Jack Grealish said: “Obviously your socks are supposed to go above your calves. But one year when I was here, the socks once shrunk in the wash. So they wouldn’t go higher. That season, I ended up playing really well. So it became a superstitious thing for me. I thought ‘I’m going to keep doing this because I’ve done well’.”
There was also a story that he watched footage of George Best gliding past defenders with his socks round his ankles and wanted to copy the look of the Manchester United legend, but the player himself has knocked that theory down.
Jack Grealish said: “A lot of people say that it’s because of George Best. While I love him and admire so much what he did, that isn’t the reason.”
Grealish wears ‘teenage’ shinpads, according to a source close to the player. Somewhere between large child and small adult size we’re told. The reason Grealish wears the minuscule protectors, once described as ‘train ticket’ shinpads by a Villa blogger, is to help him move more freely as he finds shinguards that go further up his leg to be restrictive. There’s no chance of a changing of the guards any time soon.
Jack Grealish added: “It’s a superstition that I’ve done all my life and I’m going to keep it that way. A few referees have tried telling me but I’ve got to keep it like that.”
