What next for forgotten man Dele Alli? Ex-Tottenham and Everton star’s battle to save his flailing football career

The easy talking point when discussing Dele’s drop-off is in regards to his numbers, as he is no longer the player that could stump up double figures of goals and assists across a season of Premier League and Champions League football.

That maverick spark in the final third was his trademark, but his foundation was what he provided out of possession, as best surmised by former Tottenham team-mate Ben Davies earlier in 2024 on The Gab & Jules Show.

Davies said: “Dele was incredible, when he turned up, he was a young kid from Milton Keynes and he got thrown into first-team training and he would just do stuff for fun. I think to start with, the management, the staff were like ‘What’s this kid doing?’ [They would say] like play properly, get the ball and play here. He would just get the ball to feet, step over it, and try to go through other people’s legs, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Trying to flick the ball and at this time I remember he was playing as a six. He was a CDM, he would fly into tackles and you’d get some boys be like ‘relax’.

“Then it would come to pre-season and we played against Real Madrid and it would be like the ‘Dele Show’. From that he was just a kid who there was no level of competition, that was the best way to describe him. What he did in League One he would try against [Luka] Modric, against [Toni] Kroos, It was so irrelevant to who he was playing against.

“A big thing that I think we didn’t appreciate at the time was how good off the ball he was for us. If you watch back those games, our team couldn’t press without Dele. He was hounding the goalkeeper, hounding the centre-back, hounding the central midfielders, he was dropping back and winning tackles, and I’ve said it to him many times, I’d love to see him go back to playing a bit deeper, playing as a six, go back. Take the pressure of trying to get goals and assists out of your game and go back to being that tough-tackling hungry kid who’s winning the ball.

“He’s still incredibly fit, he could run all day, he used to run more than anybody. He’d have the summer of doing nothing, come back for pre-season and he’d be the fittest guy, he’d win every fitness test.”

It was that mixture of flair and fitness that allowed Dele to burst onto the scene and break into Mauricio Pochettino’s starting line up, with his tangible output the added bonus later down the line. Those goals only started to dry up once Dele was no longer as capable of working as relentlessly off the ball.

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  Injury troubles

  Dele missed just one Tottenham game with a muscle injury through his first three seasons in north London, which is a record which marries up with Davies’ testimony about his supreme physical health. But then the floodgates opened after he and many other Premier League stars were rushed back from the 2018 World Cup for the unusually cruel and early start of the following Premier League season.

  After sitting out only one game in three years, Dele was ruled out of 13 matches during Tottenham’s 2018-19 campaign. His drops in and out of fitness, especially while trying to meet the high standards set by pressing guru Pochettino, meant he couldn’t sustain the rhythm required to live up to lofty expectations.

  Further injuries followed Dele, while he was the brutalised victim of a home invasion in 2020. Three years later, he admitted to a sleeping-pill addiction, one that led to him seeking out rehab at the end of a loan spell with Turkish giants Besiktas.

  All of these mitigating factors, not even to mention the trauma of his early life, created a concoction of chaos that would halt anyone’s livelihood. It is why saying he has wasted his career is lazy and disingenuous.

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  Belated appreciation

  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the good of the football community has chosen recently to remember Dele for his highs. Comparisons with Real Madrid and England superstar Jude Bellingham were uttered by Davies before they became a mainstream debate.

  “He had the self-confidence, I think he’s spoken about it, which is like the bravery,” Davies said. “And when he – that season when he just was breaking through, scoring goals for fun, it was insane. There was no limit for him. He could have at that time been similar to, like, a Bellingham kind of player now. Someone who maybe not technically as good as Jude is, but ultimately the game comes down to scoring goals. He used to find a way to score and assist pretty much every game. And he used to just cause nightmares for opposition.”

  Tottenham legend David Pleat, who first told the club to buy Dele from Milton Keynes Dons prior to his £5m transfer in 2015, has also claimed the club chose to keep the midfielder on the books rather than make enormous profit on him.

  Pleat told FourFourTwo: “There was Dele Alli, too. I took Franco Baldini [former Spurs sporting director] to watch him and he was on his phone the whole time – he didn’t even watch him. I’ve got six reports on Dele over a period of two years; they should’ve reacted after my first two. Eventually they heard he was going to Aston Villa or Newcastle. They rang me and I said, ‘Well, fancy that? Serves you right. You have to get hold of him.’ They did the deal really quickly and I persuaded the chairman that £5m wasn’t too much to pay.

  “At one stage they could have sold him for over £80m, then things happened. I’m sad because I saw him at 16 and he already had that stature about him, and he could play, too.”

  The noises around Dele and his career are more positive than negative, which is a refreshing change from the cruel and cowardly vitriol of modern football and contemporary media.

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  Champions League return?

  Where Dele will land next remains a mystery, though he has not been sidelined from transfer gossip columns during his absence. An emotional return to Spurs has been mooted at times, though that does remain extremely unlikely in a senior playing capacity.

  Perhaps the most interesting of links has been to Ligue 1 side Lille, who have claimed huge scalps against Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid in the Champions League so far this season. They already have a Brit on their books as well, with new England star Angel Gomes dictating play in midfield and into the final year of his contract on the other side of the Channel.

  The Daily Mail first reported of Lille’s interest in October and there have seemingly not been any advances in their interest since, though that doesn’t mean work isn’t going on behind the scenes to look into a deal.

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  World Cup in his sights

  Coming away from his brave interview with Gary Neville in 2023, Dele revealed his ambitions to return to the England fold for their 2026 World Cup campaign in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

  He said, “I know my level as a player and what I can get to, I know how good I can be when my head is in the right place and I’m feeling good. Obviously I’m disappointed with the injury right now, but I’m excited to get playing.

  “It’s hard for me to even watch football. It’s been tough for me, I’d say, this past eight months has been hard to watch. You know you can set reminders on your phone, I have a reminder at 11 o’clock every day that says, ‘World Cup 2026’. That’s my aim for now. I think that people will be like, ‘he hasn’t played in a year’ but I don’t care, I know my level. The only target I have is the World Cup right now.”

  Now, that is a rather ambitious target, but it’s not an impossible one. Twelve-to-eighteen months of good performances would get Dele into the thoughts of new boss Thomas Tuchel, just as they would for any young player on the cusp of a major breakthrough. These sudden stories do happen, just less so for veteran and experienced players.

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  Health and happiness remains most important

  Though we would all love to see Dele thriving as a footballer once again, there shouldn’t be any pressure to speed up that comeback. At the very least, he does look in shape and nearing physical levels which could facilitate a return to professional sport, posting semi-regular updates on his Instagram page showcasing various workouts.

  It does appear the resumption of his career hinges on the ability to overcome mental frustrations in regards to his body rather than any other lingering long-term effects of past injuries. Dr Rajpal Brar, a specialist in physical therapy and sports science, recently told Goodison News, “I think it really just comes down to if Alli feels he has the ongoing resilience and patience to continue to keep fighting. He hasn’t played in 19 months and had multiple setbacks, so it’s not easy to continue to keep your head up and go through that daily fight, particularly if the light at the end of the tunnel continually gets smaller.

  “The point at which Dele decides it’s not worth it anymore, I imagine that’s when he hangs it up. It is encouraging to see him working hard behind the scenes so it seems he’s keen on returning to football and not retiring as suggested.”

  The main hope is Dele is now in a much happier place elsewhere in his life. If he has that, then that’s the biggest plus you could wish for.