Manchester City winger Rayan Cherki will operate with the number 10 in the 2025/26 season. This news is interpreted as an important signal of the club’s tactical and symbolic reformatting before the new season: the number 10 is often given to the team’s “brain” — the creative hub responsible for game tempo and final decisions. So, the level of trust in the French talent is high; he is being viewed through playmaker criteria.
The French player joined from Lyon ahead of the Club World Cup and signed a five-year contract. The long-term deal shows the club’s strategic plan: to add to the system’s core a young, technically advanced and multi-positional performer. Cherki’s dribbling, his turns in tight spaces and the skill to find the “final pass” are aimed at solving the tangled episodes of positional play.
In the tournament in the USA, Cherki wore number 29. The number-10 shirt will become vacant after Jack Grealish is loaned to Everton. The sequence of numbers usually carries deep meaning: claiming the historic number freed by Grealish’s departure is both a responsibility and a source of inspiration for the young playmaker. It also hints that tasks will increase for cutting inside from the sharp wing into the center, receiving the ball with his back and playing teammates “through the window.”
At Lyon, the footballer operated with number 18. There he was tested on all three edges of the attack, used to breaking the opponent’s line by cutting from the wing into the center, one-two combinations and quick stop-starts. At City, these actions will fit into an even more planned matrix: building from the back, creating angles through “triangles,” finding micro-spaces around the box — all daily tasks of the number 10.
For Cherki, moving to the number 10 is not just a digit on the shirt — it means his role in the team’s dramaturgy is being written. The speed of moving in central zones, reading pass trajectories, set-piece solutions and, when the opponent’s defense falls into confusion after the first attack, late runs into the freed spaces (“second tempo”) give him an extra chance to shoot or to deliver a pass. That is why both his personal statistics (goals/assists) increase and the team’s overall efficiency rises.
Zamin.uz sums up briefly: the number changed — the responsibility changed as well. For Cherki this is the main challenge of the new season: combining the traditional burden of the number 10 with modern intensity and becoming City’s creative hub. And the fans now look for an answer to one question: to what extent will Rayan become a decisive figure under the new number 10? The answer — on the pitch in the coming season.
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