It’s almost a year since Jack Grealish stepped off Manchester City’s party bus, wrung the beer out of his T-shirt and joined the England squad for Euro 2024 qualifying in Malta.
It was warm, it was sunny and Grealish’s positioning as the new poster boy of English football was complete.
Grealish was 27, a Treble winner and the face of the fashion brand Gucci. But even then there was a sense of possible transience. After all, England had faced gifted, almost idiosyncratic players in this way before, and it had not always worked out.
So on a Thursday evening last June, manager Gareth Southgate stood in a corridor deep inside Malta’s Ta’Qali National Stadium and was asked about his new golden child and the challenges that lay ahead.
“As I said to the City players, we’re all in a bit of an unknown,” Southgate replied. ‘We have had teams in the Champions League final but we haven’t had a team that has won a Treble, so for that group of players and staff things will never be the same.
Twelve months ago, Jack Grealish and his Manchester City teammates celebrated winning an historic Treble
The 28-year-old was one of seven players missing from Gareth Southgate’s 26-man squad
The England boss stressed that the club’s recent form was a key factor in his decision-making
‘You’ll never get that group back together and everything changes in their lives. But anything I say to them about the future, I would do in private. I don’t think there’s any point in talking about that publicly.’
It all felt rather insignificant at the time. A conversation about ‘if’, ‘but’ and ‘maybe’. But here we are in June 2024 and as Southgate prepares to take a squad of 26 to the European Championship in Germany, Grealish will not be among them.
If it’s not exactly a fall from grace, it’s certainly a great comedown for a player who has always felt at home in England colours.
For what it’s worth, I think Southgate made a mistake. Grealish has always had a positive influence on the England team he played in, and Southgate admitted as much on Thursday. “I think the child’s world,” he said.
Grealish is also extremely talented and would have provided a dynamic option from the bench. Unlike Cole Palmer, Jarrod Bowen, Anthony Gordon and Eberechi Eze, he has tournament experience that could be invaluable when the pressure mounts.
However, Southgate has opted for form and numbers, and from that point of view the odds have been against Grealish since he finished his home season with a total of ten minutes of football last month.
The noise from City about Pep Guardiola’s declining confidence in the player the club bought from Aston Villa for £100 million in the summer of 2021 had been increasingly audible for some time.
In the aftermath of City’s defeat to Manchester United in the FA Cup final two weeks ago, Guardiola denied there was a problem and suggested Grealish would ‘return to his top level’ soon enough. What spoke louder, however, was that Grealish was left on the bench as City tried to recover a 2-0 deficit against their great rivals at Wembley.
The winger was an unused substitute in City’s 2-1 FA Cup defeat to Man United last month
There are reports that City boss Pep Guardiola is not as fond of Grealish as he once was. A point that the Spaniard has denied
Southgate is a firm believer in instinct. He tends to trust his own eyes and his own interpretation of the way form can fluctuate. However, he does have questions from the club’s managers and Guardiola will have been honest with him when it comes to the problems one of his senior players has endured over the past nine months.
Grealish will be devastated by his omission, especially after an impressive cameo as a substitute against Bosnia in Newcastle on Monday evening. Likewise, he does not lack self-awareness.
When I sat down with him for 45 minutes about a month after that Treble success last year, he was wearing a Gucci tracksuit worth more than £10,000, but his view of his life and career couldn’t have been more real or candid.
Speaking about the differences between himself and clubmate Erling Haaland, he joked that the Norwegian striker liked to take an ice bath after a match, while he prefers a beer.
Fueling, a word the late Sir Bobby Robson once used about Paul Gascoigne, has always been a challenge for Grealish. He told me that he sometimes wished he could have lived a different life, where anonymity gave him the freedom to wander more freely.
He told me he had worn a wig on a night out in Manchester to ensure his anonymity. To this day I’m not sure he was joking.
Grealish barely drank during the second half of last season but has admitted he struggled with the mental demands of a campaign spent in the aftermath of last year’s victory.
What do you give the footballer who already has everything? Honestly, the chance to do it again. That proved a bit too much for Grealish, even though it was not a subject Southgate was keen to delve into on Thursday.
Grealish has admitted to struggling with the mental demands of a campaign waged in the wake of last year’s victory
The 28-year-old’s outspoken and fun-loving image is at odds with the work he puts in both on and off the field
“I don’t think this is a good day to talk about the bigger picture,” he said. ‘I don’t think it would be fair. I just had a very difficult conversation with a devastated boy. I’m not going to go any wider than that.’
What about Guardiola? Did he also play a role in this? Doubtless. Grealish has been molded into a different player in his three years with the Catalan. The free agent from Villa Park has been transformed at City into a player for whom team play and structure are paramount. It worked for the team, but did it work for the player?
One of Grealish’s most heard instructions from Guardiola is to win free kicks. It couldn’t be more pragmatic, less romantic or less ‘Grealish’ when lathered in Birmingham City blue.
However, we should not give up on Grealish. He is a hardy type. The devilish image does not reflect reality. He cares deeply about his football and really appreciates playing for his country. It won’t be long before we see photos of him vacationing on a Balearic island, Las Vegas or some such outpost. He won’t spend the summer crying about his exclusion. However, he will be missed here in the England camp.
“He can light up a room,” Declan Rice said. “This week he was hilarious and got everyone in trouble. When he came recently I thought he was excellent, knocked his socks off and his mentality was top level. I can’t speak enough about him.
‘I don’t know what his life is like, but he is a top man and I feel sorry for him because he is one of my best friends. He is such a down-to-earth, positive person and so positive about this group.”
Grealish may not be part of the England campaign this summer, but he could still return in improved form next season
Rice also nodded to the benefits of a summer without football for Grealish and that was a good point. That could benefit Grealish and City, and perhaps England too.
It seems wrong to imagine a 26-man England squad without Jack the Lad.
Ultimately, a season’s work of three goals and three assists in a Premier League-winning team did him good.
However, it will be a surprise if he isn’t back next season.