Grealish’s “Hala Madrid” tweet comes back to haunt him
An old tweet by the Manchester City player dating back to 2014 in which he saluted the Spanish giants was unearthed following Wednesday’s semi-final defeat. Grealish later deleted it.
Among the many thoughts that might have been keeping Jack Grealish awake into the early hours of this morning was the sight of Férland Mendy’s oustretched boot clearing his goal-bound effort off the line - had it entered, it would certainly have ended Real Madrid’s Champions League campaign there and then. Phil Foden was just centimetres away from getting to the rebound but it wasn’t to be. Grealish raised his hands to his head in disbelief. He had come on for Gabriel Jesus on 78 minutes to give City fresh legs, and almost put the game to bend with three minutes of normal time remaining.
Grealish goes close
Seconds after Mendy’s clearance, Courtois stuck out a boot to miraculously divert another Grealish shot skimming past the post. Grealish couldn’t quite believe it. And adding to his amazement, once the game was over and with City out and Madrid on their way to the final, somebody unearthed an innocuous tweet of his tweet from several years back to underscore the moment. In 2014, when Grealish was a promising 19-year-old playing for Aston Villa reserves, he took to social media after watching Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid beat Bayern 1-0 in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals - a Bayern side coached at the time by his current boss Pep Guardiola. “Hala Madrid”, tweeted the player, adding four Spanish flag emojis. He later had second thoughts about it and deleted the tweet but it remained, somewhere in cyberspace and was revived and went viral again on the night Madrid denied his City a place in the Champions League final.