Jack Grealish: Gareth Southgate was wrong to leave me out of Euro 2024 squad

Man City winger believes he should have gone to Germany and ‘can’t speak highly enough’ of interim manager Lee Carsley

Jack Grealish remains adamant Gareth Southgate made a mistake with the devastating decision to leave him out of England’s squad for the European Championship.
Grealish, 29, says he has “felt a lot of love” from interim manager Lee Carsley since his recall and will compete for a starting place in Uefa Nations League matches this week.
Harry Kane is a doubt for the Wembley clash against Greece on Thursday after missing training on Tuesday, while Grealish is playing with a point to prove after missing the Euros when he felt his experience would have helped Southgate.
“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t really agree with it,” he said. “Do I think I should have gone? I still think that, yeah, I should have but obviously it wasn’t meant to be.
“I felt like I didn’t have the best season. You look at some players, for example, in my position, even the likes of Phil Foden, Anthony Gordon, Jarrod Bowen, people like this, they scored a lot of goals, which 100 per cent I agree with.
“But I just know that my game is not just about goals. I think I give so much more to the team than just goals. And I think you need a bit of a balance in every position on the pitch and I class myself as quite an experienced player now. I’ve played in quite a lot of big games, Champions League finals, FA Cup finals and I’ve won a lot of stuff now.”
Carsley brought Grealish back immediately into his first England squad and the Manchester City attacker scored in Ireland and started against Finland. Cole Palmer, Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden have now added to the competition to play in this international break.
Grealish became a father recently and says Carsley will also have sleepless nights trying to fit all his attacking talent into a team.
“Listen, I thank the manager here, Lee Carsley, for giving me that chance and having that trust in me. It’s obviously really meant a lot,” said Grealish.
“I think throughout my career when I’ve played under managers that have shown a trust in me and communicated with me the way he has in the past two camps, it really helps me. It makes me feel that the manager really does rate me and I can’t speak highly enough of him since I’ve been here.”
Grealish spoke highly of Carsley’s credentials for the full-time job, while team-mate Levi Colwill says he has seen an “arrogance” from working with him in the Under-21s when he won the Euros and barely changed his demeanour in triumph.
“He’s a very calm person. I think he brings that to the team,” the Chelsea centre-back said. “An amazing person and a strong-minded manager. He knows how he wants to play and how it matches the players we’ve got. He has a bit of arrogance about the team and himself, in terms of ‘we’ve got the best players in the world’ and we all believe that. We can take it that next step to winning a huge competition.
“We had an amazing tournament with the Under-21s but even when we were picking up the trophy he was still calm. I was still in a bit of shock. My emotions were all over the place but he kept it to himself. He didn’t really show much difference.”