Rico Lewis and Antoine Semenyo on finding strength and community in their faith

Rico Lewis was asked how it felt to be back in action before the new season following Manchester City’s first friendly against Inter in Hong Kong last Saturday, and he had a message.

“Yeah, first of all I want to thank my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for giving me the opportunity to play today, and to be alive,” Lewis said. “He is the reason I’m here today and everything I do is in the glory for him and his kingdom, but yeah, happy to be back on the grass with the team, we played a good game in both halves, both halves were a bit different.”

Lewis’ faith has blossomed over the past year and is very important to him. This summer, the 21-year-old held a charity football tournament in Manchester, with the proceeds going to homeless charities, something motivated by his Christian values.

“One day… it’s weird, I was speaking to my wife and I said, ‘I want to buy a bible’,” he told The Athletic in July. “She was brought up Catholic anyway so she was always in and around the faith, but it was just something that I started reading, and I guess it touched my heart, and it’s changed me from the inside.

Rico Lewis signs a shirt on Manchester City’s pre-season tour in Seoul (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

“It’s something I wanted to investigate and as soon as I started looking into it, it changed me in a way where I couldn’t look back. I was changing and it changed my whole life, hopefully my family’s life as well. That could spread to many people around me and hopefully, ideally, for everyone.”

Lewis is the latest City player to have embraced the message of the bible. Following a fine performance in November’s 3-0 win against Liverpool, winger Jeremy Doku put his improved performances down to his faith.

“What changed for me this season, I have God in my life,” he told reporters. “That’s what changed, and that’s what you can see. On the pitch, I have His presence with me. That’s the difference. I’m just happy that now I can just deliver the way I want to play without any fear or doubt or anything.”

Doku and his wife, Shireen, were baptised by American pastor Tim Timberlake in December last year, the footage of which features in a video on the winger’s YouTube channel. Last week, he uploaded a 20-minute video titled, “How faith carried me through the World Cup”, a time when he and Shireen welcomed their first child.

Antoine Semenyo, who signed for City in January, is from a Ghanaian background and comes from a religious family. “Mum and Dad didn’t let me go to football on Sundays without going to church first,” he told reporters in Hong Kong.

He was also baptised in December, in a ceremony on Bournemouth beach just before his move to Manchester. “I’ve been wanting to do it for so long and I had couple of days where I could do it, and I said to the local pastor, ‘I wanted to do (it)’. I always wanted to, I knew that I’m obviously walking with God at the moment, and I want to maximise my faith as much as I can, so practising gives me the opportunity to do that,” he told reporters in Hong Kong. “I’m so happy I’ve done it and I’m (on) the walk of faith now and it’s been amazing.”

He says it has helped him settle in at City, alongside fellow January signing Marc Guehi, whose father, John, is a devout Christian and a former church minister.

“I think that’s definitely a factor for sure,” Semenyo added. “Me, Jeremy, Marc, we speak a lot and we always pray a lot. We pray before the games, we pray in the hotel the night before together. When you have brothers in Christ, it just gives us the maximum strength to go into the games knowing that we’re confident and we’ve got belief in God, so it’s great.”

Semenyo and some of his team-mates are part of the Ballers in God movement, started by former Tottenham Hotspur midfielder John Bostock, which states that its mission is “to use the global platform of football to make Jesus known”.

Its website sells shin pads emblazoned with different religious themes and messages, which are backed by testimonials from Anthony Elanga, Alex Iwobi and Trevoh Chalobah, among others. Players who are part of Ballers in God meet up with each other over video calls.

“We did it a couple of times before the World Cup started to send a message about God coming back and it was great,” Semenyo says. “A lot of celebrations with the crown coming off our heads and going down, to obviously praise God for coming back. We do it all the time.”

The group affiliated with Timberlake — Lewis, Doku and occasionally Divin Mubama, Stephen Mfuni and Ryan McAidoo — also participate in video calls once or twice per week, where they spend 30-40 minutes examining different verses from the bible.

“We started doing bible studies and stuff like that and we talk about it frequently,” Lewis said. “Jeremy’s had a big change, you would have seen that on his social media. He’s the one who really drove it and it was good for us, especially for me at the start of my journey.

“He has a pastor that he met, and he actually speaks to us and takes us through a verse, we could be there 45 minutes on just four or five words. There’s so much that goes into it that can change your life and if everyone can take the time to just explore… it’s not an easy thing to do but there’s a bigger picture and it can change a lot of people’s lives.”

It is clearly a message that is spreading in the City dressing room.