Dele Alli | Overlap Interview with Neville opens up on childhood trauma and mental health issues

Buster15

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How far has he fallen. Not that long ago he was one of the brightest young footballers.
But now, he is absolutely nowhere.
Even Besiktas don't want him.
Does anyone understand why?
 
Attitude. It’s that simple. He’s a millionaire and doesn’t care for football anymore.
 
Buster15 said:
How far has he fallen. Not that long ago he was one of the brightest young footballers.
But now, he is absolutely nowhere.
Even Besiktas don't want him.
Does anyone understand why?
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He was a good player but I always felt like he was overrated and not one of the best players in his age bracket.
 
Never really liked Dele (MK Dons & Spurs are quite high on my shit list, plus he's a bit of a scrote) but still sad to see him wasting his career.

Should've taken more heed of Jose's advice.
 
Can't believe he is only 26 - feels like he has been around for an eternity. Should be getting to his peak now, really, but has completely wasted his talent; I doubt he is even Championship quality nowadays.

He seemed to be more mature between 18 (when he joined Tottenham) and 21 than he does today:

37 goals and 29 assists (66 combined) in 106 PL games in his first three seasons at Tottenham. Looked an incredibly talented player to this iteration. The drop off is ridiculous.
 
Pexbo said:
Attitude. It’s that simple. He’s a millionaire and doesn’t care for football anymore.
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A mix of attitude and modern football not being overly accommodating to technical players that you need to “carry” so to speak. Even when Spurs were doing well with him at his peak he was a bit of a luxury player.
 
I’ve seen two YouTube videos of his time in Turkey. One positive and one negative. Funny how you can make a player look a superstar and a complete failure at the same time.

Though speaking to my Turkish friends, the negative video is a better representation of his time in Turkey.
 
While he may not have been what he was cracked up to be at his absolute best, I think it has to be a relatively simple explanation. Because even if you say he was never going to be world class, he was still one of Spurs best players, a top 6 PL club, still performing at a young age at a high level. So you need an explanation for why he has gone from that, to not being a Turkish league player. If he's not a Turkish league player it begs the question of what level he would have to drop to to actually be effective. It's such a stark drop it can't really be about positions or because he was slightly misevaluated.

So all in all I think it has to come down to him personally. Whatever has gone on in his life, or not wanting to train, losing all physical fitness, then footballing sharpness is soon to follow. His managers have more or less stated the story. He's not ready to play football which means he's not training properly, and if you're not training over a period of years you're no different to a former footballer banged up and then coming back many years later. It would take a long period to actually get back to sharpness and that's if you wanted to. Dele probably doesn't.
 
duffer said:
Never really liked Dele (MK Dons & Spurs are quite high on my shit list, plus he's a bit of a scrote) but still sad to see him wasting his career.

Should've taken more heed of Jose's advice.
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I’m kind of the opposite, I think for his talent level he’s had an excellent career.
 
Abraxas said:
While he may not have been what he was cracked up to be at his absolute best, I think it has to be a relatively simple explanation. Because even if you say he was never going to be world class, he was still one of Spurs best players, a top 6 PL club, still performing at a young age at a high level. So you need an explanation for why he has gone from that, to not being a Turkish league player. If he's not a Turkish league player it begs the question of what level he would have to drop to to actually be effective. It's such a stark drop it can't really be about positions or because he was slightly misevaluated.

So all in all I think it has to come down to him personally. Whatever has gone on in his life, or not wanting to train, losing all physical fitness, then footballing sharpness is soon to follow. His managers have more or less stated the story. He's not ready to play football which means he's not training properly, and if you're not training over a period of years you're no different to a former footballer banged up and then coming back many years later. It would take a long period to actually get back to sharpness and that's if you wanted to. Dele probably doesn't.
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A sound assessment.
I don't agree that he was not talented because as you say, to be a regular with Tottenham at a relatively young age and especially to have supplied goals for them when Harry Kane was injured supports that.
Any his situation is not dissimilar to a few other young English players who have dropped out. Any hopefully Sancho will not be one of them...
It has to be down to character and mentality.
I am worth millions so why do I need to bust a gut in training.
It is a shame though that talent is being wasted and hopefully he might wake up before it is too late. But there is little chance of that happening.
 
He certainly had world class potential at his peak, didn't SAF and Jose (in his prime) both want to sign him? He's one of those footballers who are so thick they never develop enough maturity to do what it takes to progress.
 
Attitude, seemed he lost the hunger once he became a millionaire. More concerned with his fashion line and party life than football.

No doubting he was good in his first few years, stats speak for themselves. But he was only ever good in that one spot off the striker, added to this he didnt really give a toss in training it seems, there is that clip of Jose telling him that fact.
 
He’s had a hard, troubled life in his early years and I think he struggles with mental health privately.

Hope he can continue a career at relatively high level and enjoy a happy life.
 
Rhyme Animal said:
He’s had a hard, troubled life in his early years and I think he struggles with mental health privately.

Hope he can continue a career at relatively high level and enjoy a happy life.
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Hard life? Partying all night? fecking women left and right - even posting a fecking sextape online, being an arrrogant scrote at a tender age of 21?
Stop throwing the mental health issue every time a player fecks up.
 
GifLord said:
Hard life? Partying all night? fecking women left and right - even posting a fecking sextape online, being an arrrogant scrote at a tender age of 21?
Stop throwing the mental health issue every time a player fecks up.
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Kinda second this. There's a difference between poor mental health and poor mentality, and it can be flippant to always conflate the two.

Dele Alli doesn't appear like somebody who struggles to cope day to day but rather a guy who struggles to know to maintain the elite mentality needed to be a professional footballer, which is fair enough as not everyone can.

Edit - Actually he might struggle day to day. That beans clip suggests he's not a great cook.
 
I took a gander at the old threads, and whilst I think most accurately assess him as a somewhat limited player getting more from his talent than he ought to, there are some shocking takes in there:

Bwuk said:
No he wasn't anywhere near as good as Alli is atm.

I think Alli has all the talent to be considered in that tier of players, Scholes, Gerrard, Lampard etc assuming be fulfils his potential. All the talent in the world.
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Rhyme Animal said:
Dele Alli's in the Scholes, Gerrard area for me. I think his career will be that good.

I also think there's a very good chance he'll end up at United.
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Red Pavan said:
Why does he need to have great ability on the ball to be a top player? Did Lampard/Gerrard have great ability on the ball? They still had amazing careers with goal scoring and that is what Dele Alli will likely become if he keeps on progressing.

P.S - He is actually more talented on the ball than Gerrard or Lampard.
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RochaRoja said:
Lampard and Gerrard were two of the best attacking midfielders in the world and were technically inferior to Alli.
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giorno said:
B20 said:
1st touch, shooting, crossing, passing, ball control Gerrard was immaculate. Fecking alli being compared.
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And Alli isn't? Have we watched the same player? :wenger:
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The thing is, those weren't such terrible takes given how good Alli was in his first few seasons at Spurs.

No idea what happened to him but kinda sad to see.
 
He really never was close to being world class. A good talent who started to buy into his own hype and lost the plot. Happens all the time.
 
To be honest, if at age 22 you have enough money to live good life for the rest of your life, it must be insanely difficult to keep yourself motivated past that point
 
2017

vadimivich said:
Of all the young talents Spurs have had in recent years - Modric, Bale, etc ... I think Dele has the highest ceiling of them all. He has the attitude and self belief to go to the absolute top of the game, and I will be extremely surprised if he isn't at one of the two Spanish giants by the time he is 25 and competing for a Ballon d'Or. From virtually the very first touch of his Tottenham career where he casually nutmegged Modric in a pre-season game, I figured I'd just sit back and enjoy the ride for the few seasons he'll be in London with us.

He's a "second striker" or whatever you want to call it (he's clearly a forward and will be for his whole career, he's no longer a midfielder except in the most stretched definition) ... but I don't think people realize just how ridiculous his scoring statistics are for someone in that position. Ronaldinho had more than 15 league goals just twice in his entire career (Brazil and Europe). Bergkamp's best season ever, by far, in the PL was 16 goals. Baggio went over 15 only 5 times and over 20 only twice (21 and 22). Gullit scored 66 goals in his entire time in Serie A and PL combined. Dele had 10 goals last season, 16 and counting this season and you'd have to bet he'll have a few 20 goal seasons in his career at least. Even if all Dele does is score goals for the rest of his career, he's going to be a historically devastating player at that position. Again, he literally just turned 21 years old.

He clearly works extremely hard at his game. Last season he scored all but 1 goal with his right foot. This year he's already got 4 with his left foot and 4 with his head, turning himself into an outright monster in the box. His shooting from distance has noticeable improved and he has a flair for the dramatic and for big games (3 of his 4 headers are against Chelsea and City for example). He's extremely competitive and not intimidated by anyone, and that makeup along with his hard work on his game is going to take him a long way.

Kane is more important for the long term future of Tottenham, he seems like a kind of boring homebody who is happy with his childhood girlfriend and baby and life in London at Tottenham and will be the type stay for a long time. Dele though? He's got his sights set on the very top shelf. I'll be happy if we get to see him for one season in the new stadium (his age 22-23 year old season) and then I'll wish him well as he heads to Madrid and get to tell my grandchildren I saw him play in Lilywhite. Unless he gets his career cut short by injury or he just loses his head with underwear models and partying, he'll be the best player I get to see in a Spurs shirt in my lifetime.
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Rhyme Animal said:
He’s had a hard, troubled life in his early years and I think he struggles with mental health privately.

Hope he can continue a career at relatively high level and enjoy a happy life.
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yes, that's my understanding. Not so much of a slack arrogant player but a young man who's experienced some damaging episodes that haven't been addressed. He was picking up a lot of tabloid attention for getting drunk and with him asking to use only the 'Dele' name because his father was absent speaks to a lot of unresolved turmoil imo. Although I'm Red through and through, I would love to see him pull out of the spiral and just get back to enjoying football, it's not too late however I fear it's not going to happen.
 
Hindsight is 20/20.
Lots of people rated him very high, and rightly so, the first years at Spurs.
And those who did not, and claim now that he was not just that good or could see this (or similar) outcome should start taking charge for their opinions, because they would have next to futuresight ability.
He was extremely good some years around 2017.
 
HTG said:
He really never was close to being world class. A good talent who started to buy into his own hype and lost the plot. Happens all the time.
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He was 100% world class in his age range at a time.
 
Can’t believe he’s only 26. Feels like he’s been around forever.
 
Feck, he's still only 26.

Aged 18-22 he was banging in double figures for Spurs and playing 50 games a season. Went to the world cup in 2018. Never looked the same player after that.

He lost something along the way, drive, motivation, whatever it was he just never progressed and stopped doing what made him such a good player in the first place.
 
Retrospectively tearing a player to shreds is a very easy and lazy stunt; if you weren't calling the player X, Y and Z then, it's pretty rich to proclaim you knew/said all along this is how he'd turn out a few years down the line.

It's obvious something has gone wrong with him and his football has paid the price. He was dug out by a couple of managers and Mourinho presciently told him he'd end up how he has, if he kept going as he was... and here we are.

Perhaps he checked out early, as some players have been wont to do, or, he goes through things none of us know about and football is then not close to his chief concern. Bigger names than him have derailed and fallen from grace. It happens.

Unless he himself comes out and states why it's happened, we'll never actually know how this came to be.
 
He looked really talented in his early years. Lots of revisionism going on in here.
 
SilentWitness said:
A mix of attitude and modern football not being overly accommodating to technical players that you need to “carry” so to speak. Even when Spurs were doing well with him at his peak he was a bit of a luxury player.
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In hindsight you can see strong parallels with van de Beek at Ajax. Both had a creative wide attacker (Ziyech/Eriksen) doing most in the build-up; a press resistant no.8 to carry the ball (Frenkie/Dembele); and a striker who was happy to drop deep to alleviate some playmaking from a central spot (Kane/Tadic).

Alli and DVB were then left to their own devices to do what suited them best -- final third runs and being a menace in and around the box.
 
He was genuinely a world class player until 2018, then something went wrong. A real pity because he was extraordinarily talented, like a more elegant Thomas Muller
 
giorno said:
He was genuinely a world class player until 2018, then something went wrong. A real pity because he was extraordinarily talented, like a more elegant Thomas Muller
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Yeah I wonder what happened - it was such a big drop.
 
balaks said:
He was 100% world class in his age range at a time.
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If he was he was good at hiding it. I never saw it. Whenever I watched Spurs, I was let down by him. Others like Kane or Son were always much more impressive.
 
GifLord said:
Hard life? Partying all night? fecking women left and right - even posting a fecking sextape online, being an arrrogant scrote at a tender age of 21?
Stop throwing the mental health issue every time a player fecks up.
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It's much more nuanced.

Childhood trauma, especially from the ages of 1-3 can be detrimental. A lack of stable parents and normal upbringing can cause personality disorders later in life as well as constant self sabotage. Dele's childhood and teengage years point towards that and unresloved trauma.
 
His final product in the attacking 3rd was lethal when he came up to Spurs. But he never had that defined role and when teams started to account for him, he didn't adjust or try to improve himself. That's where Jose mentioned he was a shit trainer and has a poor attitude. Also seems to be a dull person intellectually.

Not surprised he's faded away so quickly as it was only a matter of time. Never was a true midfielder and thought all his good play came off from the left and in pockets of space behind Kane and obviously in the box. Outside of the box and final third, he was a nothing burger. Lingard outplayed him in the 2018 WC as a central midfielder because he understood the play as an 8, which people thought Dele was but isn't and never will be.

No sad feelings for this lad...he's a twat.
 
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