“Oooh, you look niceee”, Annie coos as soon as I get to her house after the England quarter-final. I’m wearing a frayed crochet top, tight black flares and my hair is half up to reveal gold hoops that mean business. Beads of sweat form on my forehead after cycling up a huge hill with tinnies for everyone in my bag, but I don’t mind because I get a rosy glow that can only be replicated with a Glossier Cloud Paint. The celebratory afters contain a handful of people I know and definitely don’t plan hitting on. Yet I still want to look good tonight, mainly because of one ridiculous (and extremely far-fetched) thought: If Jack Grealish saw me right now — cycling from my house to Annie’s — would he think I was hot?
My friends erupt in laughter when I tell them this, but as I make myself a drink in the kitchen, I’m too embarrassed to admit how little I’m actually joking. It seems that what started off as a Twitter bit when I was just in a silly goofy mood, has now turned into the footballer buying up all the new-build property in my head and living in it rent free.
And how could he not? He is the perfect British himbo. Sure he may not know what an encyclopedia is, but you don’t have to when your calves are literally bigger than most people’s brains. Not to be dramatic but this one man and his hairband are the best thing to happen to English football since 1966. Beckham who?
I fancied Jack (we’re on first name terms now) from the moment I saw him on the pitch. My stomach lurched at the sight of his glossy hair bouncing up and down as he dribbled past other players, and all I could think about was being under the sheer weight of his thighs for the rest of the game. Forget Michelangelo’s David, we need to erect a 17 foot marble sculpture of the Aston Villa forward instead.
But it was when he flashed a perfect smile others would only dream of having engineered in Turkey, that my heart started going pitter-patter, pitter-patter. I had to excuse myself to my room, splash some cold water on my uncomfortably warm face and sit down on my bed, just to pull myself together. After feeling nothing for over a year, this one man induced a sexual awakening so extreme, I changed my Hinge location to Birmingham.
Most people won’t mind me saying that, on paper, he’s not any more good looking than Sancho or Henderson, but it’s his quiet confidence and bubbly demeanour that has everyone hooked. Jack seems normal and actually attainable, evidenced by the fact that he loves afternoon naps, loves his family, loves his dog and hasn’t ruled out being a club promoter in Tenerife or Ibiza. “I would be getting everyone into the club”, he recently said in an interview. A true comrade. And he’s not even lying, he’s promised that he’d take the team on a three-week trip to Vegas if they bring it home.
It’s easy to imagine our life together. A determined and focused man, he’d be off training and playing matches most days, while I’d be buying velvet curtains to match the crushed velvet sofa situated under our personalised Live-Laugh-Love-style framed art. The entire house would be grey, all 50 shades of it and we’d have two labradors running round the perfectly trimmed garden. Whenever I’d see his white Range Rover pulling up in the loose stone driveway or smell his Paco Rabanne aftershave, the feminism would leave my body and I’d commit to living a happily domesticated and ignorant life once more.
He reminds me of all the guys I never went for in college, whose entire personalities were built around the concept of a “cheeky Nandos”. They were hot in a Cook-from-Skins way, but loved their hometown and the local nightclub just a bit too much to risk being stuck there forever. Let’s be honest, only a certain calibre of man could admit to “swimming with pigs” and it’d make you fancy them even more. In another world Jack would be a boohooMAN wearing Forex trader with 📍 LDN -> 📍BRUM -> 📍DUBAI written in his Instagram bio. Would probably get on Love Island. Would probably come second place. Would probably launch his own shoddy fashion line or meal-prepping business.
But all jokes aside, why has Jack Grealish got everyone giddy? I asked a few people to find out.
“I think there’s something about a man who clearly knows he’s fit. Usually it’s a bit of a turn off but that confidence is what has got us into the Euro finals,” Bex voice-notes me after a week of isolation. She doesn’t think he’s the hottest person in the world, but that he’s got the whole package. “I just think he’d be filth, I’m so sorry. Do you understand how fit you’d have to be to let me overlook the Birmingham accent?!?”, she laughs.
“He is the people’s princess. He has this nation wrapped around his little finger, I’m a queer woman but I’d literally die for him even though he wears white skinny jeans with rips in”, types an anonymous Twitter account in the early hours of the morning. “It’s his big dyke energy and cheekiness. Oh and I also want him to crush me between his thighs.” Fair enough. Same.
“It’s the former GAA player about him. It’s the same with Paul Mescal (Connell from Normal People). There’s just something in the ‘used to play Gaelic football’ water at the minute. Creates a star quality or something”, Niamh concludes in a big Twitter DM paragraph. “It probably just gives them insane leg muscles and that’s case closed.”
Others have also imagined what dating Jack would be like. Ella writes: “He’s someone I imagine to really like tasting or doing new things. Like if you wanted to go to a museum for the first time, he’d really give it a go. I imagine him to also be quite romantic. He’d take you on a yacht and hire a private chef because he remembered you love Mediterranean food. He would be a passionate man.” It’s true, he’d be the type of guy you’d shake your ass on a yacht for.
“He sort of reminds me of the hot guy at school who wasn’t a bully and fine with gays and I would therefore be secretly in love with,” says Louis. “Like I’d run into him in a club at home and he’d be super sound.” While Lo comments on his physique: “Grealish is a guy with god-like genetics, his thighs are ridiculous to be fair. Mine didn’t even look that good when I cycled 3000 miles across Europe.”
With this level of obsession, it’s clear that with the Euros ending, the nation’s Grealish-mania won’t be stopping any time soon. But even if England doesn’t bring it home tonight, Jack Grealish can always come home to me.
