Superstar or cheat? That’s the real question we should be asking ourselves on England and Tottenham player Dele Alli.
Since his debut season in 2015, fans and pundits alike have called him the next ‘Gareth Bale’, ranting and raving about a player who scored 10 Premier League goals in his first season.
However whilst other people sit back and praise him to high heaven, I am left bemused trying to figure out what it is they actually see.
Without a doubt, Alli in my opinion is the most arrogant player to have ever graced a Premier League football pitch, and that’s an accomplishment Alli won’t want to have alongside his 2016 PFA Young Player of the Year award. Unlike United star Ibrahimović being arrogant in a funny and confident way, Alli takes arrogance in football to a whole new level. Alli mistakes being confident, with being hypocritical. He’s a diver who hates it when other people dive. He can do it, but can’t take it and he’s a prime example of players blighting a sport we all know and love.
If a player who cheats can’t accept it when other people play dirty, then I have no respect for them at all. Alli can’t expect to play like he is above the laws of football and then accuse other players of cheating when he feels like it. He plays to win fouls and plays the game always looking for that chance to trick a referee.
Within the last three Premier league seasons alone, Dele Alli has racked up a disgraceful 13 yellow cards along with a total of 113 fouls.
Out of those 13 yellow cards only a few have been as a result of diving in the box, meaning he is not only cheating but succeeding in doing so. He is clearly blackmailing the sport he claims to live for and it isn’t portraying him to be a good sportsman.
And yes, there is no doubt that he can score goals in what is claimed to be ‘the world’s best league’, but so could anyone if they were surrounded by a team of players as class as Tottenham. Anyone who says Alli is England’s best youngster is delusional and a supporter of his sporting crimes. Alli’s only talent is his talent to pull off a believable dive and for that I feel sorry for all the mislead referees who fall for his childish habit. Then again can we call it a habit? A habit by definition is a regular tendency or practice which is hard to give up and Alli clearly shows no sign of attempting to end his vile tradition. He even deemed diving and fouling as part of his game and insisted in a recent press conference he won’t give it up, “Aggression is something that is a part of me, and I'm never going to take that out of my game”.
So all you Dele Alli fans out there, supporting a player that feels it is okay to cheat and abuse other players in a game which is labelled as non-contact think again. Is supporting a player which punches opposition team mates something you want to be recognised as being a supporter of?
Why don’t you go support another young English talent in the shape of Marcus Rashford. Despite being younger, he has a mental age far more developed than that of Alli and lets be honest, he’s in a whole other league.
And for Dele Alli himself, under all that anger and aggression of his, who knows a true footballer might exist.