Although they weren’t deemed fit enough to feature at Molineux last weekend, it felt striking that two of Manchester City’s best players were in situ and with the team regardless.
Rodri, owner of the Ballon d’Or until October, talked with Phil Foden as the pair stood on the touchline watching the warm up, having travelled to the Midlands with Pep Guardiola’s squad 24 hours earlier.
There came a word or two for colleagues as City headed into the dressing room and then the two midfielders kicked every ball during an early evening victory over Wolves that proved another feather in the cap for the club’s vaunted academy. They might have spent more than £300million this calendar year but the kids are still doing all right.
Rico Lewis laid on for Erling Haaland’s first – a fizzed square ball made to look so easy that the control of the technique has barely earned a mention – before Oscar Bobb strode forward to engineer Tijjani Reijnders’ maiden City goal. The returning James Trafford kept a clean sheet on debut, Nico O’Reilly coming off the bench.
Foden and Rodri headed inside for Guardiola’s final address later on and the former made a beeline for the academy’s quartet. Like an older brother, a fun uncle.
‘Phil came over and spoke to us,’ Lewis says. ‘And was like “I can’t wait for when all five of us are all regulars, all playing together.” That’s the dream in the future, all of us together.
Rico Lewis wasted no time this Premier League season to show that Man City’s kids are all right
The academy graduate is like a little brother in the squad and ready to play an even bigger role
Lewis represents the academy core of the champions and has already won major trophies
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‘We’ve all been brought up here and through the same process. It’s so easy to relate to the people who’ve been there for the longest period of time – and at a similar age. Hopefully there will be some younger ones with us in the future too.’
Foden is five years the senior of Lewis and O’Reilly; three of Bobb and Trafford. City’s executive team have openly discussed the utopia of possessing a core of Mancunians. How feasible that actually is, given an incessant need to win and therefore not being afforded time to develop youngsters, is up for debate. And that is before the absurdly perverse lure of PSR’s pure profit in selling players harnessed through their teens.
Those are two of the reasons why, in a different world, Lewis isn’t fighting for a starting berth against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday. He is instead travelling down to Crystal Palace as a Nottingham Forest defender or potentially gearing up to face Hoffenheim for Bayer Leverkusen. Even Bayern Munich had been tracking the 20-year-old for a while. Brighton were always interested yet their model wouldn’t allow for inserting a buyback clause, something that will have been non-negotiable for City.
Lewis was relatively close to waving goodbye to the place he’s called home since the age of eight. Forest were negotiating throughout last week in conjunction with landing James McAtee – believing that a deal could be closed last Thursday. There were several rounds of talks between City director of football Hugo Viana, counterparts at the City Ground and those in the Lewis camp.
Lewis was called to Guardiola’s office last Friday, plainly stating that leaving was not his preference – something he reiterated at Wolves a day later following a surprise start. After playing padel at the training ground on Sunday, Lewis bumped into Viana and relayed similar. Those two conversations crystalised the process, changed things really, and he was effectively agreeing a new five-year contract within 48 hours.
‘For me, whenever I play for City, under this manager… it’s a dream to be in this position in the first place,’ Lewis says. ‘When all this other stuff goes on, it is what it is.’
This whirlwind sums up the hectic nature of the Premier League’s transfer window and has now had a knock-on effect elsewhere in Guardiola’s packed defensive ranks. City still need to sell, the future of Manuel Akanji now suddenly coming to the fore.
The way Lewis has handled himself over the past few weeks indicates great maturity and intelligence from a man whose GCSEs were all grades sevens to nines. A and A* across the board in old money. And it has to mean something that when City are organising community soccer school sessions during the summer holidays, they can call on a local lad like this. Someone articulate, someone in tune with Guardiola’s style. Someone who looks and sounds like the kids running around screaming in bibs.
Lewis is a local lad and was happy to be on hand to run a soccer school session this summer
The 20-year-old was swarmed by happy and excited schoolchildren at Trinity High School
When arriving at the inner-city Trinity High School, Lewis is immediately surrounded by 40 kids. ‘Before these I get a bit nervous,’ he grins, a touch sheepishly. The kids chant his name as he talks to Daily Mail Sport, so no issues there. ‘I’m still at the start of my career, not everybody knows who I am. To see them happy, shouting and laughing, is amazing. The coaches have told me there are a few who have a bit of talent. I think stuff like this will help them stick out in that sense because some of the staff are from City.’
This session, part of an initiative that offers hundreds of children who access free school meals the chance to enjoy over 400 hours of coaching, is actually funded by Guardiola’s squad. The five-man leadership group, now led by Bernardo Silva, decided on an annual donation to community events during meetings with the hierarchy and City are using six figures of the pot to put this summer scheme on.
‘When you’re in primary school, when you’re little, the only thing you look up to is football – well, in my case anyway,’ Lewis says. ‘It would’ve been great to see footballers come in. It’s a bit of a full circle moment that I can come in and make these kids happy.’
He is keen to join in for a bit, taking corners, in a significantly more relaxed state than when squaring up to Jorgen Strand Larsen on Saturday. Lewis could be seen swatting away Haaland’s international team-mate in briefly feisty scenes and that needle is something that is occasionally seen from somebody who, while small in stature, happily holds his own and went 30 bouts undefeated as a Thai boxer. He’s had a run-in with Crystal Palace supporters before and dealt retribution on Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg when the ex-Spurs man hounded him for an entire game.
Maybe that steel is a product of his environment, being around dad Rick’s Muay Thai gym in Whitefield since the age of three. Lewis agrees that possibly yes, that has an impact but doesn’t fully commit to an answer.
‘What happened at the weekend was mainly my fault because I kicked the ball away,’ Lewis smirks. ‘We scored, the ball came and I kicked it away not even thinking, which was obviously stupid! He got a bit frustrated. We spoke after the game, he said sorry, I said sorry.
‘Normally I don’t put myself in a position to get into an argument. [But] you have to back yourself to a certain extent if somebody is picking on you, you’ve got to show that you are not there to be picked on and bullied.’
He scraps, Lewis. Scraps for recognition, scraps for his team. He is this fusion of a full back and central midfielder, probably the only Englishman to properly grasp the concept, and after a rough season last year – which ended in being left out of the FA Cup final squad and a harsh red card at the Club World Cup – he is ready for now and the future. That future, he forcefully insists, is in midfield.
The star picked up a harsh red card during his Club World Cup outing against Wydad AC
Lewis is looking to forge a future in central midfield after occupying a hybrid role for the team
‘It’s all about timing, getting better with and without the ball. I think it’ll come in good time. As you’ve seen at the weekend, that is where I was playing with the ball.
‘Obviously without the ball you can’t play everyone in midfield. That is what is unique to my position is that I can do both. For me, in terms of game time, it’s going to help.
‘The way we’re structured is for everyone to support each other. Take the weekend, it’s John [Stones] who fills in, Nico [Gonzalez] drops and I eventually get back into position. It’s more that we’re built to sustain the attack, so we’re not defending transition, transition, transition.’
Transition is City’s kryptonite. Always has been with Guardiola. And the basketball manner of defeat by Al Hilal in America indicated it remains a problem. Tottenham’s arrival at the Etihad Stadium should offer a decent barometer as to how much of the work completed by Pep Lijnders since is coming to fruition.
What is clear, and this was evident with the roles played by Rodri and Foden at Wolves, is an increased togetherness. Easy to say when winning and still in the summer months of course but Lewis echoes the positivity around morale spread by others.
‘It’s got a lot to do with the training,’ he says. ‘As soon as we came back, there was a different vibe with the new staff and the manager.
‘We all felt like we had… not something to make up for after last season – obviously we all know it wasn’t the level we want it to be – but we all just felt hungry.
‘Now somebody has the Premier League against their name, we’re chasing instead of defending. You can just see it, that everyone came back hungrier.’
He generally be horizontal but perhaps this past week or two has ignited some extra fire inside Lewis, too.
