The dramatic rise and fall of Dele Alli: From English football’s next big thing to a failed loan spell in Turkey with a hippy crack controversy and being held at knife point in between… the troubled ex-Spurs star has had a rollercoaster career
- Dele Alli burst onto the scene with Spurs scoring 10 goals in his debut season
- He was pictured surrounded by nitrous oxide canisters and booze in April
- Arsenal icon Ray Parlour tells Dele to take back control of his future career
For most football fans, Dele Alli is a name that elicits perhaps a greater sense of frustration than most in England’s long history of producing world-class talent.
From a young age, Dele had huge potential and appeared to make the step up with greater ease than any of his peers. He seemed destined to go further than any English player had gone in a long time.
But as meteoric as his rise has been, his fall has been almost as breath-taking. As suddenly as he burst onto the scene at Tottenham in 2015-16, he swiftly and inexplicably fell from grace.
He took the Premier League by storm at just 19, becoming one of the most highly-valued midfielders in the world within a few short years, but now, eight years later, he is scarcely recognisable as the same player.
It begs the question – what happened to Dele, and why is the midfielder now being pictured with laughing gas canisters and booze as he returns to England on the back of a desperately poor season with Besiktas, injured and with his career seemingly dangling dangerously over a precipice?
Dele Alli caught the eye of England’s top clubs after a stunning season at MK Dons as a teenager
He rose to prominence with Tottenham and was at one point among the most highly-valued midfielders in the world
By 2018 he had become a crucial part of Gareth Southgate’s England squad and starred at the 2018 World Cup in Russia
Dele was seen with a balloon in his mouth in a photo that circulated on social media in April after his season was curtailed by injury
Dele spent his youth career at League One outfit MK Dons, working his way into the first team in July 2013 aged 17, before drawing the attentions of teams much higher up the pyramid.
At 19, and after just a season and a half in the third-tier, he was proving himself a cut above the rest as he scored 16 and made nine assists. He was comfortably MK Dons’ best player on the way to Championship promotion.
But it wasn’t in the second-tier that his immediate future lay, and Tottenham snapped up the teenager for an initial £5million to bring him to the Premier League in February 2015, loaning him back for the rest of the season.
Rather than look a fish out of water, this unknown youngster turned up in the greatest division in the world and came a whisker away from reaching double digits for both goals and assists (10 and nine).
In his early days at Tottenham, he was scarcely seen without a smile, and his fearless play epitomised this. Dele was not only embarrassing and taunting grown adults and veterans of the game, but he was doing so with evident enjoyment, and the results spoke for themselves – his outrageous volley against Crystal Palace in January the best example of this.
It was in the second half of his dazzling debut season in 2016 that he met Ruby Mae, who he would spend the next five years with in a relationship that has been described as ‘turbulent’, but would prove a formative period in the player’s life as he turned from a teenager into a young man.
Few would have guessed it, but his personal life was not always filled with the evident glee shown with the ball at his feet early on in his career.
Dele’s childhood was a difficult one, and one that he has been unwilling to talk about in the past, with reported instability in his formative years. Born Bamidele Jermaine Alli, his mother, Denise and his father, Kehinde, split when he was three years old.
The midfielder met Ruby Mae (pictured) in 2016, and the pair would share a turbulent five-year relationship
Dele had three siblings growing up including sister Barbara Johnson (R), with his mother having four children with different partners
The Everton midfielder has not spoken to his mother Denise since 2015 and moved in with his friend Harry when he was 13
He was born to a mother who had four children with four different partners, and Denise has previously described his upbringing as ‘rough’. Dele himself has admitted that he fell in with ‘the wrong crowd’ when he was growing up as a youth in Milton Keynes.
Dele Alli’s stats per season
2014-15, MK Dons – 44 games, 16 goals, 11 assists
2015-16, Tottenham – 46 games, 10 goals, 11 assists
2016-17 – 50 games, 22 goals, 13 assists
2017-18 – 50 games, 14 goals, 17 assists
2018-19 – 38 games, seven goals, eight assists
2019-20 – 38 games, nine goals, six assists
2020-21 – 29 games, three goals, five assists
2021-22, Tottenham/Everton – 29 games, two goals, one assist
2022-23, Everton/Besiktas – 17 games, three goals, no assists
‘I got into the wrong crowd from an early age,’ he told the Evening Standard in 2018.
‘Football was a great distraction from the path I was heading down. I’m very lucky to have met people who helped through the hardest of times and have helped me grow into the person I am today.’
Dele spent time living with his millionaire father in Nigeria, in a 10-room mansion attending a private school and waited on by three maids, before returning to his mum aged 11 after his father remarried and moved to Houston, Texas.
His prodigious football talent was quickly spotted and he began training with MK Dons five days a week, and moved in with team-mate Harry Hickford’s family. They never formally adopted Dele, but he spent his formative teenage years with the Hickfords, who would later travel to Russia in support of the player at the 2018 World Cup.
Denise has claimed that allowing Dele to do so was born out of convenience, as it allowed him to get to training with greater ease. It has also been reported that she struggled with alcoholism.
She told MailOnline in 2018 that she had not spoken to her son since 2015, when the pair briefly reconciled, and that both her and her ex-husband had been desperate for contact with Dele, although the player was unwilling at the time.
The 2015-16 season saw Dele flourish, snatching his opportunity with two hands and earning himself a first England call-up, as well as the coveted PFA Young Player of the Season award, but there began to arise glimpses of the disciplinary issues that would later emerge.
At just 19 years of age, Dele was showing himself to be a cut above the rest in League One
The future Tottenham star moved in with close friend and MK Dons team-mate Harry Hickford in 2013
Dele was spotted punching West Brom’s Claudio Yacob in the stomach in 2016, which effectively ended his campaign
Dele ended the 2015-16 campaign by winning the PFA Young Player of the Year award
The midfielder finished his stunning first season in the top-flight with 10 goals and nine assists
During a game against West Brom in April 2016, he punched Baggies midfielder Claudio Yacob in the stomach in an off-the-ball incident.
It was not flagged during the game, but he was retrospectively handed a ban that effectively ended his season with three games to go, while also highlighting that although his skill on the ball was undeniable, he still had plenty of growing to do as far as his temperament was concerned.
At the end of the campaign, this impressive, fearless youngster made another statement, dropping the surname Alli from his shirt. The player has said he felt no affinity with the name.
The next two seasons at Spurs saw Dele continue to flourish both domestically and internationally, in an exponential rise to prominence in the English game, with another 36 goals and 30 assists in 100 games for Tottenham – as well as a second successive PFA Young Player of the Season award.
By his 21st birthday, he had amassed more goals and assists than each of Cristiano Ronaldo, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes and David Beckham had at the same age in the top-flight.
If ever an indicator of his potential were needed, then this was surely it.
And as his stock increased exponentially on the field, so it did off the field. In May 2018, the then-22-year-old released a 74-piece collection in partnership with Manchester-based fashion company Boohoo. Dele’s status was now rising beyond that of a talented youngster, and he was beginning to assert himself as a big name within the broader English cultural sphere.
By the time the 2018 World Cup came along, Dele was valued at £88million (€100m) according to player value aggregator Transfermarkt, and had become one of Gareth Southgate’s most trusted figures in a young Three Lions squad.
Dele Alli’s Premier League goals contribution record after reaching 21 years old was superior to Frank Lampard (left) Cristiano Ronaldo (centre) and Steven Gerrard (right)
Under the management of Mauricio Pochettino, Dele hit the best form of his career
In 2018 Dele released a 74-piece collection in partnership with Manchester-based fashion label Boohoo
The Spurs star scored in England’s quarter-final win over Sweden and played every minute of their last-four clash with Croatia, but was unable to get England over the line as they suffered semi-final heartbreak.
Another season with Spurs began poorly, with the 22-year-old picking up the first of five injury issues that would hamper his campaign and plague his form.
Although Tottenham reached a first ever Champions League final, it would be Dele’s worst season in the famous white shirt, and if disciplinary issues were being hinted at before, they were creeping more and more into the fore.
Dele began to gain a reputation for petulance and the darker arts of the game – Gary Lineker famously dubbed him ‘Divey Alli’ – and he finished a season punctuated with injuries on just five goals and three assists in the Premier League.
With things not going so well on the pitch, the demands of a rising profile began to tell, with a row reportedly over upgrading to a £3,000-a-night penthouse with staff at London’s May Fair hotel grabbing the headlines in November 2018.
A bystander filmed the confrontation, with the star heard saying: ‘Fourteen grand. Think I’ll put up with any of this s**t?
‘What are you going to do for me? I’m just . . . but I’ve got a room here tonight.’
Reports at the time suggested that the player – and England colleague Ross Barkley who accompanied him in the five star hotel – was inebriated at 5am, which may have played some part in the outburst.
The then-Tottenham midfielder was branded ‘Divey Alli’ by club legend and broadcasting giant Gary Lineker
Dele’s girlfriend Mae travelled to Russia for the 2018 World Cup to show her support for her partner
With England he played a major role in their march to the 2018 World Cup semi-final, including scoring a header in the quarter-final victory over Sweden in Samara
Dele was supported in Russia by the Hickford family, with whom he moved in when he was 13 years old, as well as his girlfriend Mae
Two members of staff were seen talking with Dele Alli in the foyer of the five star hotel
By the end of 2018-19, the now-23-year-old midfielder began to look tired, with the break bringing a much-needed rest for a player that had suffered repeated injuries in a long campaign, particularly to his hamstrings.
But rather than put an end to the brief downward trajectory an otherwise stellar rise to the top had thrown up, the new season would see Dele’s stock take its biggest hit so far – one that he still has not recovered from.
That summer he played for England once again, winning his 37th cap in a UEFA Nations League clash with Switzerland on June 9 2019. It remains his last appearance for his country.
His poor form continued for Tottenham – a change of manager briefly hinting at a return to supremacy for Dele after three goals and as many assists in Jose Mourinho’s first four games in charge, but it would not be sustained.
And once again, his slump on the pitch was matched by repeated issues in his personal life, as the star’s downfall began in earnest.
In February 2020, as the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic across the world began to accelerate, the star was caught in another high-profile incident, in which he posted a video appearing to mock a man of Asian descent, captioned: ‘Corona whatttttt, please listen with volume.’
The video saw Alli wearing a mask while appearing to feign concern. It also showed a bottle of handwash, accompanied by the caption: ‘This virus gunna have to be quicker than that to catch me.’
He would later apologise for the video, which he described as a ‘poorly-judged joke’, but was handed a huge £50,000 fine and a one-game suspension four months later.
After being subbed at Stoke in a December 2020 League Cup tie, Dele kicked out in anger at a drinks bottle as he fell down the pecking order at the club
Despite a positive start, Dele soon started to struggle under Jose Mourinho at Tottenham
The 2018-19 season saw Dele constantly sidelined with five injuries throughout the campaign
The midfielder’s 37th – and to date final – appearance for England came in June 2019 in a UEFA Nations League defeat to Switzerland
He would later apologise for the video, which he described as a ‘poorly-judged joke’, but was handed a huge £50,000 fine and a one-game suspension four months later
Some issues Dele could have played no part in. He and his girlfriend Mae – from whom he briefly split in 2019 before reconciling – were robbed at knifepoint in his own home in May 2020.
The now-24-year-old Dele was thumped in the face in the traumatic burglary, as two males wearing balaclavas broke into the back of his north London property before threatening the Spurs star — who was at the time isolating with his adoptive-brother Harry, their two partners and a long-term friend.
The burglars plundered various items, including watches and jewellery, although the emotional and psychological damage to all involved is surely beyond any valuation.
The end of a disrupted and delayed 2019-20 season brought a close to what was ultimately another disappointing campaign for Dele personally, with eight goals and four assists, and although the player was now only 24 fears were beginning to arise that his downturn would not be arrested.
That summer, Dele furthered his reputation as something of a party boy as he was pictured with Jack Grealish basking in the Ibiza sun, drink in hand as he took a break from the unrelenting pressures of Premier League football – but things at Tottenham only worsened in the new season.
The 2020-21 campaign – his last full season with the club – saw him fail to score a single goal in the Premier League for the first time, making just 15 appearances.
He would also split with Mae for good in February 2021, with friends at the time blaming the footballer’s ‘good-time nature’ and his dedication to the video game Fortnite.
After the end of his turbulent long-term relationship, Dele was seen seemingly on dates with several women including Maria Guardiola, daughter of Manchester City boss Pep, and model Nicole Hall.
Dele and girlfriend Mae were held at knifepoint and punched after robbers broke into his house
Two males broke into the back of Dele’s north London property just after midnight – where his brother, Harry, was also staying
Dele spent time with partner Mae and fellow footballers such as Jack Grealish in Ibiza in 2020
He and Mae split up in 2021 after a turbulent five-year relationship – allegedly due to him playing the video game Fortnite too much
Dele Alli is no stranger to Twitch, but he started playing a new game: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 in 2018
After breaking up with Mae he began dating Maria Guardiola, daughter of Manchester City manager Pep
Despite desperately struggling for form, and falling down the pecking order at the club, he would survive Mourinho and Nuno Espirito Santo, before being sold on to Everton under Antonio Conte in early 2022 on a free transfer.
The club had run out of patience with a player that had promised so much, and ultimately delivered comparatively little. Between Pochettino’s exit and his own departure 26 months later, Alli managed just 75 games, 12 goals and 12 assists.
A move away from Tottenham was touted as a route back to the top, but the player started just once in a woefully forgettable spell at Goodison Park.
The relatively inexperienced hand of Frank Lampard was not one best-suited to guiding him back to the peak of his powers, and he was quickly sent packing to Turkey and Besiktas.
But not after meeting Cindy Kimberley, famously Justin Bieber’s one-time crush in 2015, and ex-girlfriend of American rapper Tyga. The two remain together, with pictures of them emerging on holiday in June 2022.
Perhaps further distance from a league in which he had fallen so dramatically from grace was intended to trigger a rejuvenation, but once again in his up-and-down career, a goal in just his second game proved to be a false dawn.
It was not for want of trying, though. Besiktas sporting director Ceyhun Kazanci claimed that Dele was ‘working intensively’ in training, but admitted there was no answer as to why he was not able to repeat the heroics he had shown on such a regular basis early on in his career. He was axed from the first team by March.
The one-time England star’s struggles were not bound solely to the English top-flight, apparently, and three goals and just 15 games later he returned to Everton with his season cut mercifully short with a hip injury.
Following Spurs managers including Antonio Conte (above) couldn’t help him recapture form
Dele endured a miserable time at Everton since joining the club at the start of 2022 before leaving on loan
The midfielder then began dating Cindy Kimberley – a notable former crush of Justin Bieber – in 2022
But the season was far from over for Dele. Within days of returning to Everton the now infamous picture of the player, surrounded by giant bottles of nitrous oxide. booze and Siberia ‘extremely strong’ snus surfaced.
While possession of laughing gas is not currently illegal, Home Secretary Suella Braverman wants to introduce new laws banning it entirely for all but legitimate uses after rising concern over its health effects and links to anti-social behaviour.
If Everton supporters – and indeed all fans of the sport – held any hope that the young man that had once promised so much would come good at Goodison, then this surely tempered any expectations.
It remains to be seen what the immediate future holds for Dele at Everton, in the wake of this most recent, and perhaps most damaging, incident in his turbulent personal life.
His is a talent that not many possess, but unfortunately for the now-27-year-old midfielder, he has also had to endure experiences that few of his peers have ever been put through, especially at such a young age.
He returns to Everton with a year still left on his contract, but finds himself at a completely different club than the one he joined, and that will give him hope.
Dele finds Sean Dyche, one of the biggest personalities and best man-managers in the English game, at the helm – an infamous disciplinarian, and demanding boss that makes no exception for any of his charges.
If any are to push Dele to a turnaround, then he likely has a better chance than most, but the former Burnley boss is not one to waste his energy on a player that does not buy into his philosophy, and really honestly want to work under him.
And Dyche has wasted little time in suggesting just that for the player, suggesting that he is keen to get back on the pitch.
The ex-Tottenham star failed to impress at Besiktas and was later axed from the first-team squad by March 2023
Sean Dyche is now in charge at Everton, with the infamous disciplinarian well-placed to demand more from Dele
‘I just got a sense that he wants to be back playing football and playing well,’ Dyche said, as reported by the Times.
‘A decision will be made over the next few days over which way to go. There’s two ways of dealing with it: naturally or you can do the operation and there’s a debate on which suits which person.
‘There isn’t anything other than getting him fit. I’ve heard all the noise, I’ve heard all the opinions and I’m pretty sure that you’re aware that I like to make my own.
‘Some of the stuff that has been reported, he is 27. Like most footballers they know certain things, what they should and shouldn’t be doing.
‘At the end of the day as a manager, forgetting about Everton, you can’t control everything they do in their lives. You can only guide people with what you think it good for them and eventually players have choices. We recommend they make good choices of course.
‘He’s factually injured. He’s come back with a proper injury that’s going to take some time to get sorted out, so he’ll use that period wisely, I hope.’
Dele has received a lot of heat since arriving in Turkey but he has vowed not to give up, claiming that football ‘saved him’
Dele’s time in Besiktas did little to quell fears his decline could not be halted. In fact, concerns increased
Dele is at a crossroads at Everton and has the opportunity to turn his career around and arrest the slide that has dogged his last few seasons
Dele is now at a true crossroads in his career. He is 27, with almost a decade left ahead of him of his playing days, and more than enough time to make up for the last few seasons of footballing anonymity, provided he wants to that is.
If his latest antics portray anything, it is that he is a young man in need of help and guidance, at a time when he is fast becoming his own worst enemy, and the Toffees must lend him their support if they are to nurture him back to his best.
The consensus that his career is now over seems a harsh one. Dele’s rise was prodigal. His fall from grace staggering.
But that is not to say that this 27-year-old man with his whole life still ahead of him cannot rise once more, and prove wrong the doubters that have circled him since he first made his Tottenham debut, eight long years ago.
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