Rayan Cherki’s Pass Was A Thing Of Beauty

The video of any great goal is a rich text that offers the viewer countless details to plunge into and enjoy. One of my favorite aspects are the players' reactions. There's so much to read into the body language of a scorer and their teammates after the ball hits the net: their thoughts about the feat, their intentions, their perception of the moment's importance, how they feel about themselves, how they feel about each other.

One of the more interesting situations is when the pass that set up a goal was the play's true star, and looking out for how or whether the scorer goes about acknowledging that fact. I've seen all kinds of reactions in situations like those—from big-headed goal-getters who hog the spotlight after merely tapping in a sensational through ball, to grateful scorers who make a bee-line to the assister, imaginary shine rag in hand, to share the joy and glory together. What I can't recall seeing, however, was a response quite like Phil Foden's on Saturday after Manchester City's third goal in a 3-0 win against Sunderland:

Out of context, you might imagine that Foden's reaction came after Rayan Cherki had just scored a worldie, and Foden—clearly mind-blown, his closed, disbelieving eyes spreading wide along with an unalloyed grin as his head and hand shook in that telltale "Now what the FUCK did I just see?!" gesture—was rushing over to congratulate the Frenchman for it. But Foden was actually the one who had scored. To understand what could have a scorer so utterly beside himself, and not due to what he'd done himself, you just have to look at how Cherki went about teeing up the Englishman:

The rabona is one of those techniques that make stark the differences between what elite players can perceive and achieve, and what we couch potatoes can even fathom doing ourselves. It says that the technique's performer is so preposterously gifted and precise with one of their feet that they can wrap one leg around the other, prod the ball with a whipped foot, and send the resulting pass exactly where they want it while pulling off a series of movements that, should the average fan at home try to mimic, would send us crashing to the ground and the ball fizzing off in some entirely random direction. But even then, Cherki's rabona wasn't your typical one. Usually a rabona is a resource relied on by exceptionally one-footed players who would rather pretzel their legs to get their strong foot onto the ball than attempt a more standard pass or shot with their weak foot. It's a feat of wonder that simultaneously implies a weakness, the overcoming of an athletic limitation with a dazzling bit of compensatory athletic genius.

What's so crazy about Cherki's assist, as Matías Baldo pointed out, is that he suffers from no such limitation. Cherki is arguably the most fully ambidextrous player in the game today, even outstripping his compatriot Ousmane Dembélé. Lots of players with a strong weak foot can strike the ball well with either peg. Cherki is unique for being completely comfortable using every part of both of his feet in every possible scenario; dribbling, passing, crossing, shooting, he can do it all equally well with either foot. His two-footedness is so freakish that he's widely believed to be a natural lefty, due to his slight preference for using that foot, even though the truth is the opposite.

What this means is that Cherki's choice to rabona a cross onto Foden's head was exactly that: a choice. He was fully capable of delivering the pass with his right, but instead decided that the little bit of English the ball would have if he hit it cross-footed, coupled with the way the technique disguises its practitioner's intentions, was the best way to surprise the defense and put his teammate in position to score. The only thing crazier than electively choosing such a difficult maneuver and pulling it off to perfection in the thick of a Premier League clash is the greater likelihood that Cherki, like most soccer players in that position, was operating on instinct, his body so quick to process the possibilities of the moment, and so accustomed to orchestrating such complex actions, that he executed it all more or less automatically. If you think you're alone in finding the whole thing legitimately awe-inspiring, you just have to look again at Foden's face to understand that even the best of the best can have their heads cracked wide after witnessing it.

It takes a special kind of talent but also mindset to attempt, master, and then perform moves like that at the height of competition, and Cherki offered a glimpse into how that kind of mind ticks when asked about it after the game. "All the time I play like a free soul because it’s my life," he said. "I want to take pleasure, I want to give pleasure to the fans and I’m very happy. The rabona is my creativity." Despite what some of us poetically minded fans might claim in our flights of fancy, the game of soccer is not in fact a form of art. It is a contest with a single, clear purpose: to win. Everything else is simply a means to that end. That doesn't mean, however, that those means lack value in and of themselves, nor is it to deny that the particular way a given player or team plays carries intentions and meanings and expressions that cannot be reduced to a scoreline and a W-L-D record. (To that end, even though I'm certain his only real aim was to give his newest star player a motivational ego-prick, I remain a little miffed at Pep Guardiola for trying to downplay the assist.)

When Cherki does something not strictly "necessary" like rabona-ing a pass when the moment seemed to call for something safer and more straightforward, he is communicating something about who he is, where he comes from, what he values, and what he is capable of, and is speaking it to himself, his opponents, and the audience. Of course, one shouldn't make the mistake of believing that someone capable of athletic or artistic beauty must be good and beautiful in all ways. But it's worth appreciating beauty when it appears, and to celebrate its manifestation just like Foden did, with a shake of the head and a smile.