Dele Alli made his debut as a pundit as part of Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football coverage this week.
The Everton midfielder watched on from the studio as his teammates were thrashed 6-0 by Chelsea to round off Gameweek 33 of this Premier League season.
After bravely admitting to struggles in his personal life and childhood last year, Dele appears to be nearing a return to football and it was great to see him back in the limelight for positive reasons.
Here’s what we learned from his appearance on Monday Night Football.
Dele grew up as a fan of Liverpool and has previously stated that Reds legend Steven Gerrard was his footballing idol.
He came through the ranks of local side Milton Keynes Dons and broke into their first-team setup as a teenager, catching the eye of England’s biggest clubs.
Though Dele would go on to sign for Tottenham Hotspur in 2015, he held talks with Liverpool over a move to Anfield as well, meeting with then-manager Brendan Rodgers.
On Monday, he said: “So after the game, Liverpool would play in West Ham, I think in London. And then I went to meet Brendan Rodgers after that game, the night before the Liverpool game, and we had a conversation, but it never happened. I felt at that time I was ready to take the next step.”
Dele signed for Spurs at the end of the January 2015 transfer window under the stipulation he would spend the rest of that season back on loan at MK Dons, who were successful in their bid to earn promotion from League One.
“I wanted to go [back to MK on loan] because I wanted to see the team get promoted,” he added. “Obviously it was my local team and we were second in the league. So I wanted to go back and try and help them finish that off. Because by that time, [I knew] I’d be definitely ready to go to the Premier League.”
If Dele had gone to Liverpool, he would have eventually been managed by Jurgen Klopp. What kind of world would that have looked like?
We can sit and imagine what Dele under Klopp would have looked like, but we know for sure he was a roaring success with Mauricio Pochettino as his manager.
Pochettino threw the midfielder straight into his first-team setup, first as a deep-lying playmaker alongside Eric Dier and then further forward off the shoulder of Harry Kane.
Dele’s highest highs came at Pochettino’s Tottenham, hitting double digits of goals three years in a row and…
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