Rico Lewis came into the Manchester City team for the Champions League clash with AEK Athens on Tuesday night
Manchester City pair Rico Lewis and Phil Foden celebrate a goal against AEK Athens
Rico Lewis caught the eye for Manchester City in their Champions League win over AEK Athens
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Rico Lewis described last season as ‘just what he needed,’ but he didn’t want a repeat this time around.
The 21-year-old must have feared the worst then when, in a strikingly similar pattern to the 2025-26 campaign, he began the season in the team and then struggled for meaningful minutes.
Last year he started the first two Premier League matches but didn’t make the XI again until the Manchester derby in January. His only other top-flight start came on the final day of the season as part of a heavily rotated side against Aston Villa.
Fast forward 12 months and Lewis was again in City’s opening day XI but was hooked early in the second half against Bournemouth and disappeared onto the bench. He did play in the Carabao Cup win over Championship side Norwich in September but such was his lack of game-time that it was something of a surprise that he started the Champions League tie with AEK Athens on Tuesday night, even with Matheus Nunes missing through injury.
Abdukodir Khusanov has been preferred at right back by Enzo Maresca as Nunes’ alternative, but the Uzbekistan international is better in the middle of the backline. The City chief took the midweek match with the Greek champions as an opportunity to rest Marc Guehi and move Khusanov inside.
That opened the door for Lewis and while he would still prefer to play in midfield, he grasped his opportunity with an impressive display.
He was the pick of the home players in the first half and his touch to set up Phil Foden for the hat-trick hero’s second of the night was sublime.
Lewis was rampaging on the right and while his positional sense defensively can still be questioned, and he didn't cover himself in glory for the AEK goal, the movement and energy he offered elsewhere showed he can still bring plenty to this City side.
The academy graduate will have been hoping for more chances under Maresca, who took individual sessions with Lewis after training during his spell as assistant in the 2022-23 campaign, when the England international first emerged into the XI.
That catapulted him into the Three Lions team and he earned five caps but the last of those came in 2024. He was called into Thomas Tuchel’s squad this month as an injury replacement for City team-mate Nico O'Reilly and earned a club recall against AEK.
Speaking exclusively to the Manchester Evening News in the summer, Lewis insisted he was happy with his career path - there's a plan that is in place for me that I just have to believe in - and spoke of a desire to play as many games as possible this term.
That hasn’t happened as yet, but performances like Tuesday night can only help his cause.
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