From out-shining Palmer to a new start and FA Cup joy at Buxton

Picture the scene - two prolific Manchester City teenagers combine to complete an early season thrashing of Chelsea's youth team in 2021.

One of them, long admired for his "potent finishing power", scores twice. The other? Cole Palmer...

Tai Sodje, the kid who outshone Palmer that day, is the son of former rugby speedster Bright and nephew of two ex-Nigeria international footballers, Efe and Sam.

Sport is in his blood.

He spent 10 years on City's books as a youth player before starting his injury-delayed senior career in England's sixth tier with non-league Buxton this season.

In his first four months of first-team football after being released by the Premier League club in the summer, the 22-year-old has scored 14 goals in all competitions.

And he has helped the National League North side set up an FA Cup second-round tie against League Two club Cheltenham Town on Saturday.

"For me, as long as I'm keeping fit, playing and scoring, that's it for me, I'm happy with that," Sheffield-born Sodje told BBC Sport.

"When I first signed for Buxton, my aim and what I told myself was 'let's go score, let's go score'. And to actually do it has been a real confidence boost.

"I back myself to score no matter what level it is. I want to play at the highest level I possibly can. That and scoring goals are what drives me."

FA Cup second round

5-8 December 2025

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A feature profile, external on Manchester City's website on 2020 described Sodje, who left Sheffield United's youth system for the Citizens' academy aged 11, as "a skilful centre-forward who marries vision, craft, guile and potent finishing power to great effect".

They were words written at the start of a season in which he topped City's Under-18 scoring chart with 19 league goals. A year earlier Palmer hit 15, albeit in fewer games.

But repeated injury setbacks meant there was no launch into the footballing stratosphere for Sodje like there was for Palmer.

Within two years of setting Sodje up for the second of his two goals against Chelsea's Under-23s in a 4-1 Premier League 2 win, external at City's Academy Stadium in 2021, Palmer had swapped sky blue for royal blue in a £40m move.

"You knew from very young he would be doing what he's doing - he's a joke at football, his levels were unbelievable," Sodje told BBC Sport about his former team-mate, now an England international who came eighth in this year's Ballon d'Or vote.

Palmer was not the only City youngster that Sodje played alongside who would go on to be the subject of a big-money transfer.

Fellow forward Liam Delap, sold to Ipswich before joining Palmer at Chelsea, and midfielder Shea Charles, bought by Southampton, have also commanded huge fees.

Sodje stayed on with City's youth teams, never managing to break into the first team or secure a loan move away because of a succession of badly timed injures.

But what former team-mates and friends have achieved in the game at a young age is not something Sodje is envious about.

If anything, he takes the feats they have accomplished as inspiration.

"When you see people that have gone on the same journey as you doing great things, you know it can happen," he said.

"You do want to be there, at a high level. I just have to look forward and accept that you can't change the past. You are not going to go anywhere if you are just looking back and thinking this could have happened or that could have happened."

Sodje is pragmatic, contemplative and positive when talking about every facet of his career to date.

He is grateful for the decade spent at City, the team-mates he had, the coaches he learned from and facilities he had access to.

His upbringing in a sporting family - his father Bright spending years in rugby league's Super League, while uncles Sam, Efe and Akpo had long careers in football - has helped him stay patiently focused on the career he is trying to build.

"He [his father Bright] is still giving me tips now," Sodje said.

"He has done it, played rugby professionally and the discipline and hard work you need is the same in any sport if you want to get to those levels."

Buxton is where Sodje has found a new start after a trial spell at League Two Fleetwood Town came to nothing.

Silverlands Stadium - a ground in the Derbyshire spa town penned in by a police station, terraced houses and an allotment - might not be the world-class facilities he called home at Manchester City, but he is happy there.

"Anywhere is going to be different from City," Sodje said. "But I'm still there to play football, aren't I? You don't always need everything else around it.

"Even being at City for so long, with the academy side, your career only really starts in men's football I think.

"For me, this is my next chapter, this is me starting now and it's a fresh page."

And for all that Sodje was exposed to at City, training sessions spent with one of English football's behemoths, it is with Buxton he has been most wowed by a goal.

That was Connor Kirby's dipping long-range extra-time winner in the first round against Chatham Town that topped anything Sodje got to witness firsthand from record-setting goalscorer Erling Haaland at City.

"That is the best goal I have ever seen on the pitch," Sodje said. "It was ridiculous. Outrageous.

"And for us to be on a run like this is more than you could ask for."