Dele

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Can someone copy/paste whole interview here please?

It is just minutes before Dele Alli is due to arrive for his first extended newspaper interview as a Tottenham Hotspur player, when Mauricio Pochettino walks up the stairs at the club’s Enfield training base. “You’re here for Dele?” asks the Tottenham manager. “You know, I just said he’s the best 21-year-old footballer in the world.”

And with that, Pochettino, who made the claim in his weekly press conference, disappears through the double doors that Dele, as he wishes to be called, soon breezes through with a wide grin.

Dele is polite, relaxed and articulate, and quickly offers up an insight into the humble beginnings from which he developed into one of the best young footballers on the planet.

Growing up in the Bradwell area of Milton Keynes meant Dele could take little for granted – particularly money – and, describing how he got into football, the England international said: “From under-nine to under-11, I played in a Sunday league. Before that, there was this scheme where you had to pay £1 to train and I used to do that. But I wasn’t able to pay it and in the end they let me do it for free.”

When it was put to Dele that money must have been incredibly tight, he added: “It was. When you come from where I came from, there were a lot more important things to spend a pound on than football training. Obviously, for me at the time, I thought it was all that mattered.


“But for families who are struggling, it’s not the case. They need a lot of support. But when you are nine or 10, maybe the vision of your parents isn’t the same as what it is for you.

“There is a lot of pressure on the parents with a kid who wants to become a professional footballer. There is a lot of responsibility, having to drive them around everywhere.”

Asked which football boots he wore during his formative years, Dele said: “I thought they were nice! I was lucky. When I was young, I had quite big feet, so the older lads in the area used to give me their hand-me-down boots. They looked after me.”

His upbringing perhaps explains why Dele feels a keen responsibility to give something back. The evening before this interview, he had missed watching Chelsea’s Champions League defeat by Barcelona to launch a new Tottenham Hotspur Foundation programme that aims to help reduce levels of crime and anti-social behaviour in Haringey.

The Tottenham Hotspur Community Football League, run in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and Haringey Council, allows under-14 teams to compete every Friday evening at the Duke’s Academy in the shadow of the new Spurs stadium. Dele was mobbed by teenagers at the event while he posed for photographs, signed autographs and talked to the organisers and those who will benefit from the project.


“Playing for Tottenham in the Premier League, you get a lot of opportunities to help out other people and, for such a good cause, it was definitely worth going to,” said Dele.

On the subject of how he has acclimatised to being a hero to so many youngsters, he added: “You grow into it. At the start, it was a bit crazy, but now I am used to it and it’s all about giving something back.

“Like I said, we as players have such a great opportunity to help people and make a big impact. I think it is important you don’t hide from it and do as much as you can.

“This new league the club is running is a brilliant way of getting young people from the area to play sport and meet friends in a safe environment.”

Despite his willingness to help others, Dele acknowledges he is not always an angel on the pitch and laughs at the suggestion he has become a pantomime villain among opposition supporters.

His determination to stand up for himself almost cost him his big break at Milton Keynes Dons, but a lower-league grounding against older opponents gave him the perfect platform to grow up fast.


“I was playing in an under-10s team and one of the managers worked at MK as well, so they asked me to go down and train,” said Dele.

“I remember my first session, they said they were playing Chelsea. I’d only ever seen Chelsea on Match of the Day. But MK’s academy were going to play Chelsea’s academy at Stamford Bridge and they would not let me go as I had only trained once.

“So, because of that I left and went back to playing for my Sunday league team.

“Then, a year later, MK asked me to come back and trial for their under-11s. But, in the end, they said I could sign without having to trial.

“Obviously, everyone takes different routes, there’s no right or wrong pathway to becoming a professional. But being at MK gave me the opportunity to play first-team football against men.

“I preferred that, it’s something I had done since I was younger. Even when I was a kid playing on the streets or on the estate, I was always playing against older people. I always wanted to test myself as much as I could. MK was the perfect place to do that.”

There was an early sign of the devilment in Dele’s play, when, in one of his first Tottenham appearances in a pre-season tournament, he nutmegged former Spurs midfielder Luka Modric while playing against Real Madrid.

Since then, his development and rise has been meteoric. Before turning 21 last April, Dele had chalked up more goals and assists than Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Paul Scholes and Cristiano Ronaldo at the same age.


Dele scored his 10th goal of this season against Bournemouth last weekend and is now only eight short of chalking up his half century in all competitions for Spurs.

“I feel like I’ve been playing for a long time now, but I think a lot happened to me really quickly,” said Dele. “There’s moments where you step back and think ‘how can this have happened to me?’

“I’ve been working for it since I was a kid and there’s been a lot of decisions I’ve had to make, and it’s all been to do this and put myself in this position.

“I wouldn’t say I was surprised, I’m confident in my ability, maybe I was surprised by how quickly it happened, but it’s always been my aim and I’ll keep working hard to achieve even more.”

With the highs have understandably come some lows. Red cards in key games against West Bromwich Albion and Gent, England’s European Championship failure, the middle-finger salute that earned him an international ban and, most lately, accusations of being a diver.

“Nobody wants to be labelled as a cheat,” said Dele. “It’s an opinion and everyone has a different opinion. I get into the box a lot and round the box, and I’m an attacking player and I get fouled a lot.

“There are some that look bad. It’s different when you are in the action.


“The one at Crystal Palace, that’s the one I saw a lot of reaction to. I was running through and, at the time, all was going through my head was that I didn’t want to step on the keeper. But when you watch it back and people start saying things, it can look a lot different.

“That’s why I think it’s important that players, not just about diving, about other stuff too, that you don’t get too involved in it and just focus on what you are doing and listen to the opinions of the people you trust.

“I think we live in a world now where everyone has a chance to have an opinion and with social media, everyone’s opinion can be seen and it’s important that I don’t get drawn into that, don’t look at it, don’t read it or start to believe what people say about me.

“I am 21 and you do some dumb things sometimes, and it’s all part of learning and improving, and turning into a good person and that’s what I want to achieve.”

What will make Dele even happier is to win his first piece of silverware with Tottenham, who face Swansea City in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup tomorrow.


Having gone close in the Cup and in the Premier League, he now wants to go all the way.

“We all want to win trophies and to achieve something as a team,” said Dele.

“There is no point coming so close like we have the last two years, you know second place almost feels as bad as finishing bottom. You want to win, so I think we need to.”
 
The result of this doesn't bother me one bit, as polls mean absolutely fuck all other than partizan support clicking on an option that supports their partizan wants. But it does show just how he is viewed by rival fans, he's last in the list, even Rashford, a player that can't even get off the bench in a mediocre side and has scored far, far less than Dele whilst playing as an out and out attacker. Anyway the poll proves just who fucking good he is:
 
Suck on them limes, haters! Just look at the stats!

Is Tottenham's Dele Alli the best young player in the world?
And anyone backing Mpappe (who is fantastic player) this is what his own team mate thinks of the League in which they play: Rabiot said: "It’s all well and good putting eight goals past Dijon, but it’s in matches like this that you have to stand up and be counted." This came after the defeat to Real Madrid, highly significant on two fronts 1) Mpappe's performance was shit and draw huge criticism 2) We played Real and beat them in commanding fashion, MoTM in that victory was Dele.
 
And anyone backing Mpappe (who is fantastic player) this is what his own team mate thinks of the League in which they play: Rabiot said: "It’s all well and good putting eight goals past Dijon, but it’s in matches like this that you have to stand up and be counted." This came after the defeat to Real Madrid, highly significant on two fronts 1) Mpappe's performance was shit and draw huge criticism 2) We played Real and beat them in commanding fashion, MoTM in that victory was Dele.
This. Dele is a phenomenal player. £100m+ no problem. He’s a chippy fkr so easy for oppo fans to dislike I guess
 
It is just minutes before Dele Alli is due to arrive for his first extended newspaper interview as a Tottenham Hotspur player, when Mauricio Pochettino walks up the stairs at the club’s Enfield training base. “You’re here for Dele?” asks the Tottenham manager. “You know, I just said he’s the best 21-year-old footballer in the world.”

And with that, Pochettino, who made the claim in his weekly press conference, disappears through the double doors that Dele, as he wishes to be called, soon breezes through with a wide grin.

Dele is polite, relaxed and articulate, and quickly offers up an insight into the humble beginnings from which he developed into one of the best young footballers on the planet.

Growing up in the Bradwell area of Milton Keynes meant Dele could take little for granted – particularly money – and, describing how he got into football, the England international said: “From under-nine to under-11, I played in a Sunday league. Before that, there was this scheme where you had to pay £1 to train and I used to do that. But I wasn’t able to pay it and in the end they let me do it for free.”

When it was put to Dele that money must have been incredibly tight, he added: “It was. When you come from where I came from, there were a lot more important things to spend a pound on than football training. Obviously, for me at the time, I thought it was all that mattered.


“But for families who are struggling, it’s not the case. They need a lot of support. But when you are nine or 10, maybe the vision of your parents isn’t the same as what it is for you.

“There is a lot of pressure on the parents with a kid who wants to become a professional footballer. There is a lot of responsibility, having to drive them around everywhere.”

Asked which football boots he wore during his formative years, Dele said: “I thought they were nice! I was lucky. When I was young, I had quite big feet, so the older lads in the area used to give me their hand-me-down boots. They looked after me.”

His upbringing perhaps explains why Dele feels a keen responsibility to give something back. The evening before this interview, he had missed watching Chelsea’s Champions League defeat by Barcelona to launch a new Tottenham Hotspur Foundation programme that aims to help reduce levels of crime and anti-social behaviour in Haringey.

The Tottenham Hotspur Community Football League, run in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and Haringey Council, allows under-14 teams to compete every Friday evening at the Duke’s Academy in the shadow of the new Spurs stadium. Dele was mobbed by teenagers at the event while he posed for photographs, signed autographs and talked to the organisers and those who will benefit from the project.


“Playing for Tottenham in the Premier League, you get a lot of opportunities to help out other people and, for such a good cause, it was definitely worth going to,” said Dele.

On the subject of how he has acclimatised to being a hero to so many youngsters, he added: “You grow into it. At the start, it was a bit crazy, but now I am used to it and it’s all about giving something back.

“Like I said, we as players have such a great opportunity to help people and make a big impact. I think it is important you don’t hide from it and do as much as you can.

“This new league the club is running is a brilliant way of getting young people from the area to play sport and meet friends in a safe environment.”

Despite his willingness to help others, Dele acknowledges he is not always an angel on the pitch and laughs at the suggestion he has become a pantomime villain among opposition supporters.

His determination to stand up for himself almost cost him his big break at Milton Keynes Dons, but a lower-league grounding against older opponents gave him the perfect platform to grow up fast.


“I was playing in an under-10s team and one of the managers worked at MK as well, so they asked me to go down and train,” said Dele.

“I remember my first session, they said they were playing Chelsea. I’d only ever seen Chelsea on Match of the Day. But MK’s academy were going to play Chelsea’s academy at Stamford Bridge and they would not let me go as I had only trained once.

“So, because of that I left and went back to playing for my Sunday league team.

“Then, a year later, MK asked me to come back and trial for their under-11s. But, in the end, they said I could sign without having to trial.

“Obviously, everyone takes different routes, there’s no right or wrong pathway to becoming a professional. But being at MK gave me the opportunity to play first-team football against men.

“I preferred that, it’s something I had done since I was younger. Even when I was a kid playing on the streets or on the estate, I was always playing against older people. I always wanted to test myself as much as I could. MK was the perfect place to do that.”

There was an early sign of the devilment in Dele’s play, when, in one of his first Tottenham appearances in a pre-season tournament, he nutmegged former Spurs midfielder Luka Modric while playing against Real Madrid.

Since then, his development and rise has been meteoric. Before turning 21 last April, Dele had chalked up more goals and assists than Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Paul Scholes and Cristiano Ronaldo at the same age.


Dele scored his 10th goal of this season against Bournemouth last weekend and is now only eight short of chalking up his half century in all competitions for Spurs.

“I feel like I’ve been playing for a long time now, but I think a lot happened to me really quickly,” said Dele. “There’s moments where you step back and think ‘how can this have happened to me?’

“I’ve been working for it since I was a kid and there’s been a lot of decisions I’ve had to make, and it’s all been to do this and put myself in this position.

“I wouldn’t say I was surprised, I’m confident in my ability, maybe I was surprised by how quickly it happened, but it’s always been my aim and I’ll keep working hard to achieve even more.”

With the highs have understandably come some lows. Red cards in key games against West Bromwich Albion and Gent, England’s European Championship failure, the middle-finger salute that earned him an international ban and, most lately, accusations of being a diver.

“Nobody wants to be labelled as a cheat,” said Dele. “It’s an opinion and everyone has a different opinion. I get into the box a lot and round the box, and I’m an attacking player and I get fouled a lot.

“There are some that look bad. It’s different when you are in the action.


“The one at Crystal Palace, that’s the one I saw a lot of reaction to. I was running through and, at the time, all was going through my head was that I didn’t want to step on the keeper. But when you watch it back and people start saying things, it can look a lot different.

“That’s why I think it’s important that players, not just about diving, about other stuff too, that you don’t get too involved in it and just focus on what you are doing and listen to the opinions of the people you trust.

“I think we live in a world now where everyone has a chance to have an opinion and with social media, everyone’s opinion can be seen and it’s important that I don’t get drawn into that, don’t look at it, don’t read it or start to believe what people say about me.

“I am 21 and you do some dumb things sometimes, and it’s all part of learning and improving, and turning into a good person and that’s what I want to achieve.”

What will make Dele even happier is to win his first piece of silverware with Tottenham, who face Swansea City in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup tomorrow.


Having gone close in the Cup and in the Premier League, he now wants to go all the way.

“We all want to win trophies and to achieve something as a team,” said Dele.

“There is no point coming so close like we have the last two years, you know second place almost feels as bad as finishing bottom. You want to win, so I think we need to.”


Great PR for Dele this. Some normalisation shown to fans of football. Shows that he's just a normal kid with a natural born talent. The cheat stuff will subside and he will start to be revered as a more mature player with his old self cast off in a few years time. here preferably.
 
IlgQUyn.jpg


Sell
 
And anyone backing Mpappe (who is fantastic player) this is what his own team mate thinks of the League in which they play: Rabiot said: "It’s all well and good putting eight goals past Dijon, but it’s in matches like this that you have to stand up and be counted." This came after the defeat to Real Madrid, highly significant on two fronts 1) Mpappe's performance was shit and draw huge criticism 2) We played Real and beat them in commanding fashion, MoTM in that victory was Dele.
That was a dig at Neymar.
 
Alli on course to beat own sprint record
23 Mar 2018

Alli.jpg

Spurs midfielder has made most sprints this season


Dele Alli is on course to make the most sprints by a player in a Premier League season.

Analysis of tracking data from Premier League matches this season show that the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder has pushed himself into top gear on 2,163 occasions this season.

Alli on course to beat own sprint record

Alli is also top of the rankings for the most sprints recorded in a season. No player has matched the 2,621 sprints he made last term since this data was first recorded five seasons ago.

If he maintains his current average of 72 sprints per match across his final eight fixtures, he would beat his own overall record.

Most sprints in a PL season
2017/18
Sprints Since 2013/14 Sprints
Alli
2,163 Alli 2,621
Doucoure 1,988 Boyd 2,587
Firmino 1,942 Arfield 2,532
J. Ayew 1,908 Clyne 2,522
Allen 1,852 Firmino 2,497
Bellerin 1,850 Lallana 2,455
Richarlison 1,829 Sigurdsson 2,408
Eriksen 1,761 Boyd 2,359
Rodriguez 1,719 Coleman 2,265
Townsend 1,686 Giroud 2,243
 
It is just minutes before Dele Alli is due to arrive for his first extended newspaper interview as a Tottenham Hotspur player, when Mauricio Pochettino walks up the stairs at the club’s Enfield training base. “You’re here for Dele?” asks the Tottenham manager. “You know, I just said he’s the best 21-year-old footballer in the world.”

And with that, Pochettino, who made the claim in his weekly press conference, disappears through the double doors that Dele, as he wishes to be called, soon breezes through with a wide grin.

Dele is polite, relaxed and articulate, and quickly offers up an insight into the humble beginnings from which he developed into one of the best young footballers on the planet.

Growing up in the Bradwell area of Milton Keynes meant Dele could take little for granted – particularly money – and, describing how he got into football, the England international said: “From under-nine to under-11, I played in a Sunday league. Before that, there was this scheme where you had to pay £1 to train and I used to do that. But I wasn’t able to pay it and in the end they let me do it for free.”

When it was put to Dele that money must have been incredibly tight, he added: “It was. When you come from where I came from, there were a lot more important things to spend a pound on than football training. Obviously, for me at the time, I thought it was all that mattered.


“But for families who are struggling, it’s not the case. They need a lot of support. But when you are nine or 10, maybe the vision of your parents isn’t the same as what it is for you.

“There is a lot of pressure on the parents with a kid who wants to become a professional footballer. There is a lot of responsibility, having to drive them around everywhere.”

Asked which football boots he wore during his formative years, Dele said: “I thought they were nice! I was lucky. When I was young, I had quite big feet, so the older lads in the area used to give me their hand-me-down boots. They looked after me.”

His upbringing perhaps explains why Dele feels a keen responsibility to give something back. The evening before this interview, he had missed watching Chelsea’s Champions League defeat by Barcelona to launch a new Tottenham Hotspur Foundation programme that aims to help reduce levels of crime and anti-social behaviour in Haringey.

The Tottenham Hotspur Community Football League, run in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and Haringey Council, allows under-14 teams to compete every Friday evening at the Duke’s Academy in the shadow of the new Spurs stadium. Dele was mobbed by teenagers at the event while he posed for photographs, signed autographs and talked to the organisers and those who will benefit from the project.


“Playing for Tottenham in the Premier League, you get a lot of opportunities to help out other people and, for such a good cause, it was definitely worth going to,” said Dele.

On the subject of how he has acclimatised to being a hero to so many youngsters, he added: “You grow into it. At the start, it was a bit crazy, but now I am used to it and it’s all about giving something back.

“Like I said, we as players have such a great opportunity to help people and make a big impact. I think it is important you don’t hide from it and do as much as you can.

“This new league the club is running is a brilliant way of getting young people from the area to play sport and meet friends in a safe environment.”

Despite his willingness to help others, Dele acknowledges he is not always an angel on the pitch and laughs at the suggestion he has become a pantomime villain among opposition supporters.

His determination to stand up for himself almost cost him his big break at Milton Keynes Dons, but a lower-league grounding against older opponents gave him the perfect platform to grow up fast.


“I was playing in an under-10s team and one of the managers worked at MK as well, so they asked me to go down and train,” said Dele.

“I remember my first session, they said they were playing Chelsea. I’d only ever seen Chelsea on Match of the Day. But MK’s academy were going to play Chelsea’s academy at Stamford Bridge and they would not let me go as I had only trained once.

“So, because of that I left and went back to playing for my Sunday league team.

“Then, a year later, MK asked me to come back and trial for their under-11s. But, in the end, they said I could sign without having to trial.

“Obviously, everyone takes different routes, there’s no right or wrong pathway to becoming a professional. But being at MK gave me the opportunity to play first-team football against men.

“I preferred that, it’s something I had done since I was younger. Even when I was a kid playing on the streets or on the estate, I was always playing against older people. I always wanted to test myself as much as I could. MK was the perfect place to do that.”

There was an early sign of the devilment in Dele’s play, when, in one of his first Tottenham appearances in a pre-season tournament, he nutmegged former Spurs midfielder Luka Modric while playing against Real Madrid.

Since then, his development and rise has been meteoric. Before turning 21 last April, Dele had chalked up more goals and assists than Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Paul Scholes and Cristiano Ronaldo at the same age.


Dele scored his 10th goal of this season against Bournemouth last weekend and is now only eight short of chalking up his half century in all competitions for Spurs.

“I feel like I’ve been playing for a long time now, but I think a lot happened to me really quickly,” said Dele. “There’s moments where you step back and think ‘how can this have happened to me?’

“I’ve been working for it since I was a kid and there’s been a lot of decisions I’ve had to make, and it’s all been to do this and put myself in this position.

“I wouldn’t say I was surprised, I’m confident in my ability, maybe I was surprised by how quickly it happened, but it’s always been my aim and I’ll keep working hard to achieve even more.”

With the highs have understandably come some lows. Red cards in key games against West Bromwich Albion and Gent, England’s European Championship failure, the middle-finger salute that earned him an international ban and, most lately, accusations of being a diver.

“Nobody wants to be labelled as a cheat,” said Dele. “It’s an opinion and everyone has a different opinion. I get into the box a lot and round the box, and I’m an attacking player and I get fouled a lot.

“There are some that look bad. It’s different when you are in the action.


“The one at Crystal Palace, that’s the one I saw a lot of reaction to. I was running through and, at the time, all was going through my head was that I didn’t want to step on the keeper. But when you watch it back and people start saying things, it can look a lot different.

“That’s why I think it’s important that players, not just about diving, about other stuff too, that you don’t get too involved in it and just focus on what you are doing and listen to the opinions of the people you trust.

“I think we live in a world now where everyone has a chance to have an opinion and with social media, everyone’s opinion can be seen and it’s important that I don’t get drawn into that, don’t look at it, don’t read it or start to believe what people say about me.

“I am 21 and you do some dumb things sometimes, and it’s all part of learning and improving, and turning into a good person and that’s what I want to achieve.”

What will make Dele even happier is to win his first piece of silverware with Tottenham, who face Swansea City in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup tomorrow.


Having gone close in the Cup and in the Premier League, he now wants to go all the way.

“We all want to win trophies and to achieve something as a team,” said Dele.

“There is no point coming so close like we have the last two years, you know second place almost feels as bad as finishing bottom. You want to win, so I think we need to.”
I hate these monosyllybic one-word answers from young footballers today!
It wasn't so long ago, that you coulda fit that interview on a postage stamp...

Nowadays, it's longer than 'War & Peace'!
 
I hate these monosyllybic one-word answers from young footballers today!
It wasn't so long ago, that you coulda fit that interview on a postage stamp...

Nowadays, it's longer than 'War & Peace'!
Didn't know whether to give you a "like", "agree" or "funny". so closed my eyes and hit.
 
Is this a snub by Southgate playing Lingard over Alli for a second time? Are we expecting him to be a starter once Kane returns for England at the WC?

If pundits are anything to go by his relationship with Kane is the main reason to play him.

:pochfacepalm:
 
He dives, I've absolutely no problem in saying this, I am at complete peace with it. If he's booked for doing it, good well spotted by the ref. If he gets away with it, good, lets lose our shit celebrating Harry's converted pen.
I dont view as any worse than claiming a corner when you know you touched it last.
If people want to make a fuss about cheating, fine.
but then make a fuss about all the cheating, not selected bits of it
 
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