And after sweeping all before them at club level, England are hoping to tap into their Midas touch at next summer’s finals. “The manager always talks about your club experiences and adding to the group and we have a squad full of serial winners,” said recalled defender Tyrone Mings.
“When you look around the European competitions and domestic competitions and the amount of players that were involved in those and it can only help. Talent gets you so far but everything that the team experienced the last few tournaments, everything we do in training and level of consistency the team has shown these past few years, all adds up and points in the right direction.
“So I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be looking at winning.” The City quartet are unlikely to be involved against Malta on Friday – which is probably for the best in Grealish’s case after his lead role in the champions’ celebrations – but could feature against North Macedonia at Old Trafford on Monday.
Mings, a former team-mate of Grealish’s at Aston Villa, described a night out with England’s party animal as “extremely wild”. He said: “He’s just won the treble so I don’t think anybody can begrudge him going out and letting his hair down – those luscious locks of his now he has taken the hairband out. He’s certainly had a good few days. Surely he’s all partied out now.”
Mings is preparing for an England recall on Friday night after a 15-month absence with the frank admission that he lost his place and missed out on the World Cup because he was coasting. The Villa centre-back is likely to return for the Euros qualifier in Malta with John Stones mothballed after his Manchester City exertions with renewed purpose.
He has come full circle from the low of last summer when in the space of two months he lost his place in the England squad, the Villa captaincy and his place in the starting line-up for the opening game of the Premier League season. “It was a whole summer of strange times really. I was sitting on the bench at Bournemouth and thinking ‘I don’t know how all of this has happened in such a short space of time’,” he reflected.
“I wasn’t taking it for granted, but you just sometimes need a kick up the backside, don’t you? And that can come in many different ways. Sometimes you ask for it, sometimes it gets delivered to you. Did I need it? Probably. I think there is always a plateau in people’s careers where things are coasting.
“It was just a situation where if I look back now and think: ‘was I really pushing myself everyday to the level where I am right now?’ Honestly, probably not. I had been in every England squad for two and a half years, and these things are sent to test you.
“The most important thing is how you react to them and that is what I take away from what I’ve gone through.” Mings, who won the last of 17 caps against the Ivory Coast last March, credits the arrival of Unai Emery as Villa manager as being transformative for him both in terms of simplifying his role on the field and in deepening his understanding of it.
Having helped Villa to qualify for Europe after their last-day win over Brighton, the 30-year-old is back in the international fold feeling he is now playing the best football of his career. He added: “Probably yes – certainly in the Premier League I’ve been through a big period of learning. The manager has come in and basically taught me that I know nothing about the position that I play! But that is exciting – he is someone who takes great pride in everything that he has got to teach,” said Mings.
“I look at the scenes at Villa Park on the last day of the season and to see how far the club have come and how far I’d come in terms of my personal journey over the course of the season was impressive.”
The remarkable turnaround for a cause for celebration after qualifying for the first time since 2010/11 but not every footballer’s idea of a knees-up matches that of Grealish. “I was in bed by about 11 o’clock with a Ribena,” admitted Mings.
