Jack Grealish strolling around Wembley in wide-eyed wonder after England’s Euro 2020 triumphs was one of the most wholesome and endearing football images of last year.
Childhood dreams were being played out and reflected upon in real-time for a player who, for a brief period, felt like an old-fashioned English sporting folk hero.
Nowadays, he’s Manchester City’s £100million man who gets booed everywhere he goes. After Saturday’s occasionally fractious 1-1 draw at Southampton, the immediate post-match routine had radically changed.
“I think they had a discussion with Oriol [Romeu] because Grealish was waiting for him in the tunnel because of a few things that happened outside on the pitch that was not right,” Saints boss Ralph Hasenhuttl told Sky Sports.
“But it is not here for the cameras, they spoke about it, everything is good.”
If briefly, before the peacemaking, Grealish had decided Saturday night was alright for fighting, his City career so far has drawn upon another staple of the Elton John canon.
Sacrifice has been the name of the game for the once freewheeling star. The pros and cons of his disciplined performances on the left-wing have been much debated but two things are clear.
There is no way Grealish is playing anywhere near as badly as some of his detractors claim because, if he was, he would not start so frequently for Pep Guardiola. Names and pricetags count for nothing if you are not dialled into the manager’s plan at City, as pretty much all of the British record signing’s teammates will confirm.
But playing as a shiny new cog in a whirling machine is different to being the ringmaster of your own circus at Aston Villa. On a purely aesthetic level, watching Grealish is not as ‘fun’ as it was previously.
You expect the 26-year-old is keenly aware of this and, as a player who has revelled in his status as an entertainer, it might explain him being riled so much by Romeu’s cartoonish mischief on the back of Jan Badnarek’s nasty studs-first foul.
The wider narrative is one of Grealish struggling at City and this will only be fuelled further by Hasenhuttl’s post-match disclosure. It’s a shame, really, because a lift-off performance seems within reach.
It could have come last weekend, when he botched a glorious chance to open the scoring against Chelsea and it felt close again at St Mary’s, when Grealish was City’s best player in a poor first half for the Premier League leaders.
He was quickly into his work, drawing a foul from Romeu in the first minute. Apparently the former Barcelona youth product made a note.
There was a pleasing link-up with Phil Foden in a fifth-minute move that fell down when Raheem Sterling botched a simple pass to Kyle Walker. Southampton went up the other end and opened the scoring through Kyle Walker-Peters.
Foden’s slapdash approach to tracking his man was ruthlessly punished there, but his alliance with Grealish down the left channel was City’s main source of encouragement.
For all the negative publicity around the two enjoying each other’s company a little too much socially last month, Grealish clearly relishes his on-field relationship with Foden - sensing a kindred spirit.
City’s number 10 was playing in a central attacking role and a wonderful turn and run under pressure helped to get the visitors back on the front foot.
Sterling, who was frankly awful on the back of such a sparkling recent run, could not get a Foden cross under his spell after Grealish unpicked Saints.
Grealish’s 10 passes to Foden were more than he played to any other City player and Guardiola will hope to see that partnership grooved a little more over the coming weeks. It has the potential to be defining factor in the big games to come at home and abroad.
Foden was handing his shirt to a gleeful youngster around the time Grealish was pondering post-match retribution for Romeu - a jarring contrast, but it feels like a performance to bring the joy back for Jack is tantalisingly within reach.
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