Manchester City v Manchester United (FA Cup Final) Is Jack Grealish the Ringo Star of English football?

““World’s Luckiest”. In England, Ringo Starr is often considered the “luckiest man alive” since joining the Beatles. The guy who was in the right place at the right time… a big hit, we insist. In August 1962, John, Paul and George fired their ill-fated drummer, Pete Best, and it was Lennon who hired Ringo. Richard Starkey (his real name) was a boy from Liverpool, the drummer of Rory & The Hurricanes, met in Hamburg in 1960, where the future Beatles grew up in disreputable caves.

Ringo would have a rough start, rejected by fans attached to Pete Best and underestimated by producer George Martin, who replaced him with a studio drummer during the recording of the Fab Four’s first hit. love me. Then Ringo became a full-fledged Beatle. The rest is history… The luckiest man in the world. This religion is more affectionate than average, although with jealousy, Ringo is often considered “a good drummer, but nothing more” He combined three geniuses in a good twist of fate, and they remain together to this day. “The World’s Greatest Band”.

Everything is a lie! Ringo Starr has an extensive record on stage and in the studio, energizing Endurance Declines (I saw her standing there), dry force (No one knows what will happen tomorrow) and subtle nuance (come along) The smiling and dedicated Ringo Starr was instrumental in building the Fab Four that became so popular during Beatlemania.

Higher football IQ than expected

Jack Grealish’s career offers a lot of parallels with Ringo’s… obviously very prominent at Aston Villa, Jack knew the joy of joining Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City greats. A man at the right time, in the right place… because at the Citizens, Jack was the number 10 of the legendary Sergio Aguero, who was forced to leave after ten years of loyal service at the Sky Blues. Catalan coach Grealish, 25, is the Villans’ primary player, looking for a good lane player because he is good on the ball and tactically disciplined.

The problem: his record transfer of 118 million euros in the summer of 2021 and a lackluster first season raised suspicions and jealous jeers against the unworthy fortune to rub shoulders with a host of artists from the Etihad Stadium … later, like Ringo Starr. With the Fab Four, Jake put this last half on the best team of the moment. Well done, Guardiola!

Pep discovered a football IQ higher than his natural talent. Kevin McGinnity is chairman of Gaelic football club John Mitchell’s GAA, where Grealish learned his first lessons. SoFoot Pep’s two favorite qualities are: “Jack played from U7 to U14. He saw the game and he was able to retain the ball which is an incredible asset in Gaelic football.”

The lad with the big calves was not the brightest diamond in the City constellation (De Bruyne, Rodry, Gundogan, Mahrez, Ederson, etc.) but, smiling and dedicated, like Ringo, he brilliantly brought his stone to the Citizens’ edifice. became very popular. After a bit of brushing up on his mistakes about being a merry party animal (alcohol and laughing gas), he continues. D Beloved of English football, Beloved Maverick playerAnd one of the best faces of the three lions.

Pepin has a refined style

As he is currently one of the rare English players at City (along with Stones and Walker) and through his strong Irish roots (he played Gaelic football and U21 football with Eire), this no doubt resonates with the big English clubs. A more common tradition is to list Celtic battalions (Welsh, Irish and Scottish). Above all, everyone applauds the way he has been able to transition from Villa to City, integrating perfectly into Guardiola’s puzzle. Pep made this eccentric warrior an indispensable pawn of his tactical apparatus

Last April, during the victory against Liverpool (4-1), decisive in the title race, Jaque halted a stunning collapse against Salah-Jota at 0-1, then provided the dice pass of the equalizer to Julian Alvarez. We remember coach Guardiola’s praise after the game: “He’s the Jack Grealish we’ve been waiting for, as Aston Villa fans know him very well.” A belated but decisive admission: Greelish Beatle has become…sorry!, a civilian.

Bernardo Silva, and De Bruyne in particular, is the boss, given more latitude in ball possession and movement. Jack Grealish transcends his function as a simple street performer. In order to be more effective for the joint. Pep freed him from the deceptive modern need to accumulate statistics at all costs. In the sixties, Ringo Starr put himself in the service of the geniuses of John, Paul and George, even if his style was less than that of his peers Keith Moon (The Who), John Bonham (Lead Seb) or Mitch Mitchell. (The Jimi Hendrix Experience), which he largely contributed to The Beatles sound and taped rhythmically to all their test flashes.

Another sign of rapport between Ringo and Jack: Sideways. Grealish is a right-handed player who, at Aston Villa, has been used as a wrong-footer on the left as at City, providing opportunities to get down the axis to shoot or build up in the heart of the game. However, Ringo Starr was a lifelong player on a true left-right hand drum set! According to him, this is one of the keys to the originality of his style, which limited him a little to the bearings, but forced him to be more creative in his search for the best beat.

“Me too Jack of Solihull”

Finally, Ringo and Jack are both regression monsters. The Fab Four drummer endured a difficult childhood and adolescence, marked by an absent father and many long hospital stays. At the age of 5, Jack was devastated by the early death of his younger brother Keelan at the age of nine months. In football, the youngster from Villa overcame difficulties with a loan move to Notts County, followed by three years in the Championship (English D2, 2017-2020). Acquainted with football in Gaelic football until the age of 14, he knows how to always recover from countless bad blows and toughen up, which until recently made him the most fouled player in the Premier League.

“I always said yes to adventures offered to me“, Ringo Starr, a happy 82-year-old survivor of the swinging sixties rock’n’roll circus. Celebrates England 2022 title: “I try not to take my head off. It’s about football and personal enjoyment off the pitch. I do what I love all my life. I’m the most expensive English footballer in history, but I’m Jack from Solihull (Birmingham’s far southern suburbs, editor’s note) My friends and family know and appreciate it.”

In time, Ringo said that it was the Beatles who were lucky enough to hire him (“They have beenGood luck hiring me“) because in 1962 the Hurricanes became more prominent than the future Fab Four. After all, Richard Starkey made an indelible mark by performing popular songs like Yellow Submarine Or With a little help from my friends. He also wrote Don’t pass me by And Garden of the Octopus !

Jack Grealish is a member of the best team of eleven categories (The Fab Eleven ?), one of them representing the history of the game. He silenced jealous whispers against him by drowning them with lawsuits for illegality. Manchester City have won an amazing and unprecedented treble, the Championship (which is done), the Cup (which is this Saturday) and the Champions League (next Saturday, June 10). Sky Blues has an asset in Greelish, no doubt AC-DC would have celebrated with a chorus of fans: “They’ve got Jack!“