Jack Grealish is having the best week of his life. Of course he is – he’s just won the treble with Manchester City (the Champions League, the Premier League and the FA Cup), and only one other English football team has ever done that. But this isn’t just anybody having the best week of their life – it’s Jacko. To put it in context, every week is a good week for Grealish. He is the optimist’s optimist, the hedonist’s hedonist, the party animal’s party animal. And this is his time. In years to come, this behaviour will become known as doing a Jack. There may well be a four-day festival named after him – Grealishbury? Jackstock? – where revellers have pricey vodka poured down their throat as they “do the turkey”.
Even when he was playing terribly last year during his first season at City, despite having being signed for £100m, Jacko was having a great time – whether photobombing other players’ interviews, telling the press he’d been playing terribly, being caught out on the lash by his manager, Pep Guardiola. Jack the lad. Never was an alice-band-wearing, calf-flaunting, dynamite-dribbling, lovable narcissist more aptly named.
Many City fans weren’t sure about Grealish initially. There couldn’t have been a less Pep-ish player. Guardiola is famous for signing smart team players and making them even smarter. He can’t stand individuals who play for themselves. And Grealish was the ultimate individual – at his previous club, Aston Villa, they simply gave him the ball and let him do what he wanted. He was fantastically skilful, but he was also a footballing egomaniac with a reputation for diving better than Tom Daley.
And then there was Grealish’s mouth. My God, the mouth. After City came back from the dead to beat Aston Villa in the final game of last season to clinch the league title, he said the secret was that they had taken off his teammate Riyad Mahrez because he “played like Almirón”. Not only was it fantastically rude to Mahrez and Newcastle’s Miguel Almirón, it spurred Almirón on to be one of the Premier league players of this season. Grealish was drunk at the time (natch) and subsequently apologised.
What saved him is that he’s funny as well as talented. Then Pep properly got to work on him – he made it his mission to make Grealish one of his own. Even the greatest manager of our age couldn’t have expected the result – a near-perfect team player who’s still daft as the proverbial.
So how has Grealish been enjoying the best week of his life? Not surprisingly, with the bender of benders. Think of Freddie Flintoff after England beat Australia in the Ashes in 2005, when he was pictured with TWAT daubed on his forehead and his face inked with a tache, goatee and specs. We’re talking that level of celebration, the main difference being that Jacko can’t take his drink like a thirsty 6ft 4in (190cm) Lancastrian.
Monday’s festivities involved a topless Grealish almost falling off the victory bus, saying he’d not slept in 24 hours and “had the best day and night” of his life (by then he’d lost count of the hours, and was almost 48 hours into his revelries), and announcing in a yellow hi-vis jacket (just in case anybody couldn’t spot him) “I’m a turkey and the turkey needs feeding,” as teammate Kalvin Phillips poured booze down his throat.
Before that, he was seen in Istanbul (the location of Saturday’s Champions League final) dancing, then stumbling to the plane. One YouTube video commentator says: “He has no idea what planet he is on.” Which is slightly unfair. He’s on planet Party of My Life.
There have been numerous other highlights: Grealish singing City fans’ adaptation of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere (“Something’s happening, happening to me. Spent all my money on drugs and City” – though to be fair, this was early on in the celebrations and he was sufficiently together to only mouth the drugs bit), having champagne poured on his head by Erling Haaland, and glamming it up in pearls on Monday evening.
Grealish is supposed to be available to play for England in Malta on Friday. In the meantime, he is showing all of us how to party like it’s 2023 and we’ve just won the treble. He’s now on to Day Four, still stumbling, still doing the turkey. And he’s showing no sign of slowing down.
Hang it in the Loooouvre 💙😂 pic.twitter.com/atL2tEz0ah
— Jack Grealish (@JackGrealish) June 13, 2023
