{"id":701,"date":"2026-04-25T11:25:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T11:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=701"},"modified":"2026-04-25T11:25:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T11:25:54","slug":"rayan-cherki-had-secret-trial-at-chelsea-but-turned-them-down-as-former-player-reveals-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=701","title":{"rendered":"Rayan Cherki had secret trial at Chelsea but turned them down as former player reveals all"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Rayan Cherki turned up at Cobham training ground for a so-called secret trial and was “miles better than anyone else”, according to former Chelsea youth player Miles Leaburn.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in 2015, when he was still on the books at Lyon, a 12-year-old Cherki is said to have travelled over to London for a trial at Chelsea.<\/p>\n

Lyon were unaware of his presence in the capital, according to Leaburn, who remembers Cherki’s time at Cobham as being one of the standout moments from his nine-year spell at the club. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe came over from France and was rainbow-flicking guys in training,” Leaburn told The Sun. \u201cI was thinking, \u2018Oh my God, this is incredible.\u2019 He honestly rejected playing for Chelsea because he probably found it too easy.”<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was miles better than anyone else \u2014 absolute quality,” added the Charlton Athletic striker. “That was one of the standout moments of the eight years or so I spent at Chelsea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cherki, who has never spoken about the alleged trial, would return to Lyon and go on to make 146 appearances for the Ligue 1 side before securing a \u00a332 million switch to Manchester City last summer. <\/p>\n

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\"Cherki<\/div>\n

Cherki is said to have trialled at Chelsea when he was younger. Image credit: Getty<\/cite><\/div>\n

Leaburn, meanwhile, was released by Chelsea at 16 but made it as a professional with Charlton Athletic. He has made over 100 appearances for the Championship side. <\/p>\n

Speaking about his nine-year spell at the Blues, Leaburn recalled meeting Fernando Torres and Didier Drogba when he first joined the club. <\/p>\n

\u201cI joined Chelsea when I was seven after they scouted me at a development centre in Kidbrooke. I was playing for Cray Wanderers at the time,” he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI started going to their training ground at Cobham from that age but it\u2019s not until you\u2019re nine that you sign a contract, committing to only one club.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo at that time Chelsea, in a bid to woo you into signing for them, introduced us to some of their first-team players. I remember meeting John Terry, Fernando Torres, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard. It was such a cool thing for a young kid to meet top players like that.”<\/p>\n

Rayan Cherki also turned down approach from Manchester United<\/h2>\n

As well as catching the eye of coaches at Chelsea, the talented Cherki was being tracked by Manchester United, according to talkSPORT. <\/p>\n

In fact, United are said to have made a proposal to the Frenchman when he was playing at under-15 level, but Chekri decided to stay with Lyon before making his first-team debut in 2019. <\/p>\n

He would become a first-team regular at the Parc Olympique Lyonnais before joining Manchester City last summer. <\/p>\n

Cherki, who has been one of the Premier League’s standout performers this season, has yet to perform a rainbow-flick during a game, but don’t be surprised to see it happen in the not-so-distant future. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rayan Cherki turned up at Cobham training ground for a so-called secret trial and was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}