Dele Alli: Mauricio Pochettino was my best manager and I considered retirement under Jose Mourinho – but don’t blame him

Dele Alli says he considered retiring from football aged 24 after being dropped from the Tottenham team by Jose Mourinho.

And the Everton midfielder has insisted Mauricio Pochettino is the best manager he has worked under – labelling his relationship with his next bosses as ‘fake’.

7

7

7

The 27-year-old opened up in a brave interview with Gary Neville on ‘The Overlap’, where he commented on his childhood trauma, while also revealing he checked into rehab after becoming addicted to sleeping pills.

Alli, who has returned to England after his loan spell in Turkey with Besiktas, also commented on his relationship with Mourinho after the Special One replaced Pochettino at Spurs.

After finding himself on the bench, the 37-cap England international has stated this impacted his mental health, leading him to ponder hanging up his boots.

He said: “It’s hard to pinpoint one exact moment [when he started to feel things weren’t right].

“Probably the saddest moment for me, was when Mourinho was manager, I think I was 24.

“I remember there was one session, like one morning I woke up and I had to go to training – this is when he’d stopped playing me – and I was in a bad place.

“I remember just looking in the mirror – I mean it sounds dramatic but I was literally staring in the mirror – and I was asking if I could retire now, at 24, doing the thing I love.

“For me, that was heartbreaking to even have had that thought at 24, to want to retire. That hurt me a lot, that was another thing that I had to carry.”

7

7

Alli and Mourinho were filmed for Amazon’s ‘All or Nothing’ docuseries which covered Spurs‘ 2019-20 season.

In the series, Mourinho told Alli he was ‘f****** lazy’ in his office – and again in a team meeting – while also telling the same thing to Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, with the clips going viral on social media.

And Alli has insisted that Mourinho quickly apologised for his comments after realising he was in the wrong – though that never made it in the TV show.

He remarked: “That lazy comment, people love to bring that up, that interview obviously was on Amazon. He called me lazy – that was the day after recovery day.

“A week later, he apologised for me for calling me lazy because he’d seen me actually train and play.

“But that wasn’t in the documentary, and no one spoke up about that because it was only me and him.”

Alli then revealed that following managers used that same narrative to justify why he wasn’t in their plans.

He added: “After that, I think people definitely tried to use that, for some other decisions.

7

“I think other coaches, maybe, for other reasons why I wasn’t playing, they stuck to that – lazy one – because it was kind of an easy, easy one to use.”

But he added: “I don’t blame Mourinho, I don’t blame anyone. My reaction to that wasn’t right, but it wasn’t something I had control over.”

As for his relationship with Pochettino, Alli was nothing but effusive in his praise for the Chelsea boss, who recently insisted he wanted to speak to the player to offer him some advice.

It was Pochettino who thrust Alli into first team action for Spurs as a 19-year-old, with his stunning form seeing him win the PFA Young Player of the Year awards in 2016 and 2017.

Alli said of Pochettino: “Mauricio Pochettino was the best manager and I couldn’t have asked for a better manager at the time.

“It wasn’t like a footballer and a manager relationship. It was deeper than that, I felt.

“He was just so understanding of the decisions I was making, and he was guiding – like, he cared about me as a person before the football, which is what I needed at that time. And I think that’s important for young players.”

And Alli has revealed he struggled to connect with future managers following Pochettino’s dismissal in 2019, as he stressed his ‘ego’ impacted his ability to connect.

7

He stated: “I think [Pochettino] helped a lot in that period of my career, which is why it was tough for me when he left.

“Because, you know, then you [get] new managers, and it was hard for me to let anyone in at that point and to be open. And I felt like everything was just so fake.

“When people – managers – would speak to me, I just felt like the conversations weren’t real. 

‘It’s hard to explain. It’s something like it was more, it was probably more me and in my own head and my own ego. 

“You know, I weren’t open to let anyone in, and I didn’t feel like any of them wanted to really know me on a personal level, which is then tough for me to fully commit and give my everything for them, which obviously had a negative impact on me in the long run.”