Dele Alli As a member of the club, he was active in the field of world football premier league as a Tottenham player. The 27-year-old footballer was one of England’s big projects but he did not shine at Spurs and his career took a different direction. Now, the midfielder recently did an interview with former footballer Gary Neville for YouTube channel The Overlap and opened up about the trauma he experienced growing up.
The current Everton player revealed that he was addicted to sleeping pills due to his professional situation and therefore decided to seek treatment at a rehabilitation center.
“I’m afraid to talk about it. When I came back from Turkey and found out that I needed surgery, I was in a very bad mental state and decided to go to a mental health rehabilitation center. Addiction and trauma are treated there. I felt it.” “That was my time. I didn’t give you that they can tell you to go, you have to know it yourself and make the decision or it won’t work,” he said.
The former England international revealed that he was a victim of sexual abuse as a young boy. “When I was six years old, I was sexually abused by a friend of my mother’s who was around the house a lot. My mother was an alcoholic. They sent me to Africa to learn discipline and then sent me back,” he told Gary Neville, calling the interview the “most emotional, difficult, but inspirational thing I’ve ever had in my life.”
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The midfielder with Nigerian roots revealed in an interview that he not only used drugs as a child, but also dealt in them.
“I smoked when I was seven and started dealing drugs when I was eight. “An elderly person told me they wouldn’t stop a kid on a bike, so I would run around with my soccer ball and then carry the drugs behind me,” he added.
Another difficult episode that Dele related to Alli was that at the age of 11 he was hung from a bridge by a neighbor from where he lived. In addition, his family abandoned him a year later. “When I was 11, they hung me from a bridge, it was a guy from the neighborhood, a man. I was adopted by a great family when I was 12. I couldn’t have asked for better people to do what they did for me. If God created man, then it was they.”
The sportsman stated that he wants to quit football at the age of 24 and pointed out that he currently does not want to maintain any connection with his birth relatives, as they accused his adoptive family at 18 of exploiting him for the sole purpose of getting money.
Dele Alli returned to Everton after his pass in Türkiye
After spending some time with Spurs, Dele Alli signed for Everton, a team he stayed with for a year, and then went on loan to Turkey’s Besiktas for 2022/2023. However, the midfielder has returned to Everton in recent months to play next season.