivering in passing the comments of Laurent Blanc, following his failure in front of Nübel: “ He told me ” you’re stupid, normally on this one, you’re supposed to put the goal of the year.“I don’t think he’s wrong. He’s very, very hard on me, demanding. It’s for my good. We have a relationship that I’ve never had with other coaches and that’s what brings me the most happiness and the desire to give my all to the team. »
It’s a fact, the OL coach does not spare Cherki in his statements. But ” Laurent Blanc talks to him a lot “, notes Hervé Penot. Moreover : ” he trusts her “, when others might wonder, especially in an emergency accounting situation as was the case all this season again in the Rhône. Cherki sometimes plays on a wing, which is good for his ground, less for his defense. But strong from his years of observing OL during the Fekir years, during which Lacazette already officiated at the forefront of the attack, it would seem that the “president” Blanc most often wants to see his nugget evolve in the axis, in support of the “general”, rival of Mbappé among the scorers.
At OL, a young person can hide another
Does Cherki listen to incessant remarks, in all circumstances, even the most excessive? This is probably what all raw talent goes through, scrutinized from all sides, and yet to be honed. ” Of course I accept he told Prime. I don’t know why, but people often put the label of the guy who has no demands on me, when I think I have a demand just as hard as that of the coach with myself. The critics, he says again, I take them harshly and I do everything to prove them wrong. But when the coach speaks, I take everything literally and I want to show him, when he says things a little less well, that he was wrong. »
Rayan Cherki is under pressure, and no doubt it shows at times. This may also release one of these comrades from the training center, less ahead and less expected at the turn, but who is also making an impression on the side of Lyon. His name: Bradley Barcola, also nominated as a hopeful for the UNFP trophy! Rayan was born in August 2003 in the 3rd arrondissement and grew up in Pusignan, near the airport, before joining Saint-Priest then OL in 2010. Bradley had just preceded him, born in Villeurbanne in September 2002 , passed by the club of his city, before joining the young people of the seven times champion of France the same year. Here they are both pros, facing Messi & Cie.
Symbol of this Lyon youth, which continues to shape the club’s DNA, at the very moment when OL wonders about its future, with the takeover and the hasty departure by Jean-Michel Aulas: at the start of 2023, against Troyes, the two kids from the Academy each scored a goal. However, as Opta reported, it was the first time since January 23, 2008 that two players from the Lyon training center aged 20 or less scored together in a Ligue 1 match. The previous players were called Ben Arfa and Benzema. Suffice to say that if these young shoots will have given Blanc a cold sweat this year, they will undoubtedly have also given him very beautiful emotions.
National selection, professional career: what future for Rayan Cherki?
This is the unavoidable question for all the kids who were compared in their childhood, always wrongly, moreover, to Zidane: what next for Cherki’s career? The interested party did not escape it, and his speech never really varied. Attached to Olympique Lyonnais, the one who currently wears the number 18 of his training club, like Fekir, would like to win the Champions League with Lyon, which is not at all won on paper, then ” score french football “. And, like the most illustrious of his elders at the same age, he keeps the great Real Madrid in a corner of his head.
Rayan Cherki currently wears number 10 among French hopefuls, under 23. He passed his classes within the French Football Federation, blue jersey on his back, and is currently aiming to participate in the 2024 Olympics in Paris, like Mbappé. But sportingly speaking, the young man has several nationalities. Through his father, of Italian origin, he finds himself on the shelves of the Squadra Azzurra. And because of his mother, of Algerian origin, the Fennecs are keeping an eye on him, after registering the arrival of another Lyonnais by birth in their ranks, Houssem Aouar.
But with four goals and five assists in L1, regular technical feats, his experience which accumulates in tough matches, where he gains in volume, could Didier Deschamps not observe him from afar? The answer is obviously no, and the program “Téléfoot”, on TF1, had confirmation of this recently. On April 23, during the Olympico won by OM (1-2) in Décines, his deputy Guy Stéphan was indeed in the stands, and according to our colleagues, it was not only to supervise the Marseille internationals, but also for him: Rayan Cherki.
Not just for him, either. Because with seven assists and five goals in the league, Bradley Barcola also attracts the attention of big teams and the staff of the selection A of the Blues. Especially since his family is of Togolese origin, and his brother Malcolm, also trained at OL, as a goalkeeper, and who is currently playing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has chosen to defend the colors Hawks. Here are two promising young people, and therefore coveted, that we could one day see among the vice-world champions, unless fate reserves another choice for them.
>> To read also: Ligue 1: the very bad season of Olympique Lyonnais