“Music is very important to me. I listen to it all the time, since I was new born,” O’Reilly tells GOAL Editions. “Anywhere I am, I just put my headphones on.”

His earliest memories are of listening to RnB and hip hop at home with his mother. Ja Rule was the backing track to O’Reilly’s everyday life when his mum was driving him to school or training. He soon developed his own taste with the help of his friends, lasering in on American and English rap. He consumes so much music that he clocked 700 hours of listening in his 2025 Spotify Wrapped. His favourite artist right now is Gunna and he was among the Georgia rapper’s’ top 1% listeners in the world last year, receiving a personal video from him. 

Following closely behind is Drake, who he says “influenced me a lot”, Lil’ Baby, Future and Dave. And they all play a huge part in his pre-match routine.

Guardiola has described him as a “big, big presence” and recently hailed him as “the signing of the season”.

It is little wonder that O’Reilly loves going to gigs. After all, he knows a thing or two about putting on a show. 

He first caught the eye while playing for City’s under-18 team in 2023 with a salvo of eye-catching goals. First he netted an outrageous scorpion kick to snatch a last-minute victory against Middlesbrough. It was the start of a whirlwind journey. He was named in the first team squad for City’s pre-season tour of the USA in 2024 and made a real impression.Next he was starting the Community Shield at Wembley against Manchester United. 

He was soon propelling the team to the FA Cup final, with talismanic performances against Plymouth Argyle and Bournemouth. And the sight of a homegrown City fan from Manchester making his way in the team was a shot in the arm for fans during an otherwise terrible season.

O’Reilly’s first Premier League goal came in April. He played in the Club World Cup in June and by October had received his first England call-up. In December he scored in City’s 2-1 win at Real Madrid, being named Player of the Match at the Bernabeu. Channeling his favourite rappers, he made Europe’s most iconic stadium in the world his stage.

And like any top musician, he is adept at performing in a variety of scenarios. He took next to no time to adapt to left-back but this season has also been deployed in defensive midfield and attacking midfield. 

Playing further forward has given him a licence to take on more attacking responsibility and in a recent game against Newcastle he played like a centre-forward, scoring twice and earning lavish praise from Wayne Rooney and Micah Richards. 

He returned to left-back for the Wembley showdown with Arsenal and proved City’s secret weapon, scoring twice in the space of four minutes to effectively decide the game. The occasion was instantly dubbed the O’Reilly final and in the eyes of City fans he gained rockstar status.

While football has always been the career he wanted, O’Reilly sees the appeal in being a musician. “I can see why people enjoy it, the lifestyle around it,” he says. 

He moved in the same circles as grime artist Aitch, who grew up in Moston, the northern Manchester neighbourhood where O’Reilly took his first steps as a footballer with Moston Tigers. 

He has grown to know Aitch personally but insists “we don’t really talk about football.” There is an obvious reason why. Aitch is a staunch Manchester United fan.In another reality, however, O’Reilly could have been a United player. The first team to scout him was United although City soon followed and made their approach, as did Liverpool and Everton. O'Reilly grew up in a household of United and City supporters but he chose to follow City, joining his mother and sister. So naturally he wanted to play for City. And he preferred their training sessions.

Another rappers O’Reilly admires, Dave, is a well-known United fan. The London-born grime artist’s lyrics are peppered with football references, none more than Thiago Silva, the track which entered the national conscience when he pulled a fan out of the crowd at Glastonbury to rap with him. O’Reilly remembers the moment well.

He is yet to go to Glastonbury or any other music festival but his face lights up when he is asked to curate his own festival line up, picking five headliners, dead or alive. He gives the task plenty of thought, only wanting to choose artists he has not previously seen. He eventually opts for Gunna, 50 Cent, Lil Durk, Neo and Michael Jackson. 

Going to gigs is a little more complicated for O’Reilly since becoming a City first-teamer and England player but he still gets out when he can. He went to see Drake last summer at Co-Op Live, the biggest indoor arena in the UK which is just a stone’s throw from the Etihad Stadium.

While footballers and musicians have very different lifestyles, O’Reilly can see parallels between the two fields, in particular the pressure they have to deal with.

 “Definitely, if you’ve got an album dropping and you get a bad reaction or bad comments and all these months and time spent in the studio and it’s not getting good feedback…, they have pressure on them,” he reflects.

Footballers are used to getting barrages of negative reactions after each game but O’Reilly doesn’t feel the weight of pressure on his shoulders.“Not at all, I love pressure,” he says with a serious look. “Pressure makes diamonds.”

O’Reilly’s chutzpah will stand him in good stead come the business end of City’s Premier League and Champions League campaigns and as England look to go deep in their quest to win the World Cup. However far O’Reilly ends up going, music will be guiding him every step of the way.