When footballers ‘do boxing’, it rarely looks great.

It looks, well, like footballers boxing. The punches are wide and thrown from waist high and there’s not a hint of head movement. All of which is fine, considering they’re usually doing it as a bit of fun; a way to break up the training monotony of the week or maintain some fitness while rehabilitating an injury.

When Manchester City midfielder Rayan Cherki does boxing however, he looks… well, like a boxer.

“It’s scary,” joked City manager Pep Guardiola when asked about a video of the 22-year-old Frenchman doing padwork that went viral earlier this month. “He will play every game!”

The brief clip posted on Instagram shows Cherki hitting pads with French boxing coach Omrani Faycal at his gym in Villeurbanne, northeast of Lyon, a few weeks before he joined City from Lyon last summer. During the 30-second clip, he can be seen throwing a series of combinations while using his feet to move in and out of range, with several slips, ducks and rolls thrown in for good measure.

“He’s tasty, isn’t he?” says Curtis Woodhouse, the former England Under-21 midfielder who retired from football to become a professional boxer and won the British light-welterweight title in 2014, after watching the video. “It looks like he’s got very fast hands and a bit of pop in his shots as well. I don’t know how long he’s been boxing, but if I didn’t know that was Rayan Cherki and he played for Man City, I’d think he was a boxer.”

Cherki is far from the only elite footballer to harbour a passion for boxing. At most big fight nights in the UK, you’ll see an array of them sitting at ringside. Some, including Everton’s England No 1 goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and former Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney, grew up with the sport.

Rooney would train at his uncle’s gym in the Liverpool suburb of Croxteth and once, notoriously, sparred with former United team-mate Phil Bardsley in his kitchen at home — a session that ended with Rooney lying knocked out on the floor. He at least saw the funny side by pretending to collapse after scoring against Tottenham Hotspur in his next match.

Wayne Rooney pretends to be ‘knocked out’ after scoring against Tottenham in 2015 (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

Speaking on a podcast with Eddie Hearn, the chairman of promotion giant Matchroom, in 2019, Rooney said that he believes the boxing training he did as a kid is what helped give him the strength to be able to play in the Premier League aged just 16.

“It made me physically ready, and without that I don’t know I would have been able to cope with playing against the likes of Sol Campbell, Martin Keown and these big defenders,” he said. “So that really helped me get in a condition where I was young, but physically I could handle it.”

Others have no such boxing pedigree, but see value in adding the training for it to their schedules.

Early on in the 2024-25 season, Manchester United and England forward Marcus Rashford uploaded an Instagram video of himself hitting pads and bags interspersed with bunny hops over a high bar (an intense conditioning session favoured by former Boxing News and Ring magazine trainer of the year Joe Gallagher). Former Liverpool and England captain Jordan Henderson has also been seen hitting pads, while ex-Manchester United and France midfielder Paul Pogba has been known to utilise kickboxing in his training.

But is it actually beneficial to these players?

Faycal, who started working with Cherki eight years ago, training him once a week up until the Frenchman left Lyon, is in no doubt. He describes their boxing sessions as a “real lever for improvement, especially in modern football where one-on-one battles and quick decision-making are paramount”.

Woodhouse believes the benefits are mostly related to breaking up the monotony of a training week and giving naturally competitive individuals the opportunity to improve in a different realm, but Faycal says there is far more to it. He reels off a list of crossover benefits, starting with co-ordination and neuromuscular agility.

What does this mean in practice? “Boxing develops very fine coordination between the upper and lower body,” says Faycal, who explains that throwing combinations, dodging punches (even pretend ones from your trainer) and moving with your shots requires “synchronising perception and action.

“For a technically gifted playmaker like Rayan, this improves his changes of direction, his feints, and his ability to beat defenders in tight spaces.”

Core strength is something that Liverpool and Egypt forward Mohamed Salah is known to dedicate hours of gym work to, focusing on deep rotational stability, abdominal strength, and balance. It’s been key in allowing him to withstand forces from defenders, maintain acceleration and turn quickly while moving at high speed.

Boxing, says Faycal, can produce the same effect, resulting in better ball protection, more resistance to loads and less imbalance during contact.

It can also help improve reaction time and anticipation. Faycal says that during boxing sessions, Cherki learns to read his opponents’ intentions in a fraction of a second by looking at their shoulders, gaze and rhythm. “In football, this refines anticipation,” says Faycal. “It’s about knowing when to accelerate, feint, or pass before the defender even reacts.”

Footwork is one area that could be considered contentious. Faycal believes the work boxers constantly do on being light and reactive on their feet and maintaining balance can translate into being more explosive on the pitch; sharper starts and better stability in one-on-one situations.

Conversely, former super-middleweight world champion and GB Boxing coach Richie Woodhall, who spent time training players at his beloved West Bromwich Albion, believes that while donning the gloves can help make players fitter, there is “no real benefit footwork-wise” as the two sports are “very different in what’s required to perform well”.

Mohamed Salah works out during Liverpool’s 2024 pre-season (Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

His view is supported by Professor Alan Ruddock, a performance physiologist and co-founder of Boxing Science, a performance support team that has worked with over 700 athletes, including former world champions Fabio Wardley, Kell Brook and Terri Harper.

“A Premier League footballer needs the ability to accelerate, decelerate, change direction with high force – you’re not going to get that through boxing because the forces are not there,” says Ruddock. “When you’re practicing footwork drills, it’s all a bit too polite; a bit tappy-tappy, more like dancing. It’s the Queensberry part of the Queensberry Rules. A footballer needs to produce high rates of force in a very short space of time. Boxing footwork is not going to do that for you, unfortunately.”

When Woodhouse made the switch to boxing, everyone expected him to have the feet of Vasiliy Lomachenko, the great Ukrainian fighter renowned for his exceptional footwork. Sadly for him, he still had those of a retired footballer. “I never had good feet as a boxer,” he says. “Everyone thought (I’d be) twinkle toes, but it’s a completely different skill set. I was a bit of a plodder.”

There are always exceptions, though.

Boxing world champions Katie Taylor and Lauren Price both started out as footballers, making it to international level for the Republic of Ireland and Wales, respectively). And both have exceptional footwork and balance, attributes which are often attributed to the time they spent on the pitch. Equally, these could be natural traits — ones that helped them to reach the levels they did in football and are now doing the same in the ring — as opposed to ones developed through the beautiful game.

Cardiovascular fitness is also an interesting area.

Much depends on the type of boxing training footballers are doing, and on who is implementing it. Ruddock says that, having tested and trained hundreds of boxers, the level of explosiveness they present is “nowhere near” that of a Premier League footballer.

Katie Taylor (left) went from footballer to boxer (Ed Mulholland/Getty Images)

While boxers have good levels of fitness and can hold a good speed for a long time, Ruddock says they don’t necessarily have the same repeated sprint ability as elite footballers. That’s not to say it isn’t possible to get a good cardiovascular stimulus from padwork. Ruddock cites a 2014 study that showed it is possible to push boxers towards 90 per cent of their VO2 max or 90 per cent of their maximum heart rate using a pad protocol that mimicked amateur boxing.

“So it is possible to get a good cardiovascular stimulus from pads,” says Ruddock, “but you need a very skilled coach and pad man, because it can’t just be one type of shot that they’re throwing or a low number of shots that they’re throwing.

“He’s got to have a high variation. He’s got to know when to push you, when to pull you back, and then progressively add the demand rather than almost burn the boxer out to start with. It has to be high force, repeated activity rather than Floyd Mayweather Junior-style, tappy-tappy choreographed pads.”

The final area Faycal mentions is that of mental strength and stress management. Boxing, he says, demands composure under pressure, focus during exertion and acceptance of direct confrontation. “For a playmaker like Cherki, this can help him remain decisive in tense moments (the end of a match or intense pressure from the opponent),” he adds.

For Ruddock, there is a potential psychological transfer in terms of self-confidence. “I’m a Premier League footballer, and I’m in a battle twice a week,” he says. “What’s a good way of preparing myself for that? Getting on boxing gloves, getting in a boxing gym, and doing some boxing training.”

Cherki spoke about his passion for combat sports on the Men in Blazers podcast, explaining how “it allows me to work on my physique, it allows me to express myself”. But despite his countryman’s love for it, Faycal warns there are caveats when it comes to implementing boxing training into a player’s schedule.

The first of those is with regard to volume. “Too much could hinder the specific freshness required for football,” he says.

The second is the risk of getting hurt, especially the hands, wrists and impact injuries. “This necessitates strict supervision and often training without direct sparring,” says Faycal.

The goal, he explains, is not to turn Cherki into a boxer, but to use boxing to enhance the elite qualities he already has. “When properly integrated, boxing can transform a technically gifted player into an even more complete athlete,” he says, “much like adding a subtle turbocharger to an already highly efficient engine.”

Could there be a post-football boxing career for a player like Cherki? Woodhouse has his doubts.

“I’d tell him,” he laughs, “to continue earning that £150,000 ($202,500) a week from Man City.”