Dele Alli was a wonderkid. He made his Premier League and England international debuts within
months of each other, and at the age of just 19. Yet, by his mid-twenties, he was on-loan in
Turkish football with his career dwindling. So, what happened?
Dele Alli was part of the MK Dons side that thrashed Manchester United 4-0 in
the league cup in the Autumn of 2014. Already, however, the 18 year-old was
on the radar of several Premier League sides, including Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.
And it was the latter who struck a deal in January 2015. Alli left his hometown
club for London, after an initial loan until the end of that season.
When he arrived at Spurs properly, his ascent was remarkable. Mauricio Pochettino was into
his second season at the club, and Alli became of value almost instantly. He scored his first
Premier League goal against Leicester in August, had debuted in the Europa League by September, and
made his first appearance for England in October. He scored on his first start for England, too.
At the end of the 2016-17 season, Alli would be voted the PFA’s Young Player of the Season and,
for a brilliant juggle and volley against Crystal Palace, also won the Premier League’s
Goal of the season. For several years,
Dele delivered on his promise. In 2016-17, he was again voted Player of the Year,
becoming the first player since Wayne Rooney to win consecutive awards. He was also part of the
Premier League’s team of the season for the second straight year. He and Tottenham were flying high.
At his pinnacle, Alli was an invaluable ingredient of Pochettino’s attack,
whose productivity came from excellent movement inside the box, an instinctive finishing ability
and – most often – an uncanny understanding with Harry Kane. He scored good goals, but really
important ones too and against big opposition. By 2018-19, there were clouds on the horizon.
Dele had a spiky playing personality and had already suffered suspensions
as a result. The season before, he would also suffer a minor hamstring injury – the first
of four over the next eighteen months. In fact, in a season that would end with
him and Spurs reaching the Champions League final, he would – all in all - miss 23 games
because of those three additional hamstring strains, a thigh strain and a broken hand.
In the famous game against Ajax, at the end of which Dele provided the clever flick for
Lucas Moura to complete his hat-trick, he can be seen wearing a cast to protect that hand.
Tottenham’s downfall happened quickly thereafter. Mauricio Pochettino was sacked by the club and
replaced by Jose Mourinho at the end of 2019 and, initially, that change seemed of benefit to Dele.
In Amazon’s All or Nothing documentary, Mourinho can be seen presciently warning
the player about how quickly life passes and encouraging him to make the most of his youth.
For a while, that message appeared to resonate: liberated as a more attacking
player and freed of midfield responsibility, he enjoyed a purple patch of form and goals
during the late winter of 2019 and early 2020. But it was a false dawn and a rare high point in
his relationship with Mourinho. January 2020 would actually see him scoring his final goal
from open play for Tottenham in the Premier League, some two years before he left.
So, what went wrong? Injuries we’ve covered and Tottenham’s failure to adequately invest in a
team that had finished third in Dele’s first year at the club and second in his second was
complicit. Famously, they became the first Premier League team to fail to sign a player
during a transfer window during the summer of 2018, repeating the trick in the winter of 2019.
The consequence was a team that got steadily worse, in spite of that Champions League final,
and players – Dele included – who were sometimes used in unfavourable positions
out of necessity. Whatever the case, the culture of improvement within the squad, that had been
so key to Pochettino’s success, clearly waned. Players who had complemented Dele’s style also
left. Christian Eriksen’s passing ability was a multiplier for him, so too was the
pitch stretching full-back play of Kyle Walker and Danny Rose, and the delivery of Kieran Trippier.
Walker and Trippier were both sold, Rose grew disillusioned. Moussa Dembele also departed.
So, it’s easy to depict Dele as a bellwether of sorts. But,
according to The Athletic’s Jack Pitt-Brooke, the player holds responsibility for his decline too.
He noted a theory, that “Dele (grew) distracted by his off-field interests” and that was particularly
damaging given “that his game was ultimately all about hunger, about his willingness to keep
taking risks to get on the end of things and make those late runs into the box.”
Pitt-Brooke also observed that: “He has largely stopped making those runs…
and with that, he has lost what made him such a dangerous player. He has never been a midfielder
who runs the game by dictating possession.” It’s a valid point: even at his best, Dele
would often be relatively peripheral in games, only to punctuate them with a telling moment.
When those fireworks were gone, a player who was in 2018 ranked as the most valuable midfielder in
the world by the CIES Football Observatory barely resembled who he had once been.
As if to make that point, when Dele finally did leave Tottenham,
it was on a free transfer to Everton in January 2022, with only performance-related fees due.
Within the space of eight months and after fewer than 20 appearances, he was then loaned
to Turkish Super Liga side Besiktas. It’s been a career’s worth of ups
and downs and yet Alli was still just 26 years old in March 2023.
Did he become demotivated at Tottenham? Was he damaged by repeated injuries?
Was he a victim of the club’s general decline? And did he miss his perfect departure point?
Or were both of those factors complicit, and were they exacerbated
by a declining enthusiasm for the sport? The truth is elusive and might not be revealed
for many years to come. For now, Dele Alli remains a great riddle of English football.