The Maverick at Bramley-Moore 💙

First of all: thank you for joining me. The fact you’re reading this means you’ve taken the time to click on a link and submit your email address on the internet, which is not quite as small a thing as it sounds like. Whether you arrived here through The Raven, or social media, or listening to the podcast, or because you have some fading memory of another newsletter I used to do, I’m really glad you’re here. 

As a rule, I tend to think it’s better to show, rather than to tell. The best way to introduce you to what this newsletter will hopefully be is to write something, and don’t worry, I’ll do that in just a second. This isn’t like when you’re looking for a recipe online and you have to read about someone’s blissful childhood vacations before they give you the measurements.

But I did want to explain, just a little, why I’m so excited by this. What I love about podcasts is the intimacy: the people I listen to as I walk the dog or do the dishes or drive to a game feel like they are part of my world, as though they are talking directly to me. The best newsletters, I find, have much the same effect: they’re a conversation, a back-and-forth, one in which you can take an active part.

There’s no shortage of football coverage available to you, obviously, but I’m hoping this will be a little different: a chance to discuss the most important, most pressing issues in a way that is considered and thoughtful and occasionally just a little counterintuitive, but an opportunity to look at how the game both shapes and reflects the culture in which it exists, to act as a guide through the sprawling, ever-shifting world of the most popular leisure phenomenon in human history, and to fill in the gaps that can sometimes be left behind. Also, we will have restaurant recommendations.

I do need your help, though: I want to know what you would like to discuss, what burning issues you believe should be covered, what elements of the game enthrall and delight and infuriate – probably quite a lot of infuriate, to be honest – you. No matter what they are, let me know, by sending them to [email protected]. The most satisfying thing about a newsletter is the sense of creating something for people who have actively chosen to participate in it; it gives it the feel of a community.

Right, let’s get going. It’s great that you’re here.

There is a public image of Jack Grealish that, you sense, he is not in any great rush to change. It’s the one that was captured, almost too perfectly, in the photograph taken of him during the victory parade Manchester City staged the day after finally lifting the Champions League in 2023: Grealish standing on an open top bus, drenched and chiseled, his eyes closed and his arms outstretched, a Calvin Klein Jesus.

Grealish had been celebrating, by that stage, for several days. At one point, he had required the assistance of Kyle Walker to make sure he made the plane that was due to take City’s players from Ibiza back to Manchester so they could attend the parade.

He felt he had earned the right: that long-awaited European crown had followed yet another Premier League win, as well victory against Manchester United in the FA Cup final. He had been central to each and every one of those triumphs; he did not see any reason to apologize for enjoying himself.

“I’m living my dream of playing for the best club in the world, in my opinion,” he said. “We’ve just won the treble, so I’m obviously going to have a break now with my family and my friends. I’ll be raring to go again in four weeks.” 

It was a measure of the affection in which Grealish was held – maybe the past tense is not necessary there; maybe he still is – that there was no sustained outrage to his merriment. Britain’s tabloid culture remains strong enough that any vaguely famous face captured looking even a little dazed and confused tends to be taken as an excuse for an outbreak of puckered, sententious moralizing. 

With Grealish, though, the roguishness has always been part of the charm. He is a recognizable character in English public life, something close to a tradition: the Jack-the-Lad, confident his cheeky grin and twinkling eyes will get him out of whatever scrapes might seem to follow him around. Grealish once – possibly playfully – responded to being asked to point to where he was born on a map by questioning whether he was, in fact, looking at England. It played as disarming rather than damning.

That explains, I think, why the arc of his career since that parade, that photo, has become something of a cause célèbre. That Manchester City fans might have found his sudden demotion to the fringes of Pep Guardiola’s squad frustrating is hardly surprising. Likewise that their Aston Villa counterparts, traces of affection for one of their own still in their bloodstream, might have felt the same. 

Sadness at what became of Grealish over the last two years, though, has not been limited to those with a vested interest in his success. The way he seemed inhibited, almost dulled, by what he was required to do within Pep’s system was widely accepted as a shame. When he did not so much as make the field during the FA Cup final in May – Guardiola electing, instead, to send on a 19-year-old debutant in a forlorn and somewhat half-hearted attempt to rescue the game – it felt not just like a poor tactical choice, but as though the watching public as a whole was being denied something.

The sight of Grealish standing on the turf at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, then, his torso covered in the royal blue of Everton, has been one of the more uplifting of the summer. If anyone doubted that his career at City was over, the FA Cup final confirmed it. Grealish was left out of Guardiola’s squad for the Club World Cup, instructed to use that time to find a new employer. He had offers, including one from Napoli, but decided to wait.

At this point we should probably note that plumping for Everton over Napoli – the reigning Italian champion, let’s not forget – might accurately be described as a bold choice. From the outside, certainly, it is not entirely clear why the 29-year-old would have decided to forego the Champions League in favor of what seems likely to be a season of mid-table security under David Moyes.

I have a feeling, though, that Grealish is a more complex character than his caricature would suggest. In his first interview for his new club, he mentioned that his choice of jersey number – 18 – was not an accident. It was, he said, the same number that his “two favorite English players ever” had worn during their spells on Merseyside. Wayne Rooney wore 18, and so did Paul Gascoigne.

That second reference is a deep cut. Grealish was five when Gascoigne – another player with a reputation for mischief and widespread, deep-rooted public support – moved to Everton. By that stage, Gascoigne was some way past his best; his injuries, his struggles with his mental health, and his questionable lifestyle choices had all long since caught up with him. He did not, in truth, make much of an impression at Goodison Park. Nobody thinks of Gascoigne as an Everton player, not really.

That Grealish has some fellow-feeling for Gascoigne, though, feels right; they can both consider themselves part of one of those traditions that English football has, in its slick, modern form, somehow managed to forget: virtuoso talents who function best when granted the freedom to be themselves, non-conformist mavericks who come alive when the spotlight is theirs, and theirs alone.

It is a list filled with names that are drifting, with every passing year, into the outer reaches of the game’s long-term memory: Rodney Marsh, Stan Bowles, Frank Worthington, the cult hero’s cult hero, Robin Friday. (There were some Scots, too, players like Jim Baxter and Dave Gibson.) They are redolent, in many ways, of a form of the game that has passed.

Grealish, though, offers us a reminder that some traditions are worth preserving. His move to Everton makes sense for him; it is a chance to rediscover his confidence, his belief, and perhaps to prove that even Guardiola occasionally gets things wrong. It makes sense for Everton, too: the club has a new stadium to fill, and a new era to kick-start.

But most of all, it will hopefully add a little spice to the Premier League. Grealish may not be the most reliable performer; he is, as his public image suggests, much too human to be a machine. But he is one of England’s most compelling, most gifted players, and the competition as a whole is much stronger when talent like that is not gathered together at just a handful of clubs. Bowles and Marsh and the rest were not serial winners, but they did ensure that every game in which they featured boasted at least the possibility of competitive balance; they could, like Grealish, take down a giant all by themselves, if the fancy took them. Grealish’s disappearance at Manchester City deprived the Premier League of a potent source of light. The hope, for him and for us, is that it can be reignited once more.

As a reward for signing up for this newsletter, we’ve created (well, I say we, but I lack the technical expertise and/or memory for these things, so it’s actually the work of Thomas, Sophie, Zack, Max and several other wonderful members of the MIB team) a map to keep track of all the various food recommendations I’ve made in this newsletter, on “European Nights,” and in the secret list of gelato places that I keep in a vault somewhere in West Yorkshire. It’s here, so if you ever find yourself in a (primarily European) city wondering where to eat, maybe it will help guide you. I’ll add to it when places occur to me, so expect to see far more icons in the next few weeks.

That’s all for this week, our first. Thanks again so much for joining me – I really appreciate it. Remember to tell your friends, too, if you think it might be the sort of thing they’d enjoy. And if there are subjects you’d like to see covered or elements of football you’ve always been curious about, or even just questions you have, please feel free to send them here. This newsletter is here for you as much as me, so I’d really love your help in shaping it.

Take care,

Rory