The soul-bearing conversation I had with Jack Grealish that revealed why we should be so grateful for his career, writes IAN LADYMAN

There is a misunderstanding that all footballers have an obligation to play well into their 30s.

The language used tends to be about making the most of their talent and wringing the last drop from a short career.

But what about the ones who are not made like that? What about those ones whose bodies are different and, more importantly today, whose minds are different? What about them?

Have they failed themselves if they are not still breaking new ground at 32 and 33 years of age? Have they somehow failed us, the watchers who somehow expect them to live out our greatest fantasies for us until they can run no more?

Have a think about that while you read something Jack Grealish said to me when I talked to him as Manchester City closed in on a Treble two years ago.

‘I will be honest with you and say that sometimes I don’t like that things are different for me now,’ Grealish told me. ‘I just want to be my normal self. I would like to do everything I used to do when I was younger and it is annoying sometimes because I can’t.

Grealish has found the demands and rigours of Pep Guardiola life rather too exacting over the last season and a half… he is not the first

As I watched him pay an emotional tribute to his late brother on the 25th anniversary of his death, it was possible to see right into Grealish’s heart and soul

‘Everyone is different. Erling Haaland is the best professional I have ever seen. He is going home and having a takeaway. Sometimes that’s my choice, too.

‘But sometimes I like to go out and let my hair down. I am not gonna lie and say I don’t go out. What’s the point?’

Now we can choose the way that we react to that. We can be sniffy about it and suggest Grealish gets his priorities right.

Or we can acknowledge the presence of a real human being in the room and all the flaws and beautiful imperfections that come with that. I know which one I choose.

That afternoon spent with Grealish in the spring of 2023 was enlightening. The interview had been postponed at the last minute a week earlier. Then, on the day, he was a little late before whirling into the room in a blur of blue, yellow, green and red that made up the colours of a quite extraordinary Gucci tracksuit.

He was a life force, that day. Riding the wave of good form and all the confidence and infectious joy that comes with it, he presented as he so often does. Genuine, funny, warm and, yes, rather flawed and maybe a little vulnerable all at the same time.

He was a 27-year-old footballer who knew exactly who and what he was, standing on the top of a mountain that he perhaps suspected would not be his to own for ever. And that, as it happens, is exactly how it has turned out.

Grealish has found the demands and rigours of Pep Guardiola life rather too exacting over the last season and a half. He is not the first. His form has disappeared and so, by and large, has his place in Guardiola’s team.

Grealish was a life force, that day… riding the wave of good form and all the confidence and infectious joy that comes with it

Grealish is genuine, funny, warm and, yes, rather flawed and maybe a little vulnerable all at the same time

This summer it is likely he will be sold as part of a City clear-out of quite unprecedented scale

His goal against Leicester on Wednesday night at the Etihad was his first in the Premier League since December 2023.

This summer it is likely that he will be sold as part of a City clear-out of quite unprecedented scale. I am reliably told that as many as a dozen of Guardiola’s first-team pool are available for sale, including more than half of that Treble-winning team.

Ederson, John Stones, Nathan Ake, Kyle Walker, Grealish, Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan. They won’t all be sold. Maybe five or six in total. But with City planning to add two or three signings to the four made in January, they will be unrecognisable in part by the time next season starts.

Few can argue that Grealish warrants retention. He looks a cowed footballer in dire need of an injection of happiness. It is to be hoped he is offered that somewhere else, somewhere his football can once again become instinctive and a little less Guardiola-rigid.

The England manager Thomas Tuchel will be watching. He declared last month that ‘I love Jack’ but hinted at concerns at the 29-year-old’s lifestyle and reported back a conversation the two had in which Grealish confessed to a desperate need to play some starting XI football.

Grealish may yet come again somewhere else but if he never reaches the levels he found two years ago and when part of England’s Euro 2020 team under Gareth Southgate, then he can look back on a decade that saw him captain his boyhood club Aston Villa, play regularly for England and win everything he could have dreamed as part of one of the most watchable football teams we have ever seen.

When he reported for England duty in Malta after that Treble success two years ago, it felt as though Grealish was about to become the face of our game around the world. Southgate was unwilling to add to that narrative and ultimately that load has proved too heavy. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

Grealish has won everything there is to win at City, in a stint that included the club’s famous Treble triumph in 2023

He admits he likes a drink and a night out – is there anything really wrong with that?

This might be the end of the Treble-winning side but Grealish’s career has not been a failure

But as I watched him pay an emotional tribute to his late brother on the 25th anniversary of his death on Wednesday, it was possible to see right into Grealish’s heart and soul. And in a sporting world where so much of what we are offered is fake and hype, it was impossible not to be moved by it and grateful for it.

Whatever happens now, some will choose to say he has under-achieved simply because he has not maintained previous levels.

But given what we know of him and given what he has said of himself, is it not quite possible to look back at his Grealish’s career and say quite the opposite?

Two wrongs, no rights 

Two injustices were made at the Merseyside derby.

The match officials and the VAR did not apply the rules correctly for the reckless challenge by James Tarkowski on Alexis Mac Allister

And illogical offside rules allowed Liverpool forward Diogo Jota’s winning goal to stand

One, regarding the James Tarkowski foul, was because the match and VAR officials didn’t apply the rules and the other, for the winning goal, because the rules around offside are illogical.

What hope do we have?

Do you know where you work, Mauricio? 

Ange Postecoglou says he isn’t bothered that Mauricio Pochettino has been talking of a return to Tottenham but he has a right to be.

Pochettino talks a lot about Tottenham but someone else has that job now while, as manager of the USA national team, he has one of his own.

Time for us all to stay in our lanes until something changes.

Mauricio Pochettino should focus on his current job at the US national team rather than talking about Ange Postecoglou’s

Pep Guardiola should send Phil Foden to the beach this summer and take his chances in America without him

Leave Phil to rest, Pep 

Manchester City will earn £90million if they win the Club World Cup but to do that they will probably have to use Phil Foden.

How much would a fit and rested and back on form Foden be worth to City at the start of the next Premier League season?

Would £90m be a fair price to pay for that? Exactly. Pep Guardiola should send him to the beach and take his chances in America without him.