Rayan Cherki’s cocky showboating was the perfect antidote to football’s age of slop | OneFootball

You might have spotted the news that Dimitri Payet has just retired and let out a wistful sigh.

They don’t make ’em like that any more, do they? What happened to football’s entertainers? The mavericks? The ‘streets won’t forget’ ballers? How did we let our game get so sterile?

If – in another breath – you moaned at Rayan Cherki’s kick-ups yesterday, you can take that wistful sigh right back. Sorry. We don’t make the rules. Sigh revoked.

Pep Guardiola’s disappointed dad routine on the touchline, performatively shaking his head to make it clear it’s not something he wants to see, was no surprise from a man whose first act as Barcelona manager was to bin off Ronaldinho.

In a game that increasingly feels as though it’s being shaped by data and algorithms, set plays and marginal gains, Cherki’s act of sh*thousery felt like a shot in the arm against the sport’s beige sloppification. Football by AI.

Personally, we loved Manchester City‘s No.10 taking the p*ss out of Arsenal with some outrageously pointless kick-ups with almost half an hour to go in the League Cup final. It was hilarious.

You might have also felt like the France international was a cocky, precocious little prat who needed taking down a peg, cheering Ben White for taking a booking by clattering into him.

Such a position is also legitimate and understandable, particularly if you’re of an Arsenal persuasion.

Even if you’re that way inclined, let yourself feel that hate. Sit with it. Feel something. Ask yourself – isn’t this why I’m watching football?

Isn’t it considerably more preferable to loathe the opposition than to feel nothing?

“At least they seem like nice enough lads, don’t they? Ah well. Onto the next one.” – Is this the future that you want?

Did we hallucinate those many thousands of social media posts and column inches bemoaning the lack of characters and needle in today’s game? Today’s football has nothing on peak Arsenal vs Manchester United and Roy Keane vs Patrick Vieira, eh?

You don’t get to moan about football being rubbish and robotic, with players coached within an inch of their lives, and then complain when someone actually shows some personality. That’s the thing about personality – you might not like it.

The line being trotted out by English football’s punditocracy was as predictable as it was boring, from the Proper Football Men™ who are just as happy to descend into self-parody behind a microphone as they are well shelling out Uber Eats.

“It’s just unnecessary. He didn’t need to do it,” Alan Pardew moaned on talkSPORT.

“He was exuberant, he was having a really good game. He certainly had a game where all the little things we like about him, he was doing very, very well.

“I’m sure Pep will give him a little tap around the head and say, ‘Don’t do that again.’ That’s what I would have done.”

There’s a particular irony in Pardew expressing that opinion, when the most memorable – arguably defining – moment of his coaching career was when he lost the run of himself at Wembley, doing that dance when Crystal Palace took the lead against Manchester United in the 2016 FA Cup final.

In fairness to Pardew, there is a consistency there. He has spoken repeatedly of regretting it.

That’s him. We, on the other hand, are infinitely grateful he pulled out an all-timer of a cringeworthy dad dance. It was the defining image of that final. You might not remember Manchester United’s goals. You definitely remember Pardew’s moves.

Imagine if things had gone differently in those final 20 minutes of the 2026 League Cup final. Imagine if Arsenal had come back into it and won. Imagine how spectacularly daft Cherki would have ended up looking.

As it was, Guardiola’s men saw out their two-goal advantage with relatively little fuss. Gary Neville dubbed it the ‘Nico O’Reilly final’, which is probably fair enough when a local lad academy graduate scored both goals.

Similarly, it was the Godfather III of Kepa Arrizabalaga’s Carabao trilogy.

After the drama of refusing to be subbed off in 2019, and subsequently being subbed on as a penalty-specialist, only to fail to save any and miss himself in 2022, a fumbled catch was disappointingly humdrum this time around.

It would have been the Cherki final had his act of hubris been punished by the football gods.

No data algorithm on earth is telling him that’s an efficient or effective use of the ball. All hail Rayan Cherki and his act of defiance against the rise of the machines.