"I once went to a programme where I had to pay them a pound to train, and I used to spend money for training like that. But then I couldn't afford to pay for the training, so they let me go. ”
Dele Ali once recalled the only football that brought him fun as a child, and although his biological mother's perennial alcoholism largely limited his room for growth, his outstanding talent led him to be discovered by Milton Keynes scouts at the age of eleven, and he signed directly into the youth system without tryouts.
At the age of thirteen, his birth mother abandoned him, and Ali was almost orphaned.
A series of bad factors such as drugs and gangsters cast a lingering shadow on his childhood. But Ali was undoubtedly lucky, and he later met his football team, Pochettino.
Born out of nowhere
On November 2, 2012, at the age of sixteen, Alli made his professional debut when Milton Keynes drew with Cambridge City in the first round of the FA Cup.
Eleven days later, in the FA Cup replay, Ali scored his first professional goal in the 75th minute to give his team a 6-1 victory. Subsequently, the seventeen-year-old Ali became a first-tier player for Milton Keynes.
On March 11, 2014, in the League One match against Notts County County, Ali shined, scoring all three goals of the team.
On August 27 of the same year, Milton Keynes defeated Manchester United 4-0 in the second round of the Carabao Cup with the help of Ali, and Ali suddenly became the focus of media attention.
On September 20, Ali once again amazed English football with a hat-trick and an assist in the ninth round of League One against Crewe Alexander.
Due to his amazing performance, Ali has been favored by many big teams. Under the recommendation of the Argentine, in May 2015, Ali, who was only two months away from turning 19, let Tottenham pay a transfer fee of 6.63 million euros.
After a brief loan experience of less than four months, Ali officially returned to Tottenham, and in his debut season with the team, Ali was voted the best newcomer in the Premier League with a stunning double-double performance of 10 goals and 9 assists.
At the age of twenty-one, he made 50 appearances in all club competitions, swiping a double-double with 21 goals and 11 assists, becoming the team's second-highest scorer after Harry Kane.
At the age of twenty-two, Ali completely exploded, scoring fourteen goals and seventeen assists in fifty appearances in all competitions. With the blessing of the British family register, his price assessment reached 100 million euros.
At that time, Ali could not only fire long-range shots from the perimeter, but also break into the box to grab points, and also use fancy dribbling to grab people's attention, and the all-round skill on the offensive end was at a glance.
Pochettino's careful coaching led to Alli's rapid rise from unknown to the heart of the England national team and Tottenham's midfield, and the media and fans saw him as the hope of the future of English football, when he was known as "Frank Lampard II".
The twenty-year-old Alli played 37 games for Tottenham Hotspur and delivered an assist with 18 goals. Lampard was also on another team in London, 38 games, where he contributed five goals and seven assists for the Hammers.
'What he has achieved is not something that other players in this age group can achieve, those heavyweights have not achieved, he has achieved more than these superstars.
The Argentine coach's open tactics of pressing and counterattacking, and the relatively relaxed educational environment, gave the Nigerian-born teenager on the street space to "grow wildly".
It was in this environment that Ali quickly accumulated and thrived overnight, becoming a local banner of Tottenham's rise in the Pochettino era, and he also repaid the trust and love of the palm print with his better performance year by year.
The outstanding performance of three consecutive seasons made Ali naturally selected for the England team and participated in the World Cup in Russia. In the World Cup, although Ali was not an absolute workhorse, he scored a header in the quarterfinals to help England defeat dark horse Sweden, knocking on the door of the semi-finals again after 28 years.
Genius fell
After the World Cup, Ali's form began to fluctuate. He missed twenty-two games that season due to injury. With just seven goals in all competitions, it was his palest season since joining Tottenham.
With Pochettino sacked by Tottenham for poor results, Alli's form continued to be sluggish. Thigh injuries, hand fractures, and recurring hamstring injuries all consume Ali's body to varying degrees.
But in addition to injuries, the dissatisfaction of Tottenham managers after Pochettino is not unfounded.
In addition to dribbling and long-range shooting, Alli has impressed with his much-maligned but never improved small movements and bad temper: De Jagger of Ghent and De Bruyne of Manchester City have both been victims of his malicious fouls.
On top of that, he provoked opponents and even got into spat with teammates in the locker room.
"I fool around with bad people a lot," 21-year-old Ali confessed to the interview camera, and the twelve-year-old is still a problem teenager who is still hanging out on the streets at two o'clock in the morning.
Unlike Kane and Son Xingmin, the seeds planted in childhood gave Ali others the enviable spirituality of others, but also buried the undetectable bane.
At the beginning of his tenure, Mourinho told Ali: "You have the potential to become a world-class player, but one day you will regret that you did not reach the height you expected." ”
In December 2020, during Tottenham's Carabao Cup knockout match against Stoke City, an error by Ali led to an equaliser for the team. Mourinho was very dissatisfied and immediately replaced Ali.
After Conte took over, he rarely evaluated Ali in public, but expressed his attitude with practical actions. Under the Italian, Ali only scored a piecemeal 280 minutes of playing time.
Ali's best shadow forward position, after Tottenham has been eliminated and living space has been squeezed, the choice left for Ali seems to be only to leave sadly.
The lights outside the field also affected Ali's physical state. "Party Boy" was Ali's nickname during Tottenham, and news of his nightclubs and parties was often found in the newspapers of Britain's major entertainment tabloids.
After the Premier League was shut down due to the epidemic, Ali was exposed to spend two consecutive nights out to drink, and Ali also exposed a scandal of discrimination against Asians.
Going north to Liverpool, Ali still failed to light the last match of "reversal of fate". In Everton's eleven Premier League games, he only started in an insignificant finale after early relegation, with zero goals and zero assists.
In the end, Ali packed his bags again after half a season and chose to leave. England to Turkey is not only a long geographical distance, but also an irreparable career gap.
On March 8, 2022, Ali walked to Tottenham Stadium for the first time as a visiting player. After the game, captain Lowry took him with him to bid an official farewell to Tottenham fans in front of the South Stand.
The applause was like yesterday, but twenty-six-year-old Ali knew that this was not just a change from number twenty to number thirty-six, nor just a change from white to blue, and that the best version of himself had been left behind in the song of North London.