Rayan Cherki's Masterclass at Selhurst Park
Selhurst Park has seen some great solo turns over the years, but this was different. For 45 minutes Manchester City huffed and puffed, the ball circulating without incision, Crystal Palace happy in their low block. Then Rayan Cherki decided the night was his.
The 23-year-old turned a tense, bitty contest into his own exhibition. By the time he walked off eight minutes from the end, he'd stacked up three shots on target, three key passes, three successful dribbles and 29 ball carries, chewing up 2.2 kilometres with the ball at his feet. Those are numbers. The performance felt even bigger.
A first goal out of nothing
The breakthrough came from the kind of moment you cannot coach. Phil Foden slipped a pass into Cherki on the edge of the box. Nothing obvious on. Three Palace shirts in front of him. Space at a premium.
Cherki went anyway.
He shimmied past one, then another, then a third, the ball welded to his boots as if on a string. Just when it looked like he’d overrun it, losing his balance and his angle, he stabbed a finish past Dean Henderson with the outside of his boot, catching the Palace goalkeeper completely cold. From almost falling over to a delicate poke into the corner in one fluid motion. Selhurst Park groaned. City’s bench exploded.
Palace had no answer. They had seen the move. They still could not stop it.
Five minutes that killed the contest
Once Cherki had the game in his grip, he refused to let go. His second goal came with a slice of fortune, but only after he had again carved out the platform himself.
Picking up the ball around 20 yards out, he worked half a yard and let fly. The strike thudded off Chris Richards and wrong-footed Henderson on its way in. A big deflection, yes, but the intent belonged entirely to Cherki. He could have recycled possession, taken the safe option, stayed within the pattern. Instead he chose risk, and with it came reward.
Two goals in five minutes. Palace sunk. The contest effectively over.
Redknapp reaches for the greats
Watching on, Jamie Redknapp could barely contain himself. The former Liverpool and England midfielder reached straight for the highest shelf when trying to frame what he had just seen.
“Rayan Cherki painted a masterpiece,” he told Sky Sports, calling the first goal “incredible” and underlining how he “felt like the difference because the goals came at such an important time”. Redknapp went further, describing Cherki as “a genius” with the ball, insisting there are “not many Premier League players who can do this”.
To explain it, he dragged in Eden Hazard: that same low centre of gravity, that same ability to somehow “smuggle the ball away into the corner”. Then came the nod to another City cult hero, Georgi Kinkladze, the dribbler who “could get past people in a telephone box”. For Redknapp, Cherki belongs in that lineage – “a beautiful player” whose gifts demand a different kind of management.
And that is where Enzo Maresca comes in.
From Guardiola’s grid to Maresca’s canvas
One word keeps following Cherki around: freedom. Under Pep Guardiola, freedom came with a price tag. City dominated possession, but everything was choreographed. Zones, timings, passing angles – all locked into a grand design.
Cherki still shone in that environment. His debut season at City produced a combined 25 goals and assists across competitions, a remarkable haul given he started only 19 Premier League games and just four in the Champions League. He did it while living inside Guardiola’s positional grid, often pinned wide or frozen in a specific pocket, waiting for the pattern to unfold.
If he drifted inside too early, if he took on one man too many, the whole passing machine was deemed to be at risk. The famous “rabona” cross for Foden against Sunderland last season, which produced a goal and a viral clip, earned him a public scolding rather than unqualified praise. Guardiola later spelled out his creed: “I like the simplicity because I learned from Lionel Messi that I never make a mistake with the simple things.” In that worldview, Cherki was never going to be the chief architect. He was a talented piece, not the hand drawing the blueprint.
Maresca has flipped the script. His first major decision was simple and radical: move Cherki into the middle, behind Erling Haaland, and build around him. Same club, same ambition to dominate the ball, but a very different interpretation of what that should look like.
Maresca still demands hard work without the ball. Against Palace, Cherki tracked and harried Adam Wharton, sticking to his defensive task with discipline. The trade-off comes when City attack. In the final third, the Italian loosens the leash. Cherki is encouraged to squeeze into tight spaces, to combine, to improvise, to act as the creative engine rather than a cog.
The result is what we saw at Selhurst Park: a playmaker operating on instinct, not from a manual.
The return of the free spirit
Cherki is not an outlier in this new landscape. Across Europe, coaches are starting to bend their structures around gifted individualists instead of sanding down their edges.
At Paris Saint-Germain, Luis Enrique has built a fluid framework designed to isolate Khvicha Kvaratskhelia one-on-one, then lets the Georgian drift inside when Nuno Mendes tears forward on the overlap. At Bayern Munich, Vincent Kompany gives Michael Olise a similar licence to roam and attack space, trusting his judgment in the final third. Hansi Flick does the same with Lamine Yamal at Barcelona, allowing the teenager to “interpret” spaces in a vertical, fast-paced system rather than tying him to chalk on his boots.
Cherki belongs in that group. They are the players who break patterns, who turn controlled possession into something unpredictable. For a decade, Guardiola’s obsession with control – brilliantly effective at Barcelona, Bayern and City – became the template for almost everyone else. The copycat era squeezed out the dribblers and mavericks, the ones who play as if the game is a canvas rather than a grid.
Selhurst Park suggested that tide is turning again. With Maresca leaning into Cherki’s chaos rather than fearing it, City have found an unstoppable match-winner for nights when opponents sit in and refuse to budge. Not every mazy run will come off. Not every risky pass will split a defence. But City need someone willing to try, to prise open low blocks with something other than another sideways pass.
Cherki’s performance against Palace was a reminder, loud and clear, that football at its best is art as much as it is science. Guardiola may argue that simplicity and control are non-negotiable. Cherki, brush in hand, is making a different case: that you can be a showman and still serve the system – and that sometimes, the system needs the show.
