“I just want two things” – Rayan Cherki opens up on love for football ahead of Arsenal clash

“I think a lot of things but the first is it’s the best league in the world,” he said of his life in the Premier League. “And I’m very proud to be here (at Manchester City). And I want to play, I want to take pleasure, I want to win games, I want to score, I want to give assists for my partners.”

On the broader meaning of football in his life, Cherki’s answer was as poetic as anything he has produced on the pitch this season.

“Football is the best sport in the world,” the playmaker added. “And when we play, we create a lot of pleasure. Football for me is like art. It’s like music, it’s like drawing. If we don’t play with pleasure, you can’t play better, you can’t show what you want.

“And me, when I go on the pitch, I just want two things: The children, the dad, the mum, to forget for 90 minutes life. A lot of people don’t have my chance, and when I go on the pitch, it’s to show my style and (let people) say, ‘Oh my god I forgot my life for 90 minutes!’ The problems disappear. ‘This style is just him, just Rayan Cherki, and not everybody’.”

Cherki: Pep is crazy, he loves football

Turning his attention to the man who has helped unlock the very best of him since his arrival at the Etihad Stadium, Cherki was equally effusive in his praise of Pep Guardiola, whose own future at the club remains a subject of considerable discussion heading into the summer.

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“Unbelievable. Pep is crazy. He loves football. The football is him, and him is the football,” Cherki said. “It’s very good to work with him, because all second, all minute, all day we try, we try, we try, we work a lot. And for me it’s better because I love when I learn all the time. That is unbelievable.”

The comments are entirely consistent with those of his teammate Gianluigi Donnarumma, who earlier this week described working under Guardiola as something that “until you live it, you’ll never understand.”

For Cherki, the feeling is evidently mutual and with a potentially title-defining home clash against Arsenal on the horizon this Sunday, the stage is set for him to give the Etihad Stadium another 90 minutes nobody will forget in a hurry.