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Jack Grealish has thanked Lee Carsley for ‘bringing back the enjoyment’ in an England shirt after his snub from the Euro 2024 squad under Gareth Southgate.
Carsley steered the Three Lions to promotion back into the top tier of the Nations League after winning five of his six matches in charge.
A second-half scoring blitz secured a comfortable 5-0 win at Wembley on Sunday night, allowing the interim head coach to hand over to Thomas Tuchel on a high.
Tuchel will officially begin his duties at the start of next year while Carsley will return to his previous role at the helm of the Under-21s.
Grealish paid tribute to Carsley, who called up the Manchester City star to all three of his camps this season.
‘What a guy & manager! Absolute legend and thank you for bringing back the enjoyment in an England shirt’, Grealish wrote on Instagram.
The forward’s comment comes after he was a shock omission from Southgate‘s final 26-man squad for Euro 2024, with England going on to lose in the final against Spain.
Grealish was brought in from the cold by Carsley in September and immediately repaid the faith by scoring in a 2-0 win over Ireland in Dublin.
A month later, the ex-Aston Villa star was adamant that his omission in the summer was a mistake.
‘I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t really agree with it,’ said Grealish. ‘I think you need a bit of a balance in every position on the pitch.
‘You look at some players in my position — the likes of Phil Foden, Anthony Gordon or Jarrod Bowen — they’ve scored a lot of goals. But I know that my game is not just about goals. I give so much more to the team than just goals.
‘I still think that, yeah, I should have (gone to the Euros) but obviously it wasn’t meant to be.’
Grealish also admitted he found watching England’s matches from afar difficult but said Carsley had made a point of embracing him since his appointment.
‘I thank the manager here for giving me that chance and having that trust in me,’ Grealish, who became a father this week, added.
‘It’s really meant a lot. When I play under managers that show trust in me and communicate with me the way he has in the past two camps, it really helps me.
‘I don’t want to go into what the biggest differences (between Southgate and Carsley) are too much, but since I’ve come here I’ve felt a lot of love from the manager.’
