“I would love to be like Gazza.” This was Jack Grealish’s stated mission as he launched his senior career in England. Four years later he may see this as a quest completed, in the most unfortunate sense.
A player who draws many parallels with Paul Gascoigne, both for his audacity as a playmaker and the casualness of his demeanor, now shares a less enviable distinction with the great genius he once idolized and finds himself left out of a tournament he should have been playing for. They took part.
True, Grealish’s exile lacked the theater of the absurd that surrounded Gascoigne; Gascoigne had learned of his omission from the 1998 World Cup squad during a tense five-minute rendezvous in Glenn Hoddle’s La Manga hotel room, with Kenny G’s smooth saxophone racing away. background stereo.
All he needed this time was a shattering conversation with Gareth Southgate on the training ground to confirm the decision Manchester City’s £100m winger feared most. In the space of 2.5 weeks, he went from coveting a third consecutive Premier League champions medal to seeing his England plans turn into matchsticks. In the annals of disgrace, his could not have been quicker or more brutal.
Gascoigne is the ultimate study of the instability of an international star’s existence. At the age of 29, he became the toast of Euro 96, with his volley against Scotland ranking among the best in England history. At 57, he remains a recovering alcoholic and admits he has been staying in his manager’s spare bedroom lately, trying desperately to avoid turning into a “sad drunk” again.
It’s an orbit that should serve as a lesson in the dangers of flying too high, too fast. But Gascoigne comparisons still follow any young player who has even a glimpse of his talent. Just this week Stuart Pearce tipped Kobbie Mainoo for a Gazza-like breakthrough.
But it was Grealish who felt Gascoigne’s shadow most keenly. Even before scoring his first England goal, Steve McClaren boldly declared: “We haven’t conceded a Gazza-type goal for a long time. That’s the type of guy he is.” Is he really? Gascoigne was an England icon in the Nineties, belying Bobby Robson’s claim to be a great midfield schemer with his “dumb as a brush” description, while Grealish scored two goals in four years for his country and made 36 appearances. He won 21 of the matches as a substitute.
Moreover, in a reversal of the logic that everyone playing under Pep Guardiola comes into their own after their first season, Grealish has regressed at City. Even when they were 2-0 down in the FA Cup final, the manager turned to Jeremy Doku to try and build some momentum.
To be frank, the only way Grealish has mirrored Gascoigne lately is with his penchant for drunken celebrations. His festivities after last year’s Champions League final were a classic of the oeuvre: he strode through the Istanbul mixed district with a can of Heineken in his Louis Vuitton men’s bag, then burst into an Ibiza bash so extreme he ended up at the City’s. The open-top bus parade is both sleepy and topless.
You may ask why not? As a result, his club became the second club from England to win the Treble. But the problem is that he succumbs to such antics more often than is recommended.
Consider that on the night of City’s league victory last month, Grealish was seen staggering out of the after party at 4.45am. Was this the best look for a player who still had another domestic trophy to contend with six days later? With England’s first warm-up game for a major tournament just two weeks away, was this the right image to convey to Southgate?
A smarter person would have decided against it. This is not the era when Terry Venables reenacted the famous “dentist’s chair” episode after his Wembley wonder goal in 1996, when the England team gleefully squirted water into Gascoigne’s mouth, shoving the souls of Hong Kong down their throats. bartenders.
Southgate has demanded a much higher standard of professionalism for James Maddison, saying the midfielder needed to be a “high-performance, low-maintenance” player after the midfielder left the England squad in 2022 due to illness and was eventually photographed in a casino.
Following Marcus Rashford’s bash in Belfast earlier this year, he sounded similarly ominous, warning him about his behavior “on and off the pitch”. In this context, it is logical to ask whether Grealish is his own worst enemy with his all-night escapades.
There is no doubt he is upset at being overlooked, with Southgate describing him as “devastated” and many England players rallying around him to offer solace. But this is the kind of reckoning that will make him question the path he’s following.
Gascoigne, who trashed his hotel room after Hoddle’s snub, never played for England again. This is not a fate Grealish can accept after missing out on the European Championship at the age of 28.
But the truth is that he faces a sharp fork in the road where he can use his moment of pain either as a source of pain or as fuel to ensure he never feels the same way again. For his sake, you hope he chooses the latter path, rediscovering the gifts that command a nine-figure sum while reining in his inner lad Jack impulses.