He isn't the only promising young footballer to fail to live up to the hype. Many players come through an elite academy, some even make their debut, then fail to make the grade and play out their career in the lower leagues.
Some even return to the top and even if they don't, Manchester City are just as proud of producing academy players who go on to have long careers in the Football League as they are of those who graduate to the first team permanently.
If the career paths of all City academy players were separated into different categories relating to the level they reached, or future careers, there would be one significant outlier: Reece Wabara - the 32-year-old multi-millionaire who swapped football for fashion and never looked back.
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After coming through the City ranks from the age of 14, Wabara made his Blues debut on the final day of the 2010/11 season. Loans to Ipswich and Oldham followed - where he scored the winner for Latics in a memorable FA Cup upset against a strong Liverpool side in 2013 under the management of City legend Paul Dickov. He went on to have loan spells at Blackpool and Doncaster before City released him in 2014.
A permanent reunion with Dickov at Doncaster followed, before spells at Barnsley and Wigan. He was floating around League One and the Championship, but off the pitch something else was taking off that ultimately changed his life.
"It's my fault, I was complacent, I didn't go hard enough," Wabara told CEOCAST in December 2022 of his football career. "It was too easy up until 18, then everyone started to catch me up. I was the
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