Dele Alli – The next David Beckham gone wrong
By Jim James
I remember when Dele Alli was special – football/soccer fans, you should too. It’s 2018. A simpler time. You could still go out with your friends to see a Premier League game or call them to your house to see it on TV. You were excited to see how Phillipe Coutinho would do at Barca, if Mohamed Salah could keep this up, the world cup was in the summer and right around the corner, and Dele Alli was the hottest young prospect out there. The likes of Real Madrid & Barcelona were circling.
It is now 3 years on from that summer, and all has gone wrong for the Attacking Midfielder from Milton Keynes. He has struggled for game time, the big clubs are no longer circling, and his transfer value has plummeted. What happened?
The rise was meteoric. When does a player that was valued at less than 50 thousand pounds at 17 years old become a 100 million pound talent? Not very often, but Dele defined the odds. He was going to become the crown jewel of a new England golden generation.
Jadon Sancho was starting his first season at Dortmund. Ok, Rashford was good, but Maddison was still at Norwich, Jack Grealish was getting punched in the back of the head. It was Dele’s team to become the crown jewel of. But why the decline?
Well, at just 22 He thought he deserved everything, and he was a general just overall toxic presence in the locker room. He thought he was the leading man on a Spurs team that he was at most the 4th best player on. That is reason 1 for his decline.
Reason 2 is Jose Mourinho. It is no coincidence that his decline started in The Special One’s first few months in charge. He just wasn’t played. He had his chance to leave on loan in January and Summer 2020, but didn’t. He didn’t play and never left.
The 3rd & last reason we’ll be covering today is signings. It never helped when Spurs brought in Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Steven Bergwijn, Ryan Sessegnon, Gareth Bale, and Tanguy Ndombele to a midfield that already included Alli, Heung-Min Son, Gio Lo Celso, Lucas Moura, and Mousa Sissoko.
That is why Dele Alli declined. Maybe it was never meant to be, maybe it was bad luck, all I know is that he needs a miracle now. Thank you for reading this article, and see you soon.