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At the start of this year, nobody outside of Manchester City had really heard of Nico O'Reilly. As 2025 dawned he had 252 minutes of senior football under his belt and none of it had come in the Premier League.

Two starts in forgettable Carabao Cup ties, a debut in the Community Shield and nine minutes off the bench in a Champions League rout against Sparta Prague were the sum total of the academy graduate's first-team involvement.

Even within the Etihad, you would have been hard pressed to find anybody predicting the kind of year ahead for O'Reilly that he has enjoyed. A new five-year contract signed and sealed, his status as a first-teamer is secure. Now, he is in the England squad too.

But maybe that rapid rise shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, this is a player w

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