2023 has given us the best version of the English attacking midfielder.
It’s the twenty-sixth minute of Manchester City-Liverpool. Guardiola’s team is 1-0 down, a disadvantage that came 10 minutes earlier at the hands of the usual Salah. City have a corner kick and bring practically the whole team near the opposing penalty area. Kevin De Bruyne beat him, badly, without precision and strength, being rejected by the defense towards midfield. There John Stones, as the last man, makes a mistake: a header that allows the Reds to verticalize in a few fractions of a second on Salah, who aims for the half of the City field completely free of men. The Egyptian attacker opens the gas and aims, undisturbed, at the goal defended by Ederson.
It all seems inevitable and written: the easiest of the flaming transitions of Klopp’s Liverpool. The City players chased their counter-attack with a desperate run, but it all seemed inevitable for the doubling up. Instead, when Salah reaches the edge of the area, his attempt to assist, a bit bland to tell the truth, for Diogo Jota who had followed him in parallel is intercepted by an opponent and then ends up comfortable in the hands of the goalkeeper.
Incredibly foiled danger, the Etihad audience breathes a sigh of relief and applauds. Perhaps even stronger than usual, because the author of the incredible recovery is not who you would expect. He has been Jack Grealish, who had followed the attacker’s run with determination, keeping up with his pace and, indeed, proving to be able to go even faster and without even betraying any expression of tiredness for the effort made. The camera lingers on him. His face is calm, as if everything were normal, his haircut swaying with his step above the elastic band he wears.
Anyone would have cheered as if he had scored a goal, he doesn’t bat an eyelid. He returns to occupy his place in left field, high-fiving any teammate who crosses in that direction. Exactly 54 seconds and 10 passes later, Grealish touched up the ball, giving Julian Alvarez the assist for the equalizer. The first of the four that City foist on their rivals that afternoon.
With those two plays in the space of a minute, Grealish changed the history of the game. It is a good example of both the mentality he has achieved and the impact he has in Guardiola’s team. This sequence tells us much more about him as a player than his usual highlights plays. The dribbles in the strait, the back-heels, the turns, the shots with the right foot after returning towards the center of the field. Jack Grealish, with Guardiola, has become as charismatic and important in the space of a year and a half as he was at Aston Villa. Without making so much noise, letting Haaland and De Bruyne take the limelight anyway. Only the most optimistic in love with his talent can not be surprised.
When City decided to invest that £100million to sign him from Aston Villa, many wondered if it was worth it. There were questions about what he could bring back to Guardiola’s squad, where there was plenty in the role. Furthermore, everything indicated that Foden was the talent to focus on. The amount spent was very high for a player who had stood out in the protected context in which he had grown up, in a team that based its fortunes on the pitch exclusively on his crystalline talent and his competitive character, as enthralling as it was irreverent, which made him a cult player.
Grealish himself admitted how difficult it was to immerse himself in a totally different reality: “I came to City after being at Aston Villa all my life and I’ve never had to change. I didn’t realize how difficult it is to adapt to a different team and coach“. The move from Birmingham to Manchester was the abandonment of one’s own comfort zone: no longer being the center of a technical project but having to rebuild within a more varied and competitive context; no longer having the spotlight on you but having to chase the beams of light and take full advantage of them.
It was quite obvious that he would not have easily repeated the numbers shown in the Villa shirt. With De Bruyne being the perfect finisher in the squad, it was hard to imagine that Grealish would reach double figures for assists at City as he did at Aston Villa last year. And, in fact, the first season was an apprenticeship for Grealish, author of only 4 goals and 3 assists for the season. “Certainly not numbers of 100 million pounds“, some would say, perhaps rightly.
A year and a half later, it is starting to become clear why City have preferred to invest in him rather than Harry Kane. Tactical discipline, application in defense and the ability to attract two or three opposing players to yourself to create space are the key concepts for Guardiola. Grealish has worked hard on it, absorbing and refining these principles, integrating them with his flamboyant game and flamboyant character.
This year his statistical tally is already a 4 gol e 5 assist, numbers in line with those of Aston Villa without having the same centrality. He is very confident: he tries difficult plays both in finishing and finishing, also helped by a context as rich as his game. It is no coincidence that he is the player with the most fouls received per minute in the Premier League. Many of these free kicks are “micro-games won“, little treasures taken after a clean footwork. He has also perfected this side of his game, looking for contact without exaggerating in his dives, understanding when is the right moment to really catch his opponent out. Some dives remain, but now it feels more like a part of the modern football context than a bad thing that risks labeling it.
If we look at the statistics from a superficial point of view, one would say that Haaland and his tally of goals are the only big change for Manchester City compared to last season but the reality is more complex than that. Guardiola wants his wingers high and wide to outdistance opponents and block rival full-backs, creating space for City’s creative centre-players: in this sense, Grealish is perhaps Guardiola’s most useful player ever in the wing role left.
Guardiola has often spurred Grealish to be more daring and to be more aggressive in one-on-one situations. Attack full-backs with more courage in order to create danger, instead of being conservative for fear of losing the ball. His already mentioned ability to take fouls is a fundamental foothold in difficult situations, a shortcut that allows you to earn punishments and break the rhythm. A look at stats allows us to say how much Grealish’s greater involvement is also vital in Guardiola’s game. In addition to fouls received, he is the City player with the most progressive runs (6.4 per 90′) and dribbles attempted (4.6). Dribble and lead the ball much better than Mahrez and Foden and this feature almost makes him a unique in Manchester City.
Compared to his last season at Aston Villa, he touches about the same balls and dribbles more. He is down in his contribution to chance creation and shot volume, which is natural given that he shares the pitch with more creative players than before. The portfolio of key plays remains, however, very long. When he centers, he prefers forward ball passes to feed Haaland’s perpetual movements. In the middle of the field he knows how to break the mold with his sole dribbling. His classic play, the one that occurs most often in his compilations on YouTube, is the soft cross with the right foot to look for a cut in the middle of the area after having attracted the attention of the defense to himself.
In 2023 he showed that he knows how to exalt himself in important matches. The thing that makes the most difference in talks about great players. He was instrumental in both matches played against Arsenal this year. In the first match, in the FA Cup, he was the protagonist of Akè’s goal, not so much for the assist as for having completely manipulated the opponents’ attention: Grealish keeps the ball glued to his foot despite the doubling of Saka and Tomiyasu, hiding the his real intentions until Akè is needed at the right moment, catching everyone by surprise (at minute 2:10 of the video below).
In the Premier League match against i Gunners he lit up irrepressibly in the last twenty minutes, scoring the goal to make it 2-1. The gol, who arrived brilliantly accompanying the action from the outside to then cut and finish first in the area, released an extra dose of adrenaline in him: after scoring he further upped his game by constantly challenging his opponents; aiming at them, inviting them to stop him by fouling him. The two matches against the Gunners are just two of the great moments staged this year, which arrived in the most important direct matches for the team, just like the match against Liverpool was. “I think he’s done very well this whole season,” Guardiola said after the match Reds. “This is the Jack Grealish that Villa fans know very well. He completely believes it [in quello che deve fare in campo] and the way he behaved when he wasn’t playing was perfect. I loved the standing ovation for him from the fans.”
Grealish has always been an aesthetically fascinating player. He lives every confrontation as a challenge to dive into. He has the same irreverent grit in individual duels as Paul Gascoigne and a taste for image care that refers to David Beckham. This makes him a magnetic player, the most persuasive of the many English talents who have emerged in recent years. It is no coincidence that he has recently signed the most profitable partnership ever for a British footballer with Puma and is in talks to be a Gucci brand ambassador. He is that footballer you would like to play on your team and who, when he does something great as an opponent, he doesn’t make you as angry as the others.
His arrogance on the pitch is not an end in itself, he uses it to shape his game. He has also grown in character, he no longer gets stubborn in the adverse moments of the race as in his youth. It is evident that he is having fun, that he feels pleasure every time he can caress the ball. Not surprisingly, off the pitch he gives off a particularly serene and likeable image, whether he’s engaged in one flying pass session with Foden or caring for a child with cerebral palsy.
He is 27 years old, even if, to look at him, he still has the appearance of a young boy, and his talent is undoubtedly ripe to make his mark. Sometimes you think it’s a shame that he plays for City, where there will always be someone who will upstage him, and that if he plays for any other big English player we might appreciate him better. But the choice to work with Guardiola turned out to be the best: the challenge he needed to develop less flashy but no less important aspects of his game. He is no longer Birmingham’s Grealish: he has adapted to the new ecosystem, showing greater care for the ball and the rhythms of the game. He is able to speed up and slow down when he serves, but he hasn’t changed roles and has maintained the associative streak with his teammates.
The Grealish we are seeing, after all, is a more mature and confident version of that of the first year in Manchester, as if over time the esteem that Guardiola has in his qualities had put him at ease. The impression is that it’s not over yet: he’s on the road to definitively becoming a cult player. Like Gascoigne and Beckham, the two from which he took more nuances. If he continues like this, he will soon be the new yardstick for English footballers.
