EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Lewis, is the Thai-boxing City wonderkid 'with the hair'

You Are 17 and still at school. You have made up the numbers in a few training sessions but nobody really knows who you are. Why would they? Here stands a collection of globetrotters assembled by Manchester City. Besides, plenty of kids are asked up to help during Pep Guardiola’s tactical run throughs and are effectively mannequins.

But one of Guardiola’s coaches has been in his ear. The manager has never seen you play but trusts the word of Carlos Vicens, an assistant, that there is a youngster who should travel with them for pre-season in America. The lad with the hair.

The lad with the hair joined City as a nine-year-old. He had it shaved back then, captained pretty much every academy team going and was so good that the club once signed an opposing winger purely because he had the temerity to give him a hard time in a junior game. Rico Lewis, it is now clear, was always going to become a City player.

When the chance to prove that came, he didn’t worry about impressing the superstars. A story that tells all about his character comes from the wet heat of Houston. For Lewis, his ability was of secondary concern to the team’s seating plan. He wanted to be the last man to sneak on the coach but failed. He locked eyes with Nathan Ake, sat alone at a table.

‘When you’re there for the first time, you’re just trying to find a seat,’ he says. ‘You don’t want to be in anyone else’s. The worst thing is if you sit somewhere and then have to move in front of everyone. Things like that, it’s nerve- wracking having to ask.

‘Back then it was a big thing. I was nervous. The quicker I understood they’re just normal people, the easier it was to be myself.’

Initially, he never wanted to get in the way. There were similar social dilemmas in