Jack Grealish given warning by Gareth Southgate over treble celebrations

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Jack Grealish given warning by Gareth Southgate over treble celebrations

England manager Gareth Southgate has warned Jack Grealish and the rest of his Manchester City teammates that 'there is a line' when it comes to the extent of their treble celebrations.

City, who added the Champions League to their Premier League and FA Cup glory last weekend, spent three days celebrating their victory, with Grealish's festivities attracting particular interest on social media.

Now back in the England setup ahead of Friday's Euro 2024 qualifier against Malta, City's treble winners were not expected to start anyway but Southgate warned there must be a limit to how hard players can celebrate before all their commitments for the season are over.

"There is a line," Southgate said.

"What is different is that everyone posts everything [on social media]. I wouldn’t have liked a few of my nights out to be posted publicly. My generation would have been in a lot more problems.

"But in our head we weren't thinking of including the City players for this game. I have spoken with the players. We have talked about where the focus needs to be, where we need them to be and acknowledged what they have experienced and that's for me to manage.

"There is nothing to be served with me discussing that publicly. We weren't considering those boys to start this game. We were hopeful they could play some part and that is still the case.

"But with the tactical preparation that we knew we needed to do earlier in the week, we always knew they were going to report Tuesday night, Wednesday was going to be light and Thursday the usual light session. So unless we had a problem we were not aiming to put those players into this game."

Alongside Grealish, England's squad includes fellow City stars Kyle Walker, Phil Foden, John Stones and Kalvin Phillips, none of whom are expected to start against Malta.

The Three Lions sit top of their qualifying group and will be confident of a comfortable victory over Malta, with the City stars likely to return to the pitch on Monday against North Macedonia.