Dele Alli: A Kid More Than Ready to Be the Main Man for Tottenham and England

Football has always had a predisposition to project itself into the future. Unearthing the next big thing perennially fascinates. Until it is found, that is. Then the topic switches to what it may become. At times, it seems like young players exist in a different dimension, forever waiting for time to stop so they can catch up with their contemporaries.

Had John Logie Baird shown a prototype of the first television to a football pundit, they would probably have told him they are looking forward to seeing a Blu-ray player.

The most interesting thing about Dele Alli is not the player he might become tomorrow but the player he is today. His performance for England against Germany in Dortmund on Wednesday was full of vim, verve and no little chutzpah. It has rightly been saluted. This was no introduction, though. It was affirmation. It shouldn't have come as a surprise. He was just as good in the same fixture last year in Berlin.

Wednesday's game at Borussia Dortmund's Signal Iduna Park will be remembered as the occasion when Germany stalwart Lukas Podolski retired from the international football he was always strangely more suited to than club football. Closer to home, Wayne Rooney may have concluded Alli's performance in his absence has edged him a little closer to the same decision Podolski arrived at.

The boy is special. He may not turn 21 until April 11, but talk of his age should be no more than background noise.

Navel-gazing over whether he'll one day be good enough for Real Madrid or Barcelona is like failing to taste what's in your mouth when eating at a decent restaurant because you're too busy pondering whether it's Michelin-star quality.

Alli is arguably already the best player in the second-best team in the Premier League. This season, he has scored 15 league goals. That's only one fewer than Zlatan Ibrahimovic and one more than Sergio Aguero. Alli has managed three more goals than Eden Hazard, who plays in pretty much the same position and, were it not for N'Golo Kante, would be the overwhelming favourite to be named PFA Player of the Year.

Alli sits at the top table these days on merit. In 60 Premier League matches, he has been on the losing side just seven times.

With someone like Marcus Rashford, it's more understandable why he is occasionally discussed as though he has just learned to walk. He comes across as being as lovely a kid as he is a talent, but he's a pup. You could imagine him in an Andrex TV ad, a roll of toilet paper tangled by his feet while Jose Mourinho looks on in mock exasperation. In reality, football's Cruella de Vil would probably make him into a coat, but you get the point.

Talk about Alli is invariably tempered by mentioning the rough edges he possesses that need to be ironed out. Yet if he were 26 and in the same form, the main point of any discussion would be where he ranks among Europe's best players.

England were so in vogue in lining up with three at the back in Dortmund that the only surprise was when it emerged that the new navy away strip was the work of Nike and not Tom Ford. In adopting the Premier League formation du jour, 3-4-2-1, it felt a bit like a Happy Days episode in which Richie Cunningham turns up at Arnold's Diner sporting a leather jacket the same as Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli's.

Still, in the same way the formation has set Hazard and Pedro free at Chelsea, so it did Alli and Adam Lallana for England. There was a little of Fred and Ginger about the pair, all dainty quick feet as they intuitively made jaunty angles off one another in moving the ball with real style at times. It was almost not like watching England. Lallana nearly scored when he struck the base of the post. Alli should have scored when one effort struck goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

What's unique about Alli is how uninhibited he looks regardless of the occasion or opponent. He plays as though he could still be in League One with MK Dons—which perhaps shouldn't be surprising given it was only two years ago when he was—directing at his own tempo in the knowledge the rest of the field will be more led by him than he will them.

For the most part, Germany played at a testimonial pace, but even the likes of Toni Kroos must have noted England's No. 10 had more strut than Mick Jagger.

An apprenticeship served at the base of MK Dons' midfield has proved invaluable. Young players like Alli, who made his debut as a 16-year-old having been at the club since he was 11, are rarely trusted as the fulcrum of a side in such a key screening position. Too often, they are shunted wide into safer spots, though Paul Scholes would point to his England career as proof such a problem discriminates against talent rather than age.

Alli was given his head as a holding player, and it shines through in his play today. He possesses an innate sense of space and flow, instinctively knowing when to drive with the ball and when to move it on. You gain an understanding of how matches are mapped out by sitting in front of the play. Someone like Michael Carrick reads the game immaculately because he's so studious. He watches games while playing in them.

Starting toward the back and gradually moving forward in terms of position provides a perfect education for a footballer. Alli knows the type of runs and movement that holding midfielders dread when picking up the pieces around a No. 10 because he used to be one.

Skills Alli demonstrates in close situations are often outlandish, but they never feel ostentatious. Even when he's taking the piss, there's a certain charm to it. He carries off a nutmeg with the soft feet of a cat burglar. He could walk through coal and then a swimming pool filled with cream without leaving a footprint. It's almost as if he's trying to do it without his opponent noticing to save any hurt feelings at being hoodwinked.

Germany defender Jonas Hector was less sent the wrong way with one shuffle on the right flank than sent to get the bratwurst. Later in the game, Alli turned him again because the left-back had forgotten the mustard. As another famous Ali once said: "I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark."

Only when he starts to do that little wave of his after skating past defenders might it be time for Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino to have a word. 

"

This is Quality.

Wave After Wave (feat. Dele Alli).https://t.co/F2EhuoLFof

— Football Funnys (@FootballFunnys) March 29, 2016"

He's just such a beautiful footballer to watch. There's not much he can't do. He's a bit David Platt in the way he arrives late into the box, though he's too direct to be ghostlike. Four of his league goals this season have come via his head, which again is unusual for a traditional No. 10. In fairness, as the season has progressed, Pochettino has used him closer to Harry Kane, almost as an auxiliary striker rather than link man. 

Everything is on the front foot. He's the anti-Arsenal. Sterile possession is anathema to him. When he receives the ball, he takes responsibility without forcing it. That's what Ross Barkley could do with improving on. The Everton man's decision-making is at least a level below Alli's. But then so is Paul Pogba's, and he's the most expensive player in the world. In fairness to Barkley, it's getting better under Toffees manager Ronald Koeman's tutelage.

Part of a new athletic breed of No. 10s, Alli is 6'2" and knows how to use his body. He's narrower but doesn't have a dissimilar frame to Zinedine Zidane. He plays with a straight back, too.

Just as Kante may usher in a new era for more diminutive central midfielders capable of covering ground and pressing quickly—as opposed to more rangy specimens like Nemanja Matic, who have been the go-to types in the position over the past decade or so—Alli and Barkley could instigate stretching racks being ordered for traditional squat schemers a la Philippe Coutinho. Or maybe there's room in the world for both.

There has been speculation the England pair could be team-mates not just at international level next season.

In Michael Calvin's authoritative and pitch-perfect dissection of life as a football manager in the modern game, Living On The Volcano: The Secrets of Surviving as a Football Manager, Karl Robinson tells an illuminating anecdote about his time as Alli's manager at MK Dons.

The author and Robinson were at the training ground observing a player on the cusp of joining Tottenham Hotspur in a £5 million deal when Alli spat chewing gum from his mouth on to his knee before juggling it with either foot and volleying back to its point of origin. It probably reminded them they were talking about a kid. It's easy to forget when watching him play.

After gently chiding a player he had taken an almost parental interest in since first meeting the precociously talented boy with a complicated background and family life, Robinson, in hushed tones, told Calvin:

"

Sure, he's got some air of arrogance and confidence about him, but he's a good kid. He's given only a percentage of his wages, so he understands what it means to save.

He doesn't mind a row on the pitch, but we've got a special signal. If it is getting a bit tasty—and teams do try to kick him out of the game—he winks at me to tell me he's still in control. He can be anything he wants to be.

"

The wink is important. It demonstrates self-awareness, an appreciation that even footballers that like to play the game off the cuff need parameters. Clips of Paul Gascoigne are littered with instances of him theatrically winking to the cameras, team-mates, managers, opposition players, match officials, fans in the crowd, enemies in the crowd, wives, girlfriends and all points in between. They were always of-the-moment gestures, though, spontaneous and irreverent. 

With Alli, it was the exact opposite. A wink was the equivalent of hitting the pause button, a glass of water between pints on a lairy night out.

As West Bromwich Albion's Claudio Yacob and Gent's Brecht Dejaegere will attest, having been on the receiving end when Alli forgets to wink, the Tottenham man has an edge to his game so sharp that paper cuts could prove to be his equivalent of Michael Owen's hamstrings.

Alli will start next season suspended for whichever European competition Tottenham find themselves in after his red card against Gent earned him a ban and the broadcasters a likely pious letter from Mary Whitehouse for showing an act of pre-watershed wanton violence. 

Alli's temperament is Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness' favourite topic. He has always been indulgent of a player one suspects he would love to see stare back at him in the mirror in the unlikely event he is ever blessed with Benjamin Button-style powers of reverse aging. Out of his mouth usually tumble platitudes along the lines of: "He's a kid. He'll learn from the experience." At the same time, his eyes plead: "Don't ever change, Dele. Don't ever change."

In his column for the Sunday Times (h/t Luke Brown The Independent) he recently conceded as much, opining:

"

He really snapped into it, intending to leave a bit on the guy, so he got what he deserved with the red card.

Yet that is also one of the reasons he could become a top player. Alli has a bit of devil in him, an edge that most top players possess.

As strange as it sounds, if I was his manager, I would be quietly saying to myself: 'Thank goodness he has got that in him.'

"

Given Pochettino was sent off 13 times for Espanyol during his playing career, it seems unlikely he will lose too much sleep over one of his players showing a little needle. Those surprised a well-groomed short-back-and-sides merchant like Pochettino could ever have been so brutish should look up images of him from his playing days. He looks like the generic muscle in Patrick Swayze classic Roadhouse.

Lee Dixon echoed the point on Wednesday while covering the game for ITV (h/t Callum Davis of the Telegraph): "If [Mesut Ozil] had half of what Dele Alli has got, that nasty streak, he would be 10 times a better player than he is because he hasn't got what Dele Alli has."

What Alli has is a rare gift. All Southgate has to demonstrate is the courage of his convictions in building his England side around it.

After all, making the same decision hasn't worked out too badly for Pochettino at Tottenham.