Is this Spurs youngster growing into England’s ‘perfect’ player?

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Coming up from M.K. Dons in the January transfer window of the 2014/15 season, nobody expected Dele Alli to have a real influence on the Spurs side at least for the following few seasons. But from making his Premier League debut at Old Trafford, to an array of excellent performances that have surely guaranteed him a starting place at Euro 2016, Dele Alli has written his own fairytale into the Tottenham history books – and one that may ultimately defeat the meteoric rise of Leicester City come the end of the season.

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Dele Alli was not an undiscovered talent that Spurs bought from the depths of the lower leagues. Indeed, several scouts knew of his immense ability, with the MK Dons manager Karl Robinson saying he was the best player he’d ever seen, and that he attempted things in training that nobody had ever seen before. Before coming to Spurs, Alli had interested at least two other Premier League clubs in Aston Villa and Liverpool, but after visiting the training facilities, Alli chose Spurs. Hotspur Way then became his second home while he was injured playing for MK Dons, and this certainly played a part in him settling in so quickly at Spurs. But even from here, nobody could have fore-casted the youngster’s immense talents.

In his debut season, where he has played everywhere across the midfield in Pochettino’s 4-2-3-1, he has mustered ten goals and nine assists. To contextualise this, since Jack Wilshere last started a league game for Arsenal, Alli has arrived at Spurs, broken his goal-scoring record for the season, and now scored more Premier League goals than Wilshere ever has. Alli is blessed with stupendous technical ability; his volley scored against Stoke on Monday night is testament to this – volleying a ball coming across his body, into the far corner. The volley itself was purely natural talent; nobody learns that kind of skill in League One. It was sublime, it was ridiculous, it was unbelievable that a 20 year old could produce such a mesmerising performance when the pressure was well and truly on.

Much has been made of his ‘nasty streak’, but this itself is symptomatic of his footballing upbringing. His natural ability may not be League One standard, but his fight, his competitiveness, and his fire all originate from the lower tiers of English football. He is essentially Diego Costa, but with a cold, calculating brain. If Alli was a nasty player, he’d have a record of being sent off. As it is, he’s never been sent off in his professional career, and while he has amassed 28 bookings over four seasons, he has made over one hundred and thirty appearances for club and country – just under a booking every five games. If anything, the importance of this streak is that it is well controlled; he’s sensible and never gives off the impression he’s succumbed to his temper. Nor does it affect his play – he has terrific natural calmness on the ball, shown when, at 1-0 in a must-win game away at Stoke, he chipped the ball calmly over a helpless Shay Given to secure the second goal. Even despite ‘that’ miss, the move itself was another wonderful piece of play, having the confidence to go around Shay Given in what would have been just another goal for a Spurs team that look like the best team in the league. Leicester might well have beaten Stoke too on the night, but Spurs dominated them from start to finish, and gave them no hope of securing a comeback. At the heart of it all was the young man from Milton Keynes.

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Finally, moving away from his immense technical ability, it is vital to mention what he’s done to the squad as a whole. His relationship with Eric Dier is one that married couples envy, but this is the first amongst many – at the post-match interviews after the game on Monday night, he had shared a joke with Harry Kane – a combination which has, incidentally, been one of the most fruitful in the league all year, with Alli assisting Kane no less than seven times. He has also spoken of his utmost respect for the coach, Mauricio Pochettino on several occasions, but also revealed how the Argentine delivered the news about Alli’s first England call-up. The dynamic between coach and player is not dissimilar to that between Pochettino and Erik Lamela, in that the former is a father figure to this current crop of Spurs youngsters, and – judging from the manager’s reaction to Alli’s miss after rounding Given – no different to a father watching his son play at non-league level.

Above all, this is what’s so lovable about Dele Alli – he plays each and every game as though he was playing non-league football with ten of his best friends. He celebrates the squad’s success with the same fierceness and determination that he applies to every aspect of his game. He is, in many ways, a perfect specimen of the English game, from grass-roots to non-league to professional football. If this is what the setup produces, then long may it continue.

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