Jack Grealish, style on the pitch

Football has unwritten rules and one of them prevents players from being able to freely express themselves aesthetically on the pitch. Style is not allowed. It is a well-established school of thought among fans, journalists, coaches and even among the players themselves. The collar turned up, the shirt inside the trousers, the socks pulled down: deadly sins, futile gestures that compromise the concentration needed to win a game. You can miss a pass, a goal, a ball control as long as your hair is matted with sweat, you don't pay attention to the way your jersey comes out of your shorts and whether your socks are at the right height.

Of course, aesthetics are not completely banned, but in fact footballers are at most allowed to bring a piece of style from their everyday life onto the pitch and only as long as the team they play for wins. The latest example in this sense is the bleached hair worn by Theo Hernandez with a pink smiley on the back of the nape of his neck: a sophisticated look that was not, however, chosen exclusively for the pitch and only accepted because AC Milan returned to winning ways after a difficult period. Here, in this context of limitations and prejudices, the figure of Jack Grealish stands out.

Jack Grealish has worked over the years to become such a style icon that in April 2022 he became brand ambassador for Gucci. He has appeared on covers and magazines embracing either a modern style of hoodies, skinny jeans and soft jackets or being the face of a classic, elegant style. But the City midfielder has gone one step further and managed to create a perfectly recognisable on-field aesthetic for himself by becoming the only footballer who brings style to the pitch by attempting to separate his image as a footballer from his off-field image. The element that makes this distinction possible is his hair: on the pitch he wears a headband that flattens his hats backwards, preventing them from falling onto his forehead, but at the same time creating two voluminous cascades that gently cascade down over his temples. A deliberate and sought-after aesthetic choice. Grealish, in fact, in everyday life wears a topknot bent only to one side or completely backwards, echoing the style of Peaky Blinders. A look that only works when taken care of down to the last detail and would therefore have a short life on a football pitch. It is probably for this reason that Grealish changes his look when he steps into the shoes of a footballer, managing to create an image on the pitch that still reflects his idea of elegance and style off the pitch.

If the hair drives this image, there are also a whole series of details that fuel this stylish aura, making Grealish perfectly recognisable at first glance. For example, the socks worn just below the calf accompanied by shin guards so small that they appear non-existent, an unintentional homage to Luigi Meroni, the Italian version of George Best in the 1960s Serie A who always played with socks worn at the ankles. This aesthetic choice goes against the current habits of football players, i.e. socks worn above the knee almost creating an optical effect whereby there is almost no separation between socks and shorts.

Grealish takes this trend and turns it to his own advantage, as he accompanies such low socks with shorts worn just above the waist, which, thanks to the powerful musculature of his legs, always seem to be one size smaller, so tight they become when running. To cut a long story short: Grealish is the most stylish player on the current world football scene, the only one who has not bowed to conservative logic and has brought style onto the pitch. To this day, there is not a single footballer who can give the game a run for its money, his ability to be precise in every detail and also to do so with that veil of flamboyance that only someone who believes in himself can wave in the face of his detractors.