Dele Alli has revealed he spent time in a rehabilitation centre and continued retiring from football at the age of 24 in an emotional interview with Gary Neville.
Speaking to Neville on The Overlap, the Everton midfielder discussed the issues that contributed to his struggles on the pitch since 2018.
The former Tottenham and England star says he became addicted to sleeping tablets “to escape from reality” and opened up about his childhood trauma before adoption.
On rehab
“I got addicted to sleeping tablets, it’s a problem not only I have. It’s going around more than people realise in football.
‘When I came back from Turkey (following a loan spell at Besiktas) I came back and found out I needed an operation. I was in a bad place mentally. I decided to go to a modern rehab facility that deals with addiction and mental health and trauma. I felt it was time for me.
“You can’t be told to go there, you have to make the decision yourself. I was in a bad cycle. I was relying on things that were doing me harm. I was waking up every day, winning the fight going into training every day smiling – willing to show I was happy.
‘Inside I was losing the battle and it was time to change. When I was told I needed surgery I could feel the feelings I had when the cycle began.
“Part of the problem, I didn’t want help. I told myself I wasn’t an addict, I wasn’t addicted to them but I definitely was.
“I wasn’t taking them to sleep – I was taking them throughout the day, sometimes from 11am.”
On his childhood
“There were a few incidents that could give you kind of a brief understanding. At six, I was molested by my mum’s friend, who was at the house a lot. My mum was an alcoholic, and that happened at six. I was sent to Africa to learn discipline, and then I was sent back.
“At seven, I started smoking, eight I started dealing drugs. An older person told me that they wouldn’t stop a kid on a bike, so I rode around with my football, and then underneath I’d have the drugs, that was eight. Eleven, I was hung off a bridge by a guy from the next estate, a man.
“Twelve, I was adopted – and from then, it was like – I was adopted by an amazing family like I said, I couldn’t have asked for better people to do what they’d done for me. If God created people, it was them.”
On career struggles
“When he [Jose Mourinho] stopped playing me and I was in a bad place, I remember looking in the mirror – it sounds dramatic – but I was asking if I could retire now, at 24, doing the thing I love.
“For me that was heartbreaking to even have had that thought. That hurt me a lot. It was another thing I had to carry.
“That period I was partying a lot. But the reality of what they [tabloids] say is not the reality. They were calling me a party boy before I was doing any of this.
“My reality of when I was younger, the traumas I had, things I dealt with throughout my life, it all just came out. I’m grateful it happened at that time because it could have been a time when I couldn’t find a purpose for myself, couldn’t remember the why I’m here, why I’m doing this.”
On Mourinho calling him ‘lazy’
Alli also discussed an infamous exchange with Mourinho in Tottenham’s All or Nothing Amazon documentary in which the Portuguese manager described him as a “f***ing lazy guy”.
“That lazy comment, people love to bring that up, that interview obviously was on Amazon. He called me lazy – that was the day after recovery day. A week later, he apologised for me for calling me lazy because he’d seen me actually train and play.
“But that wasn’t in the documentary, and no one spoke up about that because it was only me and him.”
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