Ruben Dias has heaped praise on Rico Lewis but urged the Manchester City prodigy to keep working hard after his breakthrough display.
The promising full-back has broken into the City first-team this season at the tender age of 17 and has been a regular on the bench, often coming on too. With Wednesday's final Champions League group stage game against Sevilla being a dead rubber, Pep Guardiola decided to give him his first senior start.
Lewis did not disappoint and put on an excellent display down the right flank, grabbing City's equaliser by firing into the roof of the net following a lovely through ball by Julian Alvarez. The Argentine scored himself to give the Blues the lead and teed up Riyad Mahrez for the third but it's Lewis who walked away with the most plaudits.
Also read: Man City player ratings as Rico Lewis enjoys dream debut
The right-back earned a standing ovation from the Etihad when he was taken off due to cramp with a few minutes remaining and Dias was full of praise for him after the game. "I've just told him he cannot come out [with] cramp but definitely," he said when put to him by BT Sport that Lewis had enjoyed a great game. "He's an enormous talent, he's been with us for a long time now and I think for him to get the opportunity of playing, let's call it the full game and to score.
"You can see his quality. Brilliant things from him, just need to keep working."
Dias also explained why winning the game, even though there was nothing to play for, was so important for City. "We wanted one more thing not to concede," he said. "Unfortunately, we concede one but yeah, it's one of those games.
"Everything's done, everything's settled in terms of the math of the group but still, it's a game in which you need to perform because the rhythm is just going, the games don't stop and for you to drop down completely is never a good idea. So especially in the second half a very good answer from the team.
"In this club it doesn't matter if it's a friendly or Champions League final, if it's a game in a group stage when everything's done already, we need to push each other. Same in the training. You can train in a certain way and you can train to win things and that's just the way we do things."
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