Scott Carson reveals important behind-the-scenes role at Manchester City

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Scott Carson backroom role at Man City

Recently retired goalkeeper Scott Carson has revealed the unsung but important role he had behind the scenes during his time at Manchester City.

The 40-year-old ex-pro called time on his playing career after more than two decades and six years in sky blue, having made just two appearances for the club during a period in which they won 11 trophies.

Carson officially hung up his gloves on 23 October 2025, following his contract expiration, and since then has found himself carrying out a number of interviews, including one with Fozcast, hosted by another fellow shotstopper who spent time in Manchester, Ben Foster.

While lots of people have joked that he did very little to earn the flurry of medals so late in his career, or at the very least theorised as to what he actually did behind the scenes, he’s now been more open than ever about the largely sidelined spell.

Sitting down with Sky Sports, the Cumbrian keeper confirmed that initially it was, indeed, just a case of serving as not even as a rotation option but a back-up third choice.

Nevertheless, he’s an experienced veteran with 11 different teams on his CV, including Leeds United, Liverpool and Sheffield Wednesday – though only a handful of games for each – as well as half a century of appearances at Wigan Athletic before his longest stints at the likes of West Brom and Derby County.

While this job usually involves purely training, helping keep other players sharp, he says that after settling into the Etihad Campus a little more, he found himself performing a much more influential, albeit largely unsung, role in the background.

Getting validation from manager Pep Guardiola that the side “needed more of that”, he essentially ended up providing valuable seniority and motivation amongst the group, despite only playing a couple of times.

Bidding farewell to the Whitehaven-born cult hero, the club wrote: “During his time at City, Carson has been praised by goalkeeping coach Xabi Mancisidor and peers Ederson and Stefan Ortega Moreno for his work ethic and the effect of his positive attitude amongst the group.”

Speaking about Guardiola specifically, he hailed the Catalan coach for having overhauled modern football in this country, as well as giving him the secondary task of supporting his teammates, be it via boosting morale and ‘picking up’ those left frustrated by matchday selection.

As well as noting his widely publicised detail-oriented nature, he also made a point of recognising that Pep himself was “evolving each season”, whether or not everyone else saw it.

In short, he said he has helped improve the quality of the Premier League and, more specifically, that he helped redefine what a goalkeeper can be in the division.

You can watch the rest of the interview in full down below.

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Featured Images — Sky Sports (screenshot via YouTube)/Steffen Prößdorf (Wikimedia Commons)