Author: Abigail Ampofo

In a deeply revealing interview with Gary Neville, the renowned English football star, Dele Alli, shared the obstacles he has confronted in recent years that have seemingly impeded his journey to becoming the exceptional player anticipated by the football community.

Alli was once regarded as one of the most promising English talents of all time, with the world at his feet.

He was poised for greatness, but his path took an unexpected turn during what should have been his prime years.

During the poignant interview, Alli opened up about enduring profound childhood traumas, including involvement with drug dealing.

However, football ultimately became his salvation, providing him with a sense of purpose.

Nonetheless, he also disclosed the mental health challenges he faced, which became so overwhelming that he contemplated retirement at the tender age of 24.

Alli’s interview offered a raw and sincere glimpse into the struggles he has encountered, both on and off the field, shedding light on the complexities and personal difficulties that have shaped his journey.

Some key areas he spoke about include, being addicted to sleeping pills to numb his mental health issues, being molested by his mom’s friend at age 6, smoking at age 7, started dealing drugs at age 8, being hung off a bridge at age 11, getting adopted at age 12, and living through betrayal by his parent.

Alli, who ended his loan spell at Besiktas abruptly due to an injury that required surgery, narrated how he landed in rehab for six weeks to fight his addiction to sleeping pills.

“I got addicted to sleeping tablets, it’s a problem not only I have. It’s going around more than people realise in football,” he said.

“Now is probably the right time to tell people. It’s tough to talk about it as it’s quite recent and something I’ve hid for a long time and I’m scared to talk about.

“When I came back from Turkey 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.

“There is a stigma around it and it’s something people don’t want to do. Going into rehab is scary but I could never have imagined how much I would get from it. I was in a bad place. A lot happened to me when I was younger that I couldn’t understand and I was doing stupid things that I blame myself for.

“Going there and learning about it, it was never really under my control. Understanding learning it has helped. I let go of some bad feelings I was holding which was slowing me down.”

On his best period as a footballer, Ali mentioned his time at Tottenham Hotspur under Mauricio Pochettino.

“Mauricio Pochettino was the best manager and I couldn’t have asked for a better manager at the time. I was in him and his team, you know, not just him. There was Jesus (Perez), Miguel (d’Agostino) and Tony (Jimenez).

They are amazing people and they’re so understanding, and it wasn’t like a footballer and a manager relationship. It was deeper than that, I felt.

“He was just so understanding of the decisions I was making, and he was guiding – like, he cared about me as a person before the football, which is what I needed at that time. And I think that’s important for young players.

“When you go somewhere it can be quite scary, I think. And I never had that fear of, you know, trying to prove myself in that sense, because I felt like he was giving me the platform to express myself the best I could and to be comfortable.

“I mean, players always used to say, ‘I want to be like that’ (fearless). I wasn’t fearless. I was just brave. But I think being brave, you feel the fear still, but you still do it. And I think that’s something that he allowed me to do.

“So yeah, I think (Pochettino) helped a lot in that period of my career, which is why it was tough for me when he left. Because, you know, then you [get] new managers, and it was hard for me to let anyone in at that point and to be open. And I felt like everything was just so fake.’

But a change in managerial at Tottenham with Jose Mourinho taking over and Alli struggling for playing time became a new weight to carry and propelled him to consider retirement.

“Probably the saddest moment for me, was when Mourinho was manager, I think I was 24. I remember there was one session, like one morning I woke up and I had to go to training – this is when he’d stopped playing me – and I was in a bad place,” he explained.

“I remember just looking in the mirror – I mean it sounds dramatic but I was literally staring in the mirror – and 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 at 24, to want to retire. That hurt me a lot, that was another thing that I had to carry.”

Mourinho during the period labeled Alli ‘lazy’ in a famous Amazon documentary, in which the player revealed that the manager later apologised but the session was not captured in the documentary.

“He called me lazy – that was the day after recovery day. A week later, he apologised to 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,” he said.

“In the team meeting, he called me lazy but then one on one, I think it was on the pitch, he apologised for it. And I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I know myself – I’m not lazy.

“What you see sometimes isn’t the way it really is. I think, especially now with social media and all these things, we can really portray something that isn’t real. After that, I think people definitely tried to use that, for some other decisions.

“I think other coaches maybe, for other reasons why I weren’t playing, they stuck to that – lazy one – because it was kind of an easy one to use. And the problem was probably more than that.”

Nonetheless, after spending six weeks in rehab, Alli feels ready to enjoy football again and stated that he is ready for a ‘big season’ with Everton.

‘Right now, it’s just about getting back on the pitch and showing him what I can do, and the talks were more about what I’ve done in terms of the rehab and how I’m feeling, which is a normal question for people to have, I think. So yeah, a lot of the talks so far have been about that, and then, yeah, I just need to get back fit which isn’t too long away.

‘I’m feeling good in that sense, probably another few weeks (away from returning from injury) and then get back playing and enjoying football which is what I want to do. So, I’m ready for a big season and I’m more prepared to deal with any challenge that comes with it.’