2 weeks ago
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Manchester City goalkeeper James Trafford missed the chance at glory with the club a few years ago but can enjoy more now
Manchester City have brought through some excellent young players over the last decade and the team that stands out more than most is the FA Youth Cup winners of 2020.
Honourable mentions are due to the sides that included Phil Foden, Brahim Diaz, Jadon Sancho and Kelechi Iheanacho yet the class of 2020 looked great at the time and are even better now.
Liam Delap and Cole Palmer are reunited at Chelsea, having generated more than £100m in transfer fees between them over three moves. City are holding out for a fee closer to the £42.5m they sold Palmer for over James McAtee, who is almost certain to leave the club this summer.
Oscar Bobb was an unused substitute while Morgan Rogers has grown into one of the best midfielders in the Premier League at Aston Villa. Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Tommy Doyle have both had a year in the top flight while CJ Egan-Riley has turned down that opportunity with Burnley to instead sign for Marseille in the French league.
It was a star-studded team, yet there was an important absentee. In goal for the final against Chelsea was Cieran Slicker, replacing James Trafford from the semi-final.
Trafford should have played, but ended up being needed to sit on the City bench after two of Pep Guardiola's three keepers got injured. Having initially expected to take on the role of third keeper, he got an unexpected bump up when Scott Carson went down in the warm-up at Sheffield United.
"I was about to get on the bus back to the CFA after the game and then I got told that I think [Zack] Steffen had a problem and I was going to have to travel down to be third choice," he told the Manchester Evening News in 2021. "I thought nothing of it because I was third choice against Burnley in the cup and it's not really anything major.
"I went down in the morning and I was about to go and watch the warm up with a coffee when I saw that Scott was down. I thought 'Oh God, I could be doing something here'.
"So I went in quickly to get changed and put some training kit on, ran out for the end of the warm up where they were doing the shooting so I flew in there, texted me mam quickly saying I was on the bench and then it was just a surreal moment .
"It was sprung upon us so I didn't really have time to think about it but looking back it was probably better that way and I never really had time to think about what if I actually came on. I didn't think anything of it at the time."
Trafford missed out on the chance for glory with the rest of his teammates, but he has not let that stop him since and has the chance to win silverware with the City first team after getting Burnley back into the Premier League as part of the rebuild under Guardiola.
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