Armed with the boyish charm and marketability of David Beckham and the skills and playfulness of Paul Gascoigne, Jack Grealish has a potent mix that has seen him quickly emerge as the face of English soccer.
Now that he is starting to add trophies to his growing list of endorsement deals that already include Gucci and Puma, the possibilities appear endless for the Manchester City winger who is the most expensive English soccer player of all time.
Grealish — he of the bulging calf muscles and swept-back hair — was already hot property in the English game before a 2021 move from Aston Villa to City for 100 million pounds (then $139 million) that took his appeal to a new level.
Nearing the end of his second season at City, the 27-year-old Grealish has finally established himself as a key part of a Premier League-winning team that is seeking to clinch the second leg of a treble of major titles this season by beating Manchester United in the FA Cup final on Saturday.
He is far more than a soccer player these days, though.
“People like Jack Grealish are the new sports lifestyle icons,” Alan Seymour, a sports academic and author in business and marketing, told The Associated Press. “As he’s matured and got more attuned to what is required of him as a footballer, on the field and off the field, it’s why he is right up there with the very best sports personalities for marketability, not only in football but away from football.”
Elements of the wild-child image that shadowed him in the early years of his career remain.
At the height of the lockdown amid the pandemic, Grealish was found slurring his words after crashing his car in a residential estate and was later banned from driving for nine months. Then there were those images of him playing a prominent role in City’s Premier League title celebrations last year, when he was seen swigging a beer and — bleary-eyed and with a croaky voice — aiming a dig at Newcastle midfielder Miguel Almiron that gained plenty of air time.
Grealish unashamedly accepts that’s who he is. He recently said he might have been a nightclub promoter if he wasn’t a soccer player and that he’d always be prone to the kind of excesses that mean he embodies the spirit of a regular soccer fan.
But the loveable, charming part of Grealish’s personality is inescapable. It shines through in every interview he does.
“I feel so much more confident in this team,” said Grealish, who was left out of many of City’s big games last season while he adapted to the demands of manager Pep Guardiola. “I feel fitter and back to what I know, what I can do. This is why City bought me and I have so much to offer.”
Big brands think so, too. He is an ambassador for fashion house Gucci and for Bose audio equipment, and this year signed a boot deal with Puma that’s reportedly the most lucrative by a British player, worth about 10 million pounds per season over the next five years.
He has 7 million followers on Instagram and 4.2 million on TikTok. The British press are even starting to liken Grealish and his girlfriend, fashion model Sasha Attwood, to David and Victoria Beckham, and the way Grealish wears a handband — boyband-style — to manage his floppy hair furthers the comparisons with Beckham, even if their playing style is very different. STEVE DOUGLAS, MDT/AP
