Jack Grealish's World Cup destiny can still be in his own hands despite what Wayne Rooney says and the same could apply to Ivan Toney and Myles Lewis-Skelly if they joined him at Everton
Jack Grealish is back playing regular Premier League football under David Moyes (centre) and Myles Lewis-Skelly (left) and Ivan Toney (right) could do the same if they were to complete rumoured January transfer window moves to Everton
Jack Grealish is back playing regular Premier League football under David Moyes (centre) and Myles Lewis-Skelly (left) and Ivan Toney (right) could do the same if they were to complete rumoured January transfer window moves to Everton
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A big motivation in Jack Grealish moving to Everton would have been providing the platform to win a place in England’s World Cup squad and those same pull factors are also the motivation behind rumoured January transfer window raids for Ivan Toney and Myles Lewis-Skelly.
However, despite an impressive start on Merseyside, the first £100million English footballer has been told by former Blues star Wayne Rooney that he has no chance of making it onto the Three Lions’ plane for the tournament in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
Grealish featured in all five games for England in the most recent World Cup finals in Qatar, coming on as a substitute on each occasion for a total of 81 minutes on the pitch, scoring in the 6-2 win over Iran in the opening match, but he was not included in their squad that made it through to the final of the last European Championships, losing 2-1 to Spain in Berlin.
The 30-year-old won the last of his 39 England caps in a UEFA Nations League game against Finland in Helsinki on October 13, 2024, scoring the opening goal on 18 minutes in a 3-1 win, under caretaker manager Lee Carsley and indeed half of his four international goals have come under the temporary tenure of the former Everton man – and fellow Brummie. He netted the second in a 2-0 victory over the Republic of Ireland in Dublin on September 7 last year, on what must have been a bitter twist of irony for the hosts given that Carsley won 40 caps for the boys in green and both Grealish and fellow scorer Declan Rice were Irish youth internationals.
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Although he won Premier League Player of the Month for the first time in his career in the week of his 30th birthday after four assists in his first two starts for Everton, and continues to play well, having broken his scoring duck for the club with a dramatic first-ever stoppage-time winner at Hill Dickinson Stadium to seal a 2-1 comeback victory over Crystal Palace and deny the high-flying Eagles extending their unbeaten run to 20 matches, Grealish is yet to be called up by Thomas Tuchel.
Rooney, widely regarded as being the Blues’ most-talented home-grown player, making 117 appearances across two spells, netting 28 goals, either side of 13 years at Manchester United, winning every major trophy in club football and becoming all-time leading scorer for club and country at the time, has said on The Wayne Rooney Show: “Jack Grealish may as well book his holidays for the summer now because he’s not getting in the squad. You think Anthony Gordon has dropped out and he still doesn’t get called into it, so I think Thomas Tuchel is quite set.”
Even Everton’s official account on X (formerly Twitter) which responded with its “Big club: past, present and future,” post, tagging in Lee Dixon on the social media platform after the former England international questioned why Jordan Pickford hadn’t moved on, has reverted from its “Grealish for England” declaration in the bio to revert to “The Originals. Est. 1878.”
While the Blues’ internationals were away this week, Grealish was captured on camera by the club’s photographers in training at Finch Farm with those left behind, challenging Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, sprinting alongside James Tarkowski and teeing up an opening for Beto. And he’s doing it all with a smile on his face.
Last month, Grealish declared he knew there was more to come from him and said: “There’s no better feeling in life than to feel loved and the Evertonians certainly making me feel like that.” Regardless of what others in the game like Rooney think, it’s up to the player himself to change Tuchel’s mind through his performances.
All he can keep doing is putting in stellar displays for David Moyes’ men to reach a level of excellence and consistency that makes it impossible for the German to ignore. Tuchel has spoken about a preference for the players in his squad to be experiencing European club football, but if you’re clearly the best in the country in your position like Pickford, who marked his 81st cap for England by extending his record-breaking run of clean sheets into double figures, then turning out for Everton is no barrier to being selected.
Better to be turning out every week for the Blues in the Premier League than being on the bench at Manchester City like Grealish was, or not starting matches like Lewis-Skelly at Arsenal, or indeed even being paid a king’s ransom to turn out in front of sparsely-populated stadia in the desert like Toney. Those same motivations that brought Grealish to Hill Dickinson Stadium could also apply to that pair and regardless of whether any of them get the nod from Tuchel, they’d be better off for it.
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