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- Jack Grealish’s future with England hinges on him playing more club football
- Pep Guardiola revealed the contents of an ‘honest’ conversation with City
- Watch every Club World Cup match free on DAZN. Sign Up Now
Pep Guardiola insists that Jack Grealish needs game time and that it is ‘best’ for him to leave Manchester City.
The City boss excluded Grealish from his 27-man Club World Cup squad after a season of just seven Premier League starts.
Napoli are among the clubs monitoring the situation of Grealish, who is set to leave two years before the end of his £300,000-per-week deal.
City will listen to loan offers if they cannot find a willing bidder for a man they signed from Aston Villa for £100million in 2021.
Guardiola said: ‘He had a conversation with the club and they decided it was best.
‘Jack is an exceptional player. The only reason why he didn’t play last season is of course my decisions.
‘We decide that he has to play. The club was honest, he was honest.
‘We decide that the best thing is to stay (behind) and have a place that he can feel like he can come back to be the player like he was in the year of the Treble or all his career in Aston Villa.
‘Without him it would have been more difficult in the year of the Treble.
‘The fact is in the last two seasons he didn’t play much minutes. He has to come back to play and have the butterflies in his stomach that he can play every three days, every three days and show again the quality he has.’
England manager Thomas Tuchel has told the winger that he must be playing more to earn a place in his plans, having left him out of his first two squads.
Grealish, 29, has made 39 England appearances and was ‘heartbroken’ to be left out of Gareth Southgate’s Euro 2024 squad, calling it ‘the most difficult thing I have had to deal with in my career’.
All four of City’s summer signings so far – Rayan Cherki, Tijjani Reijnders, Rayan Ait Nouri and Marcus Bettinelli – are part of the travelling squad for the Club World Cup, but Grealish is not.
He is understood to have been left out so he can find a new club to join this summer.
Clubs in Europe and England, including Everton, are expected to be interested in the playmaker.
However, the fact that many are grappling with profit and sustainability issues may point to the likelihood of a loan deal, rather than a permanent move.
