It is easy to forget it all started at Leeds United for likeable Man City figure: View | OneFootball

But for one goalkeeper in particular, they have gone on to forge an excellent career, 'winning' the Champions League on two occasions, with most forgetting that his rise to stardom started in West Yorkshire 22 years ago.

Scott Carson's Leeds United career

Having been a keen rugby player, Carson decided to focus on football during his time at school, and eventually joined Leeds' academy in 2002 after impressing former defender, Peter Hampton, while plying his trade for non-league side Workington in the FA Youth Cup.

He would spend less than a year among the youth set-up at Elland Road before being called up to make his first-team debut. The Englishman would make his first appearance in professional football in January 2004 with the Whites, coming on as a late substitute against Middlesbrough after Paul Robinson saw red after bringing down Michael Ricketts.

Carson would start his first match for the club two weeks later, deputising in between the sticks at Old Trafford, with Leeds able to take a draw back to West Yorkshire. He would make one further appearance in the 2003/04 campaign against Chelsea.

Robinson would complete a move to Tottenham Hotspur the following season, with Scottish international Neil Sullivan two months later to compete with Carson for a first-team spot.

The goalkeeper's contract was due to expire at the end of the 2004/05 campaign, with the Whites keen to keep him at Elland Road beyond that time. However, he chose to join Liverpool in the January transfer window for a fee of £750,000, ending his time with Leeds having made just three appearances.

Scott Carson would go on to have a good career

Just four months later, Carson was holding the Champions League trophy aloft as Liverpool beat AC Milan in one of the best finals the competition has witnessed, but was unable to get on the pitch in Istanbul and was an unused substitute.

Carson made only four appearances in the 2005–06 season, all in cup competitions, and in March was granted a switch to Sheffield Wednesday, which would be the first of three during his time on Merseyside. He kept five clean sheets in nine appearances while on loan at Hillsborough before returning to Anfield.

Subsequent loan moves to Charlton Athletic and Aston Villa would follow after Liverpool signed Pepe Reina, and he would make 74 appearances across two seasons, keeping 20 clean sheets.

His three-year stay with the Reds came to an end in 2008 as he joined West Bromwich Albion for a fee of £3.75 million, earning them promotion back to the Premier League in the 2009/10 campaign, before moving to Bursaspor in Turkey.

Carson would return to England two years later, this time with Wigan Athletic, but could not help the Latics' drop to League One, signing for Championship side Derby County, for whom he would make his most career appearances for.

During his time with the Rams, Carson would make almost 200 appearances and claimed the club's Player of the Season award in the 2016/17 season. Quite surprisingly, Carson's next move saw him make a loan switch to Manchester City, who had just been crowned Premier League champions.

He would arrive as a third-choice keeper behind Ederson and Claudio Bravo, joining permanently in 2021. Carson has only made a handful of appearances for Pep Guardiola's side, but played his first European match in almost 17 years against Sporting CP, entering the game as a second half substitute.

The 38-year-old's career went in almost full circle as he returned to the stadium where he had won the Champions League with Liverpool for the 2022/23 final, and emerged victorious once more with City, but was again, an unused substitute for the contest.

Carson's contract is expected to run out at the end of this season, but he has proved to become a popular character among the Citizen's squad of superstars over the years and picked up countless trophies along the way.

While the latter stages of his career have seen him watch the game from the bench, he's become known as the "man with the dream job" as a third-choice goalkeeper. It's often forgotten it all started out for him at Elland Road.