During Dele Alli’s early days at Tottenham, his former MK Dons coaches had two favourite stories about him. The time he spat out his chewing gum, bounced it off both knees and then kicked it back into his mouth, oozing self-confidence. The other, which they saw the funny side of with hindsight, involved the “sin bin”. Even in training, he would regularly land himself a time-out punishment; some said the method was introduced specifically to cope with his petulance.
There was always an acceptance that Alli was not a perfect player, but there was a time in his first three-and-a-half years under Mauricio Pochettino that he was as accomplished as a midfielder of his age was likely to get.
When Spurs came a club record second place in the Premier League in 2016-17, he scored 18 goals, with seven assists to boot. It probably didn’t occur to him that he was at the height of his powers and indeed, some of the best was yet to come. It was the following season that he had Wembley Stadium “Ole-ing” as he glided around Real Madrid, the European champions. A World Cup quarter-final goal for England followed eight months later.
But there was another moment, arguably just as instructive, sandwiched somewhere in between that growth, that alarmed Pochettino. After dropping into the Europa League, Alli delivered the kind of tackle against Gent that was feared to be a leg-breaker. The first red card of his Spurs career, but a necessary reminder that managing Dele Alli is nursing a rough diamond.
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The good and the bad, the devil and the angel, were always assumed to be inseparable. The joy he found in football that inspired his overhead flicks and one of Spurs’ most imaginative Premier League goals against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park was another translation of the furious passion that occasionally ignited when he would lash out.
Inevitably, players mature. Alli’s game adapted and in another life, his gradual move into deeper and deeper roles could have served him well later in his career. He acknowledged early on that muscle injuries were already taking their toll on him physically; he could no longer press like he used to and his heat maps showed fewer ventures into the final third.
To some, the reason for the latter was simple: Jose Mourinho, who told him pointedly after a Champions League defeat to RB Leipzig that “the team were better after he came off”. Yet as easy as it might have been to cast Mourinho as a villainous influence on a pivotal moment of Alli’s career, he had been struggling for form even before the 2019 Champions League final.
That is perhaps why Antonio Conte is so convinced that his former player will not come back to haunt him when Tottenham play Everton on Monday night. Alli is much-loved by Spurs fans and will no doubt get a rapturous reception. Conte insists, though, that he is not expecting him to come back “with a great spirit of revenge”.
“I try during my coaching to be always honest with the players and to give all of them the possibility to show me that they deserve to play,” he said. “What happens usually is that when players went away, they went down, not up.”
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Conte’s message was partly a rallying cry to his current players. If they are at the club, it is because they have a future there. The moment Alli registered zero shots on goal or chances created against NS Mura was quite possibly the moment Conte realised that, spectacular as Alli’s Spurs career had been, it was over.
Lost in the constant dissection of his performances were the factors that might help to explain them, from a series of injuries to a harrowing knife-point robbery at his home in 2020.
It would be in Spurs’ interests for Alli’s career to reignite, not least because he joined Everton on an initial free transfer, rising to £40m dependent on performance-related bonuses. Frank Lampard is yet to select him in a starting XI, which should not be a major cause for alarm. From false nine to the both sides of a midfield three, he played in so many positions at Spurs that it will take time for him to readjust to his natural fitting behind the striker, reeling off the street skills honed on the hard Heelands courts of Milton Keynes.
To the generation who can be found on those pitches now, not that much has changed. The thrill among young City Colts players when he spoke to them about his time at the club via Zoom was palpable.
Lampard will be more interested in the future than the journey up to this point and he is still trying to unearth the architect of 85 goal contributions in 185 top-flight appearances. Alli’s positioning became overly complex; Everton’s task is to simplify it.
Conte need not be concerned if they succeed. The timing was right for all parties when he left in January, but it is hard to shake the feeling that the 25-year-old still has so much more to give.
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