Alex Greenwood is in the grip of an addiction she never wants to kick. “I’m obsessed with football,” says the Manchester City and England defender. “Often, at home, all Jack and I talk about is football, we watch it and analyse it all the time. People ask what I do to get away from the game but I don’t want to escape it.”
“Jack” is Jack O’Connell, the Sheffield United defender, famed for his ability as an overlapping centre-half, although a serious knee injury dictates that he has spent the past 18 months watching Greenwood perfect her transition from left-back to left-sided centre-half.
“I wouldn’t want to try overlapping though,” jokes the 28-year-old as she prepares for Sunday’s all important Women’s Super League match at Chelsea. “That Sheffield United system was so unique I’m not sure it would be the style for me.”
Gareth Taylor’s City play a different way but they, like Sheffield United at their Premier League peak under Chris Wilder, have recently begun blind-siding opponents once more. After recovering from a dismal start to the season, last year’s WSL runners-up travel to face the defending champions only five points behind Emma Hayes’s second-placed side.
Fifth is still not where City want to be but, as last weekend’s 8-0 FA Cup demolition of Nottingham Forest emphasised, they are renascent. Given that 12 senior players spent pre-season on international duty at the Tokyo Olympics and an injury crisis engulfed the squad, Greenwood never panicked.
“Every time we got a knockback it was tough and frustrating,” says the former Everton, Notts County, Liverpool, Manchester United and Lyon defender. “But, inside the camp, we knew results would improve and we always, absolutely 100%, believed in Gareth. In terms of what we do, not a lot has changed between the start of the season and now. We had the injuries and some new players and it was always going to take time for them to adjust and adapt to the way we play.”
Along the way, City coped with the injury-induced absences of England’s goalkeeper, right-back and captain, but the recent return of Ellie Roebuck – a good friend of Greenwood – in goal and Lucy Bronze and Steph Houghton in defence has galvanised both Taylor’s team and one of the most intriguing WSL title races in recent years.
After winning four trophies, including the 2020 Champions League, during a season spent at Lyon, Greenwood has no interest in treading water – and particularly not in the year when England hosts the European Championship.
Although she remains in regular contact with the former England manager Phil Neville – “A top fella and a good person; it’s always nice to hear from Phil and have some banter about the Manchester clubs,” she says – her disappointment at his relocation to Inter Miami has been leavened by Sarina Wiegman’s installation as the Lionesses’ coach.
After leading the Netherlands to Euro 2017 glory then to the final of the 2019 World Cup in France, Wiegman is tasked with improving on England’s run of semi-final appearances at major tournaments.
“I love her,” says Greenwood, a Lionesses stalwart since winning a bronze medal at the 2015 World Cup in Canada. “She’s straightforward and quite direct and leaves no stone unturned. We believe in her – Sarina’s very good and what we needed. But she also gives us freedom to be ourselves; she never wants to change who you are.”
This month England limber up for the Euros with a friendly tournament, the Arnold Clark Cup, involving Canada, Spain and Germany. O’Connell will doubtless “point little things out” as he assesses Greenwood’s international performances in Middlesbrough, Norwich and Wolverhampton. Yet the day cannot come soon enough when she, too, can offer him the “constructive” footballing criticism the pair have traded since he returned from an expat childhood in Málaga and they met as sixth formers at school on Merseyside.
Until the start of last season their parallel careers ran on upward trajectories but, since O’Connell’s injury, there have been two operations and a brief, failed comeback. It cannot have been an easy time and, although Sheffield United remain optimistic he will make a full recovery, Greenwood is protective of his privacy.
It is, though, safe to assume the day she returns to Bramall Lane to watch him play again will rank among the happiest of their time together. By then Greenwood believes City should be well on course for European qualification. “At times this season it felt like it was the world was against us but we knew it was a matter of time before things changed,” she says. “Everyone wrote us off but we had a belief we could surprise them.”
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